The Dominion. SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1936. AN EPISTLE FROM “JEREMIAH”

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 220, 13 June 1936, Page 10

The Dominion. SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1936. AN EPISTLE FROM “JEREMIAH”

In the correspondence columns of The Dominion yesterday .there appeared a letter signed “Jeremiah,” jn which. the_ writer inveighed scathingly on the events and tendencies of life in this country. The ruling motif, he remarked, seemed to be swank. I o some of the younger generation his observations may seem to savour of tbe testiness of a crotchety elder of the Victorian period at odds with an age with which he is profoundly dissatisfied. But the. underlying philosophy in his letter is worthy of attention and reflection, because the events and tendencies he has in mind are not peculiar to this country. They are the characteristics of an age in which there has been a perceptible drift from the principles of human philosophy which, in an earlier period, dominated peoples ideas of what constituted civilisation. The “swank” to which our latter-day Jeremiah refers is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “showing oil,, swagger, “bounce.” What really appears to be distressing his mind is something more serious, namely, that spirit of “competitive ostentation, which, it has been remarked somewhere, “is the ruination, of. society, and, in the opinion of some, may spell the ruination of civilisation. “Swank” is an unhealthy symptom. In an individual it p,accs him in a false atmosphere; in a nation, a dangerous one. lhe mentality in each case is wholly unethical, because it assumes a condition of superiority that does not exist, that is in fact an imposture. In this connection Dr. Albert Schweitzer made some thought-compelling observations on modern tendencies in his book, The Decay nnd the Restoration of Civilisation (A. and C. Black, Ltd., London, 1932). Dr. Schweitzer’s reputation has three noteworthy facets a famous nnisv cian (his favourite instrument the organ), a celebrated medical missionary in Africa, and a profound student of the humanities. In his opinion, civilisation as we know it to-day has entered into a period of decadence, and is even in grave peril of disaster from which R can be saved only by a complete reorientation of our ideas of its nature and its aims. This can be accomplished, he says, by a return to clear and deliberate thinking on the part of individuals, by a revulsion against controlled mass opinion deriving its inspiration and stimulus from material considerations, by reconstructing society on an ethical basis. Civilisation presupposes free men, for only bv free men can it be thought out and brought to realisation. But, says JJi. Schweitzer, “among mankind to-day both freedom and the capacity for thought have sadly diminished.” ... , Our friend “Jeremiah” asks what a. set of educationists can know about education who have never learnt to make things, do things, struggle with Nature, or habitually “use the co-ordination of brain and muscle even in throwing muck with a long-handled shovel. Dr. Schweitzer remarks on this point that “education is now carried on by teachers who have not a wide enough outlook to make their scho.ars understand the inter-connection of the individual sciences, and to be able to give them a mental horizon as wide as it should be. And he adds: “How much less free in many countries is the elementary school teacher of to-day compared with what he was once! How lifeless and impersonal has his teaching become as the result of all these limitations. ... In the education and in the school books of to-day the duty of humanity is relegated to an obscure corner, as though it were no longer true that it is the first thing necessary in the training of personality.” From this point of view it might .be worth while to make Robinson Crusoe a compulsory text-book if for. nothing else than its human philosophy and its exaltation of the individual’s duty to humanity. . . But that is only part of the problem of reforming civilisation. We are told that another hindrance is “the over-organisation of our public life.” We have only to look around and to reflect a little to be impressed by the extent to which personality and ideas, are subordinated to institutions. In a former age ideas had to justify themselves to the individual reason. “To-day,” says Dr.. Schweitzer, “it is the rule —and no one questions it—always to take into account the views which prevail in organised society. . . . The modern man is lost in the mass.” The truth of this is seen in the conflict of mentality shown in the individual’s dislike and fear of war and his nation’s preparations for it: in the frequent appeals by individuals for removing the trade barriers between nations, and the steady intensification of economic nationalism dictated by organised mass opinion. It has been remarked somewhere that a man will often be induced to agree, as a member of a group, or a crowd, to a course of action repugnant to his individual sense of fitness. That is because mass opinion so often nowadays has no ethical background. “The final decision as to what the future of a society shall be,” declares Dr. Schweitzer, “depends not on how near is organisation to perfection, but on the degrees of worthiness in its individual members.” A first step in that direction, one would imagine, would be to get. rid of the economic “swank” that has so bewildered and dazed the individual and get back to the elementary principles of living, earning, and spending.