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Adams, Brooks, 1848-1927

"The Theory of Social Revolutions"

This is the class which has won
high fortune by the acceleration of the social movement, and the
consequent urban growth of the nineteenth century, and which has now for
about two generations dominated in the land. If this class, like its
predecessors, has in its turn mistaken its environment, a redistribution
of property must occur, distressing, as previous redistributions have
been, in proportion to the inflexibility of the sufferers. The last two
redistributions have been painful, and, if we examine passing phenomena
from this standpoint, they hardly appear to promise much that is
reassuring for the future.
Administration is the capacity of cooerdinating many, and often
conflicting, social energies in a single organism, so adroitly that they
shall operate as a unity. This presupposes the power of recognizing a
series of relations between numerous special social interests, with all
of which no single man can be intimately acquainted. Probably no very
highly specialized class can be strong in this intellectual quality
because of the intellectual isolation incident to specialization; and
yet administration or generalization is not only the faculty upon which
social stability rests, but is, possibly, the highest faculty of the
human mind.


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