THE MODERN MIND

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21354, 22 December 1934, Page 7

THE MODERN MIND

CRITICISM BY CATHOLIC . MISSIONARY "NOTHING MODERN AND VERY LITTLE MIND" (from our own cobkbspondent.) LONDON, November 9. Father Owen Dudley, the novelist and missionary, has a very poor opinion of the modern mind. Speaking to the Catholic Truth Society, at a jubilee meeting, he said: "What the modern mind is I have never been able to discover beyond that there is nothing modern about it, and vei\y little mind. Dr. Barnes once announced, I believe, that the Catholic doctrine of the Resurrection was imcompatible with chemistry. If I announced that the immortality of the soul was incompatible with a Guinness I should be taken to a mental home. It would be about as intelligible. I have no doubt that if I explained at the mental home that a Guinness should be re-inter-preted in terms of modern thought I should be let out accompanied by a brass band ....

"It is humiliating to have to believe that you are not an ape—a real rational human being with a soul and not a monkey. I must admit, though, that the modern mind and the monkey go extraordinarily well together. The modern mind sees genius in Epstein the sculptor. Epstein's genius lies not in his statues, but in his successful persuasion of the modern mind that a combination of hippopotamus and gorilla is representative of a human being. I understand that these repulsive females with which he decorates London represent reality. I will believe it when I see a London young man walking out with an Epstein girl."