MODERN VALUES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 19, 23 January 1926, Page 8

MODERN VALUES.

Criticisms of American life an i the speed at which .t j.s liv-.i have f requently been made, but the latest, uttered by .Dr. Charles Shaw, professor of philosophy at the New.York University, places speed as among the seven deadly values in current life, and joins with it radio, sex. over-emphasis of health, jazz, modern psychology and money. Matthew Arnold uttered much the same criticism against the life of bis day when he said that we never once possessed our souls before we died. After denouncing Mammon as the great god of the age and Dives as the great man, the professor goes on to suggest that some philanthropist should offer a prize of a million dollars for the invention of a reason for living. The prize itself might offer sufficient reason in the eyes of many people. Speed may be a means of saving time, and thus in tlie end adding to the leisure of life. A railway train travelling at the rate of 60 miles an hour enables far more time to be spent at a holiday report than would a stage coadi travelling at eight miles. Most modern inventions have been the means of saving time and labour, and they ought to have added considerably to our leisure. Radio seems in curious company when joined to the other six deadly sins. Radio has been a means of saving life at sea and in other ways, and to class it with jazz shows that the bizarre the professor complains of has affected his own soul. A pessimist, during the progress of the war, said that the only good thing likely to conic out of it was that we should have fewer books from (Jermany on child psychology. In joining psychology with overemphasis of health, the professor shows that he has at least read some of the American books on these subjects. Every age has its cranks and its fads. The great mass of people, however, is not affected by the eccentricities of the few. The men an<l women who do the work of life are kept sane by the exigencies of their occupation. There is an clement of truth in all the professor has said, but to take his effusion as a true sketch of modern like would be to add false values to his deadly ones. If history is to be trusted, the English, in the days of the Merry Monarch, and the French, under Louis XIV., led a much faster life than most people do to-day, and had an even greater craving for entertainment. Tlie solid virtues remain unnoticed, and the froth at the top is no true indication of the real character of any age. '