John Evans at SYNTAGMA was kind enough to dig up the references to the concept of “originative intellectual workers” that I mentioned a few weeks ago. He quotes from HG Wells’s autobiography and Colin Wilson’s Beyond the Outsider.

If I’m interpreting the excerpts correctly, “originative intellectual workers” refer to people who are trying to break free of life’s petty little concerns and divine a greater meaning or purpose. I’m still almost as mystified as before, though. Maybe I need to read the two references in their entirety to actually “get it”.

Clive Allen of Gone Away left a comment in response to John’s post that made more sense to me:

HG suffered from the common misconception of his time - the belief that science had freed man to become more than he had ever been and that this was a recent phenomenon (it might be called “generationism” - the belief that man’s intelligence and understanding evolves further with each generation, thus leading to a form of “generation snobbism”). The plain fact is that man has always been an “originative intellectual worker” and that some generations produce giants that are not equalled for centuries (witness the Ancient Greeks, the Renaissance, cave paintings indeed). And the greater availability of leisure time that science has afforded us has done little but add a few inches to our waistlines. Man thinks best when under pressure.

John and Clive are clearly closer to being originative intellectual workers than I am.