IGNORANCE.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17811, 10 July 1923, Page 7

IGNORANCE.

1 "AGE OF THE MOVINGPICTURE BRAIN." AMERICAN LAWYER'S PESSIMISM. i'BY ( .;LE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COF-ntfOHT.) I.AVSTRALIAX AND X.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON. July S. Mr James M. Beck, the United States Solicitor-General, in an outspoken address before (he English-Speaking Union, said.—"We are living in the age of the moving picture brain, in which no man i\ members in the evening what lie read in tho morning, and when he no longer considers the truth or falsity of the thing he reads." Mr Beck recalled a conversation with King Albert of Belgium, in which reference was made to the men who went to death with a smile during the war. Th 3 King replied: "Yes, aud the heroes of to-day are Charlie Chaplin and Douglaj Fairbanks!" Mr Beck said the English-speaking races were approaching dangerously near tho Hippodrome period, which marked the decay of a race. ft' Shakespeare returned to earth ho would be required to write a bedroom farco with plenty of "pep" in it. Shakespeare would' reply that he had written two bedroom plays, "Othello" and "Cymbeliuo," but tho' modern manager would retort: "We do not want highbrow stuff, but the maximum of manly excitement with the minimum of intellectual effort." "When I came to London," Mi Beck concluded, "the newspaper plac ards vvero recording that Suzanno Leng len was in tears, and that liobbs was 'not out.' The tact is the time has come when a little healthy pessimism would be tho best foundation for the reconstruction of the world." Mr Beck's remarks lend additional interest to the liomanos Lecture delivered by Professor John ; Burnett, o: St. Andrew's, at Oxford, on May 18th lie took for hia subject " Ignorauce,'' and argued that it was increasing to such an extent that there' was a possibility of another ''Dark Age." Professor Burnett explained his choice of "Ignorance" for a title by declaring that the growth of ignorance at the present day was a problem gonerally overlooked, because instead of beginning with ignorance, we fixed our attention on knowledge, which at least appeared to be increasing. Moreover, when he spoke of the growth of ignorance, he was not referring especially to what were sometimes called "the masses." Among them we certainly found a great increase, if not of knowledge, at any rate of the desire for knowledge, and the Labour' Party had a sincere belief in education. Unfortunately they were apt to speak as if thero existed somewhere a stock of ready-made knowledge whieii had only to be doled out liberally » Batisfy all needs. That had been the view of Lord Brougham and other pioneers of popular education in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, but that was altogether wrong. If we started, as we should, from a consideration of ignorance, we should be struck first of all, he thought, by its passivity and inertness, and this raised a presumption that knowledgo was above all, as Plato held it to be, an activity of the soul. But if so, it followed that it could not be com municated, except in so far as the active soul could induce other souls tt> share in its activity. What could bo supplied from stock was merely the sediment of dead knowledge, though even that was valuable, since it furnished us with the necessary tools fir the real activity of knowing. But it was not itself the real thing. Were we taking the best way just now to secure the maintenance of that higher education on which all the rest depended 1 i The nineteenth century had a simple faith in the progress of knowledge and enlightenment, but wo knew too much history now to have any assured confidence in that. Theie had been Dark Ages before, and they had generally supervened on periods when knowledge of a sort had beon more widely distributed than ever. Sj far as we could see, the decay had always set in at the top. It could not be denied that there were warnings and portents at the present day such as had before now heralded an age or darkness. It was no wonder thiit some who were skilled in reading tibe signs of the times should feel uneaiy. J.'he young men of the present <Jay were, on the whole, healthier; in body and mind and more intelligent than those of his own generation. He hoped that his own generation would have behaved aa well if the same call had come to them as came to these young men in 1914, but, frankly, he was not sure. v , On the other hand, he was certain that the young men of to-day were absolutely and relatively more ignorant than those of forty years ago, and, what was worse, that they had less curiosity and intellectual independence. In Scotland, at any rate, that was true. \ Every University teacher in the country whose memory could carry him baek a generation knew that they had had to lo>ver their standard of teaching and exanunation progressively for the last thirty years in every department j except the physical and natural sci- I ences. With that exception, no doubt a considerale one, he heard the same thing on every side. He did not much blame the school- ] masters for that. They were no longer iiee agents, and the worst that could be said of tliem was that they were too ready to acquiesce in such a, state of affairs, and even to claim that the requirements of the Universities should be modified in accordance with it. He did blame the system under which the teaching of the schools was determined the necessities, real or imaginary, of an externa] examination, particularly when, as in Scotland, this was an identical written examination imposed on all schools alike by a Government department He blamed still more the educational theorists of the last generation, whose theories were apt to find their way into departmenal regulations and circulars just when they had been proved wrong even in theory.