The philosophic doctor was at hand during a time when there was an awareness of reality, an era that people in which people valued the metaphysical dream. He was in control of general synthesis. The chief thing was that he was also the possessor of highest learning. He was generally the heart of all things because he had mastered the principles. Due to the commencing modernism the philosophic doctor was then replaced by the gentleman.
The gentleman is where man started to lose site of the common dream they once had held so dear. The gentleman is basically a secularized adaptation of the doctor. The gentleman was an idealist who didn't have deep foundations or convictions but who also had self-discipline against temptations. However the gentleman did have morals and values. Weaver says that as long as the western world could keep a gentleman class it would maintain a measure of protection basically stating they needed the gentleman class as a safeguard, because mankind was neither engaged nor passionate and held a universal view of the relationship of things.
Gentleman
The Doctor, by Sir Luke Fildes (1891)
English: A page from Brathwait's book that display...This time ended and the specialist emerged.
The specialist is where we are today, Sunday November 6th 2005, where everyone only "specializes" in knowledge of one minuscule fraction of all the world has to offer. The specialist straddles the border of psychosis. We lack the common dream which has been taken over by fragmentation, which is the abandonment of generalization for specialization. Rather than generally knowing everything and having a grasp of everything we now know only a lot about one thing. And in knowing this one little thing we begin to think we are so smart, only to realize we have become blind to everything.
This is where Weaver gets the thought that men so wrapped up in...