NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22917, 21 December 1937, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

AGE OF THE CAMERA Nowadays we are such staff as films are marie on, and our little life is more and more determined by the camera, writes Mr. Ivor Brown in the London Observer. We spend enormous sums on teaching people to read, but they appear to be reading less and looking more. In the world of the übiquitous newsreel and of ever-increasing pictorial emphasis, in advertising as in journalism, it is even more necessary to take the eye if one is then to take the mind.

AESTHETIC ENJOYMENT Asking that most difficult of questions, "What happens to us when we read poetry," Mr. Basil de Selincourt says it is a sad truth, sad but inescapable, that one cannot get very far into the theory of aesthetic enjoyment without encountering those terrible hogs and sloughs in which so many philosophers flounder—questions of what is real, what realness is; whether, for example, since a picture is only a picture when it is looked at, you can still call it a picture when it is hanging in an empty room—and so forth. Thinking nicely, you see that the room may he full of sightseers and yet that the picture, aa the artist created it, may still be invisible. Many who listened to Toscanini's rendering of Brahms' Requiem only a few weeks ago would be inclined to say they now knew as never before what Brahms had actually created in that work; then, for the first time, they had a vision, if only a transient, disappearing vision, of its meaning a~s a whole; because it was complete, its beauty penetrated mind and spirit, and its hearers were caught up and enveloped in its power and radiance.

SCIENCE OF THE MIND .Allowing that scientific progress in the material field is likely to continue indefinitely. Mr. Perry Griffiths, writing to the Listener, goes on to nsk: — But is it not obvious that the future will yield even more valuable results in the world of mind and its more ethereal "heaven," the world of ethical values? In the domain of psychology, we are now probing the inner releases of the human mind, and while we shall, in the first instance, thus attain astounding results in connection with man's capacity for enjoyment and his power of controlling, and perhaps eliminating, the terrors of sin and sorrow, is it not more than probable that the human mind, thus better attuned to the real beauties of nature, will discover advantages, conveniences and amenities independently of the physical sciences and wholly within the domain of mind ? Here. I suggest, there He within the reach of every thinking man boundless treasures of knowledge which the more material sciences can never even approach. And here, also, humanity will realise its highest dentiny and unique privilege of discovering God in Nature, and achieving a more definite and unmistakable advance toward the divinity of character we now to feebly envisage or hope- for.

OLD WAYS AND NEW IN ART To plagiarise a well-known advertisement, "Times change; so does Painting." I remember well, writes the art critic, Mr. Jan Gordon, that formerly a frequent remark in a studio was, "You know, I'd leave that, if I were you." To which the answer was, "Oh, I think I can push it a bit further first," a pushing further which, too often, was attended by unfortunate results. To-day things are reversed. The visitor asks, "You going to leave it like that?" to which the answer is: "Simply daren't touch it; it's just got a something . . . don't you think?" The difference is yet more enlarged when one reflects that the_ "pushing further" was toward an ideal in the painter's mind, while the "something" is only too often an effect quite unexpected by the artist at the start of the painting. The former artist was trying to dominate his subconscious, he was trying to be "master of his soul"; the contemporary instance allows his subconscious to dominate him. Yet recognise the great importance of the subconscious as we may, we cannot help hut admire the man who is determined to make his complete ego into a properly manageable instrument. We must admire the one who determines to push further, in spite of dangers of spoiling, more than the one who, not daring, accepts joyfully the often unexpected felicities of his submerged self.

CAUSES OF WORLD UNREST The hostilities in China and Spain seemed to show that civilisation was sweeping back into barbarism, said Mr. Ramsay Muir, M.P., in a recent address in Lancashire. " Whose fault is it?" he asked. " Are we to assume that the Japanese or Italian's or Germans have a larger dose of original sin than other people? That is just nonsense." Drawing a contrast between nations that "had" and those that "had not," Mr. Muir said it was due to the inevitable failure of a, peace settlement made at the end of a great war and embittered by all the rancour of a great war. It was obvious that the peace settlement had broken down in all its main features. It was also obvious that peace still had to be made, and the respect in which it must be made was to assure the nations that felt they were shut-out of the proper share of the world's possessions that they could get them by peaceful means.instead of using the means that Japan. Germany, and Italy were attempting to employ. The blame was as much on the democratic nations as on the antidemocratic nations, because the democratic ones also happened to be the nations that owned the greater part of the world. First, they had failed to use their powers, both economic and polictical, but especially economic, to prevent war. The Japanese trouble to-day and the war in Abyssinia would not have happened if Britain had taken the right action, action which would riot have involved the risk of war Britain had not only failed in regard to the prevention of war but also in not creating world conditions of peace. The situation had been made worse'instead of better by intensifying the barriers to trade which prevented the access of the dissatisfied nations to the wealth they felt they must have to keep their people under decent conditions. Jf they did not get that they would try force, and they were trying force. The return to, or advance to, freedom of trade was the only solution.