MORALS AND LITERATURE

Evening Star, Issue 17700, 29 June 1921, Page 4

MORALS AND LITERATURE

ADDRESS BY MR T. R. FLEMING. In tho Y.M.C.A. Hall last night Mr T. R. Fleming, chief inspector under the Otago Education Board, delivered an address to the Women Teachers’ Association on tho subject of ‘ The Moral Function of Literature/ Misi Robertson occupied tho chair.

Air Fleming said in tho course of his address that the material progress of the last two centuries has tended to shift tho centre of life's interest from tho spiritual to the material view of life. Aims_ and ideals have become more sordid. If life is to have any meaning and value to individuals 1 and nations there must be a release from sordid motives, A spiritual anchorage is required to gain that release. If our boys and girls are to bo equipped for the battle of life they must have morale to lead to victory, and power to reap the fruits of the victory, those fruits being a clearer realisation of the fact that it is only by servile and sacrifice on the part of individuals that the community will benefit. If wo can train a child see clearly, to imagine vividly, to think independently, and to will nobly, that training will not ho defective. What are the most powerful instruments to tho hand of a teacher? His personality must count; science and mathematics may teach him to see clearly, to think independently, and even to imagine vividly. But literature will compete with men in training these three powers, and as to the power to will nobly, no one can deny first place to literature. Literature, in a, broad sense, may be divided into the useful and tho artistic. Narrowing tho mealiing of tho term to the artistic, wo are justified in classing literature as one of the fine arts. In that sense it possesses tho essential characteristics of beauty, ideality, and concreteness, and if wo remember that beauty here- includes what is morally good, wo may say that it is tho most important characteristic of true literature. So much for the matter or substance of literature. There remains the manner or form in which the thought, idea, or emotion is to be expressed. Thought and style arc both required to be of a high order if excellence in literature is to be attained. Unfortunately, in tho teaching of the past, sufficient emphasis has not been laid on the deepest significance of literature, and efforts to show that it translates the inner meaning of Nature and life have either been altogether lost sight of or have been subordinated to the teaching of language and form. It, is because of this deficiency in our teaching that, we seo everywhere to-day a want of appreciation of good literature. This want has deprived the individual of making friends of the wisest counsellors of all ages to whom ho can pul questions about the problem of his life, It remains for us to endeavor to equip the child with “ the breath and finer spirit of knowledge” by creating in it a deeper interest in “ the still sad music of humanity,” and so enabling him to realise that man does not livo by 'broad alone. Air Fleming concluded by giving illustrations from poems and advice as to how to handle them.