For Schumacher, “Small is Beautiful” only when in the right proportion/relationship to the large: “What I wish to emphasize is the duality of the human requirement when it comes to the question of size: there is no single answer. For his different purposes man needs many different structures, both small ones and large ones, some exclusive and some comprehensive. . . . [W]hat is needed in all these matters is to discriminate, to get things sorted out. For every activity there is a certain appropriate scale . . .” (70)
Schumacher felt the need to emphasize the small scale only because of a contemporary “idolatry of giantism” that needed correction and balance, not because of the innate superiority of the small for all things.