HOMO SAPIENS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 55, 6 March 1934, Page 7

HOMO SAPIENS

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PROFESSOR G. MURRAY'S VIEWS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, January 4. Professor Gilbert Murray described civilisation as he sees it when addressing the Historical Association at King's College. "A civilisation," ho said, "shaken by the effects of a great war, crying out for peace and concord, making treaty after treaty for co-operation and the peaceful settlement of disputes, yet spending greater and greater sums out of its sinking revenues on preparations for war; "A civilisation full of humane ideas and scientific knowledge about politics and government, yet pierced by savage discontent-and in places brutally misgoverned; "Wealthy, yet full of extreme poverty; "Enlightened, but bristling with fashionable superstitions; "Brilliant in art and'scienee and philosophy, yet somehow haunted by indefinite depression and no- longer confident in its own strength or its own value; "Eager to spread its culture over new populations who arc pining for it, botli at home and abroad, yet feeling that culture wither and lose vitality as it spreads; "Newty conscious of the whole world as the true area of its interests and object of its loyalty, yet unable to escape from the stupidest and most unprincipled nationalism; "A civilisation in which, amid many revolutions and varieties of social structure, the nobler elements seem to lie at the mercy of the lower, and Homo sapiens cannot control his fate." Professor Murray referred to the utter failure .of the free Greek communities to unite, and continued:— "The strongest forces left wore the big mercenary armies and their paymasters. The soldier was in power. Force, not" justice, the will of a despot, not the will of the people, decided all great questions. "Under those conditions, as wo have seen in certain countries today, the human intellect and conscience tend to live underground, like mice in a house; they are mostly killed when noticed, but otherwise manage in a modest and timid way to carry on a subterranean life of their own."

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