NEED FOR HONESTY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 17, 17 December 1937, Page 6

NEED FOR HONESTY

-NO FINE. SYNONYMS.” SELF-ANALYSIS URGED. “Be honest with yourselves. When you are a fool, admit it. When .you are weak and lazy don t call it tuedness and overwork. It is a most deplorable and dangerous practice when looking at your actions not to call them by their right names, and to look for fine synonyms. Look at yourselves and call yourselves by the right names too, and don’t look for fine synonyms. This was part of the counsel offered to the pupils by Miss E. E. Stephens M A principal of the Girl s High School, at the breaking up ceremony of the Palmerston North High Schools last evening, when she said education was to be pursued and attained, and that none could do without it. lhe most abominable tiling in tins world, she declared, was humbug, and people should not try to deceive their own minds. Then they would not try to deceive others. ... , “Whatever we do we must not blind our own eyes, especially to admit the code of behaviour •which we call snobbery. It upsets the whole scale of mental balance, and we should not substitute idiotic ideas like those for the things we know to be correct. Let your own reason be the measuring rod in things that matter. There are things ot absolute beauty—and they do exist ever if we perhaps do not always see them. There are three things that count, and the poets call them beauty, truth, and goodness. Our moods , and tempers have no influence on them at all. You must not shut your eyes to foolish humbug in yourselves and m others, and when people express intolerably ignorant, and stupid opinions, don’t hestiate to speak out, and do not let a nice politeness restrain you from saying a word in season. “When you suspect snobbery, foolishness, 'hypocrisy and false standards, added Miss Stephens, “do not submit to them, and do not flatter the people who show snobbery. Honesty of thought is a painful and difficult thing to accomplish, because, it strips us of all our self-conceit.” Continuing, Miss Stephens said that when we met people who violated these ideals and rules of conduct, we should have a tilt at their follies, but should not allow this to develop into a personal antagonism, and withdraw ourselves from them. No one was so disagreeable, so unpleasant, find reprehensible that one could not speak a few words with him, and there was no excuse for the attitude of selfrighteousness or intolerance. That was where the virtue of charity should be exercised.