Explore "Human Work" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The most familiar facts are often hardest to understand. This is described by Ward as "the illusion of the near. " Because of nearness we get no perspective; because of continual presence we become used to one view and fail to perceive others.
To the consideration of new facts we come with comparatively open minds, impressed by each item and its relation to the rest; but facts long known are supposed to be understood, and we resent the slight offered to our intelligence in the proposal to reconsider. Yet the most revolutionary discoveries have been made among precisely the most familiar facts; as in the nature and use of steam, or the endless potentialities of coal tar.