Learning From Past

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31307, 1 March 1967, Page 6

Learning From Past

' The past had a great deal to teach the modern world, said Professor H. D. F. Kitto, who will be visiting professor of classics at University of Canterbury.

The lessons of the past were in political relations, family relations and how to behave as members of the universe. "Time after time there has arisen in history, as is happening now, a sudden wave of emotion which has swept a country, knocking it off its feet Ten years later they have realised what fools they have been,” he said. The past could also demon-

strate the dangers facing a democracy party passion, the demagogue and sheer bloody-mindedness. There was also the question whether a democracy was effective fir whether a tyrant was better.

In classical literature it was shown that the same mistakes had been made time and again. “Human relationships don’t change much although it is true we kill now with the atom bomb and not with bows and arrows,” he said. “However, when a man is dead he is dead anyway.” Professor Kitto, who until his retirement was professor of Greek at the University of Bristol, said it was his view that the study of the classics

was livelier now than it had been between 1910 and 1920 and that was true also in the United States, ® s interest was in Greek *•«>« «»an Greek history. A country showed maturity

if it considered that its past was not dead but was still valid in the present, he said. Professor Kitto said he was saying nothing against the study of engineering or science; but when ho was growing up the cry bad been that as people were living in the modern age only modern things, such as modern literature, were any good. “That is babyish, short-, sighted and provincial and 1 think we are recovering from that,” he said.