"THE FLIGHT FROM REASON"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22578, 17 November 1936, Page 13

"THE FLIGHT FROM REASON"

Sir, —The flight from reason seems to me to be a flight from plain, matter -of - fact, everyday common sense. We have a crowd of vociferous jwssimists telling us that mankind is properly in the mud, and was never worse off than to-day in the heyday of twentieth century civilisation, which has given tho vast majority of the people living under it less work, more leisure and better ways of spending it, in fine, a better and easier living than their ancestors ever had. vet one would think they were plunged into some dreadful abyss of Tartarus to hear the howling. These pessimists, like old Omar, make "fulfilled desire" their heaven, never asking themselves whether "fulfilled desire" really is heaven, or whether their boundless and inconsistent desires can possibly be fulfilled. This is not a bad world; it is a very good world for sensible, level-headed, self-controlled people who are not such slaves to their desires for material things that they voluntarily submit themselves to the fabled tortures of Tantalus. A few days ago I read a book on ancient Babylonia and its people. They lived the same life substantially that wo do, and, 1 think, a happier one, for tlie.v appear to have been contented with what their gods gave them, not perpetually torn to pieces by a legion of flaming, unsatisfied, unsatisfiable desires. Ngaruawahia. A. Wakjiurton.