PUBLIC MORALS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1923, Page 6

PUBLIC MORALS

BISHOP OF LONDON AND HYDE PARK PURITANISM OR. SCIENCE. : (FltOH OUR OWN CORR^SPONDEHT,) _ LONDON, 13th September. Kchoes of the controversy regarding public morals and Hyde Park arec still to be heard. In a very brief letter to "The Times" yesterday, the Rey.'-"Wil-son Carlisle, the founder and hon chief secretary of the Church Army; has' something to say of the birds of the night :— "Alas! the Bishop of London's figures are under, rather than' ojer^ the mark Strong warning should be given broadcast to all persons of. good .will never to venture away from vthe lighted pathways, and even .then only'to go two by two- this has always been the Church Army rule. Hundreds of innocent r lives have been wrecked''here. Though to the pure all things may be pure, no jjood purpose is served in spying for birds of I the night, who are'usually plumed as angels of the light." ' LEGACY OF A PRE-SOIENTIFIC PAST. •'.'.... "To the reader who is neither fanatical nor apathetic," writes another cor-, respondent, "it seems a little odd in a' century of psychological knowledge, and its bearing on the problems of life in a crowded city, that the custodianship of our public morals should still be in the hands of a way of thinking that is at once neither scientific nor wise. It is not the personnel of the Committee for the Promotion of Public Morality that is at fault, it is their way of thinking, which, together with most of us, they have received as a legacy from the pre-scient-ific past. To think scientifically is to think in a new way about every-, thing, and there can be no limit to the extension of this method of thought. The way in which Darwin studied plants is the way in which the psychologist studies human beings and their variations in conduct. His knowledge is obtained inductively from the facts he studies. He makes his own major premiss ever liable to revision. He does not receive his major premiss from the literary past, and then feel obliged to enforce it upon all with the aid of the police. He is never shocked at anything. His feelings are incapable of being outraged. To him nothing is unseemly, but everything is wonderful and. worthy of patient and sympathetic study. THE PURITAN MIND. "Surely it would be wiser to entrust the guardianship of our public morals to men who think scientifically upon all matters, and whose own private lives constantly remind them that a fellowfeeling should make one wondrous kind in dealing with the difficulties of fellowbeings, especially those who, through lack of all privacy in their homes, are forced to take refuge in our public parks and to claim sanctuary therein from the way of thinking that hounds them from pillar to post. Of all people in the world, it is to be thought that the Puritan is the last to undertake the problem of making London brighter. But the dawn of a better way of thinking is breaking, for in the hands of' science the problems (to a large extent artificially created by the Puritan mind) of life in a crowded city will receive that wise, yet very sympathetic,, treatment that characterises a mind which ever seeks to continue the task so long ago inaugurated by Him who was known as the friend of those who outraged the feelings of the righteous men and women of ancient Jerusalem." '