“ACADEMIC FIDDLERS.”

Evening Star, Issue 21718, 12 May 1934, Page 17

“ACADEMIC FIDDLERS.”

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Fiddling philosophers, indeed! Nero fiddled when Rome and the Christians were burned. If they fiddled to the crows at their own expense it would not matter. But it is your boys and girls they are fiddling to, and you pay the piper. Only what is the tune and whither does it lead? Ask the philosophers, and they will smile and inquire how many .degrees you have got, and are you a Rhodes Scholar? No; but you have boys and girls coming on, and you have some principles that guide life, and you would like to pass them on to your dear ones. Philosophers, however, are not concerned with realities, _ oAly ideas of these. Thought, unprincipled thought, and nonsense will make a philosopher. Though it ruin the life of your child and sow the harvest of unprincipled Communism, what does it matter to them? “ After ns,” the deluge. It was the philosophers of Germany whose unprincipled teaching in all their universities made the World War. Here in New Zealand, and in this university centre, we make a fool’s

paradise for ourselves. But if we had Germany where Canterbury is, and France where Southland is, we should know that the religion of good advice and resolutions of Presbyteries are as idle as the wind.

You report fully a meeting of the Otago University Philosophical Club, where the master of Kuox College (Dr Merrington) gives a paper, on the weighty question ‘ Is There a Consensus of Philosophers?’ And the answer is where ho began, “ all moonshine.” Then you have an address by the new Professor of Philosophy, Dr J. N. Findlay, with a “ large attendance.” In a capital provincial city of over 80,000 people about one hundred is indeed ‘‘large ” for a professor of _philosophy. It would haye looked small in the Town Hall. I listened to it with interest,and thought that both with the subject, ‘ Aristotle,’ and the audience he could not do any justice to himself. _Of course, to tack it on to the ‘‘ Classical Association ” perhaps shut him up to Aristotle. I never listened to such a rigmarole of unintelligible moonshine in my life. I question if anybody, even the philosophers could make head or tail of it. This, of course, was not Dr Findlay’s fault. It was Aristotle’s, and Aristotle was a suicide! You may get some interest out of fossils from ancient quarries, and I have seen mummies 4,000 years old most interesting. But fossil “ thought,” dead a thousand years, is hard to put up with. If that were all, we should not mind. It is w'hat is the philosophy, here and now, taught in our University. What are its principles? This chair is supported and the professor chosen by the Presbyterian Synod of Otago. Having been here just on fifty years I have some right, on behalf of thousands, to ask tho question, so easily answered; but “ silence” is the word. If thoughtful parents in New Zealand would wake up and ask some questions about tho philosophers in the universities, who pays them and who appoints them, they would think rapidly and get busy. I have quoted Professor Shelley before. Now we have Professor Sinclaire, also of Christchurch, demanding license to teach and talk as be likes at a debate on the motion “ that complete academic freedom of thought and expression should be allowed at the University,” ho declared for “ complete freedom.” True, there were only forty students out of 800 present to hear this debate. Philosophers are not attractive speakers. How many constitute the Otago University Philosophical Club? A little half-dozen on the bowling green? Then you have Professor Hunter, at Wellington, on the same, as ho has ■ been for years, teaching aggressive agnostic philosophy. Here vve have him talking the philosophic aristocrat and declaring that “ democracy means mediocrity.” “ The institution should take a stand that people had to qualify before they could become members.” Yqs, we should all be university men and Rhodes scholars before we could so much as say what our youth should learn at the University. We are to havc_ the privilege _of paying high salaries and witnessing the philosophic bowling green—tho balls being the heads of our own children.

But if you aro a vulgar “ Labour agitator ” talking violently on your soap-box, look out; that is a different thing. You may be run in. Get a few university degrees and talk it all in the gilded chair of the classroom, and it will be all right. You will even be supported by theological professors who have similar gilded chairs of their own. I sympathise with tho soap-box orator. Chalmers and Wesley and Booth were once only soap-box orators. lam a. soap-box orator myself. Would we had one or two more, —I am, etc., P. B. Phaser. May 11.