The Need for a Sense of Values

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 291, 8 September 1928, Page 17

The Need for a Sense of Values

R. BELL has a theme of absorbing interest, upon which he 4 ‘ It /S’ bas been meditating, with radical changes of judgment, \/| for something like twenty years; and he has things to say V "I of penetrating vitality and vigour,” writes Mr. Arthur Wau g]j i n the Daily Telegraph on Mr. Bell’s new book, “Civilisation : au Essay.” . "From a sense of values comes that desire for, and belief m, liberal education which no civilised age has been without,” writes Mr. Bell. “The richest and-fullest life obtainable, a life which contains a maximum of vivid and exquisite experiences, is the end of every civilised mans desire. Because he desires it tie aims at complete self-development and complete self-expression: and these are to be achieved only by those who have learnt to think and feel and discriminate, to let the intellect .play freely round every subject, and the emotion respond appropriately to all stimuli. “Knowledge in addition is needed; for without knowledge the intellect remains the slave of prejudice and superstition, while the emotions sicken on a monotonous and cannibalistic diet. The civilised man desires au education which shall be as direct a means ms possible to what alone, is good as an end. He cultivates his.powers of thinking and feeling, pursues truth and acquires knowledge, not for any practical value that these may possess, but for themselves, or—that I may distinguish him sharply from the date-collector and competition-winner—for their power of revealing the rich and complex possibilities of life. “The Philistine, wanting the sense of values, expects .education to show him the way to wealth and power, things which are valuable only insofar as they arc more or less remote means to their ultimate good, whither liberal education leads direct. Liberal education teaches us to enjoy life; practical education to acquire things that may enable us or someone else to enjoy it. . “Politicians, for their hour, loom as large as actors and jockeys, and then, like them, fade from the public mind, and are known to curious erudition only. . * ( ‘“Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.’ “If the last part of the quotation be tr ue > s 0 titust be the first, for what could be more ridiculous than one, doomed to speedy oblivion, giving himself the airs Cabinet Ministers are apt to assume? “And, tell me. how many of your friends could tell you who was Prime Minister of England at the time of Waterloo, who was at the War

Office, who was First Lord of the Admiralty. Of how many politicians alive and active in the year 1815 are the names familiar to the reading public’ Of Canning, perhaps, and Castlereagh (chiefly because he was the object of Byron’s satire and Shelley’s), and possibly of Grey. Does •myone but an avowed student of military history know the names of more than two of Wellington’s generals? And - who was in command of the British Fleet when Napoleon came on board the BeUerophonf “But if well-educated English men and women do not know the name of the Prime Minister who presumably ‘won’ the Napoleonic War, nor the names of his Cabinet colleagues, nor of more than two of his soldiers nor of a single one of his admirals, every second-class undergraduate can-tell you that Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth,. Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Hazlitt, Scott, Moore, Rogers and Jane Austen were writing at that tme ' “And the explanation is simple: these are remembered because they have ha.d, and have still, a real and direct effect on the minds of men; because they' are still creating, still stimulating new thoughts and feelings, still suggesting new points of view or changing old ones; because they are even adding now to the world’s store of good. , “Politicians, at best, do but manipulate and distribute the good things others have produced: never do they create. When they are rememS it7s chiefly for the great and dramatic events with which their names arc associated, but of which they are not the cause; and, as we have seen great events will not save them always. They belong, as a rule, to that bird of the fourth order which, though it may play a conspicuous, can never play a leading part in the history of the race. “Politicians leave scars and scratches on the disc, but they do not make the tune; they neither originate nor conclude nor greatly modify those more conscious impulses of the .human mind which give shape to human historv. It is a mistake, therefore, to expect them to be of those who create civilisations, though often they will be found significant manifestations of the civilisations of which they arc parts.” ? Mr Clive Bell has his views on the future of civilisation and the place of reason as the ultimate arbiter of life. He may not convince his readers, but- he will make them think, as those who remember his previous volume on "Art” will readily understand. Patriotism, religion, riches, social well-being all come under review in Mr. Clive Bell’s exhaustive survey.