IDEALS IN LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 21715, 9 May 1934, Page 5

IDEALS IN LIFE

DEAN INGE'S CHOICE OF FOUR VITAL THINGS Doan luge, in his address as president of the Classical Association, assorted that the lour following things were those he would choose in life: (1) Wisdom (knowledge of the relative value of things) ; (2) domestic happiness; (3) recognition and encouragement, which is a great part of friendship; (4) the welfare of my country. In the course of his address (states 1 Public Opinion ’) he said; We English do not talk much about the best parts of our makeup—our great kindliness and toleration, our short memory for injuries, our love of justice and fair play, our hatred of cruelty. We pride ourselves on our business capacity, which is very moderate; ouv energy and industry, in which we are rather deficient; our political wisdom, which shows itself chiefly in our distrust of logic and our conviction (by no means always right) that “ force is no remedy.” The Greeks knew all about the beauty of the human body, and it was possible'that the new cult of sun bathing and a minimum of clothing might once more open the eyes of artists to the possibilities in*that direction. We want to change things and make I hem better. We have our own nostrums —a revival of religion, better education, humanitarianism. Socialism, and what not. 1 am inclined to think, observed Dean Inge, that the belief in the regeneration of society by concerted human effort is our distinctively modern contribution to practical philosophy. Well, what are the ideals and ideas of our own time? Humanism, you will say, and chiefly scientific humanism. Some, chiefly in the name of science, object to humanism. A large number say “ humanism by all means, but why Greek humanism? The Greeks mixed up art, gymnastics, and dancing with religion. They would have opened the Wimbledon tournament with a sacrifice, ami accompanied the games on the flute. If the King’s horse happened to win the Derby he would have ordered Mr John Masefield to write a hymn about it. Their greatest statues were of the gods. That is not our way of looking at art and athletics. Your cult of the classics is just old-fashioned.” We have still a great deal to learn from the Greeks. Our life is far too complicated. We increase our wants and demands on society quite irrationally. We like to have everything done for us. “ You press the button, we do the rest.” We shall soon have a population who cannot walk or read or write or think. A drastic simplification of life would improve our health, our minds, and our characters. Democracy speaks with contempt cf intellectuals and highbrows, and has brought the daily papers with the largest circulation to the lowest depth of fatuity and vulgarity. Would that Ruskin were alive to deal faithfully with the drivellers who bid ns seek our models in the “ art ” c.f the savages of Benin or the statues of Easter Island; who bid us adorn the facades of public buildings with female figures apparently suffering from elephantiasis, and sometimes give us even a canvas scrawled with geometrical zigzags. The whole thing is manifestly a disease. Some of the new architecture is not much better. A child could produce a model with a box of bricks just like a modern pile of flats. The new dictatorships are far more tyrannical, more searching in their inquisitional terrorism, than the rule of any Tsar, Sultan, or Emperor. A completely mechanical society would be a servile State in which all spiritual and intellectual life would be strangled. The consummation of this type of polity may lie studied in the beehive or the termites’ nest.