MURRAY'S HIBBERT LECTURES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23061, 11 June 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

MURRAY'S HIBBERT LECTURES

Liberality and Civilisation

By E.M.B

PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY has more than one claim to fame. There is his. outstanding work as a classical scholar. There are his notable contributions to English literature. It is under this latter head that we choose to epeak of his translations from the Greek classics. Prosaic critics have said that they are not good renderings. Terence may not be a good crib to nor Fitzgerald an exact translator of Omar Khayyam. Gilbert Murray, like both of them, stands in his own right. Like Keats in Chapman's Homer, thousands have found in Murray's Euripides new planets and new seas. But wo digress. It is Murray the thinker and the ardent League of Nations enthusiast who meets us in his Hibbert Lectures on "Liberality and Civilisation." By liberality he means something more than liberalism. He means that devotion to freedom combined with a true spirit of service which is tlip best product of humanism. Civilisation which enables a man to be unafraid to think and to give, makes liberality possible; and a failure of liberality is the surest test of the failure of a civilisation.

Renaissance of Barbarism

To ;tvhat extent then has our civilisation failed? It is here that the lecturer made depressing hearing. Freedom of speech and thought are of fundamental importance to true liberalitv. To deny freedom of one is to deny the freedom of the other, and to be denied freedom of thought is direct slavery. The,? limitations law imposes are in «xaCt and equal proportion to the lapse of the society that imposes them from true civilisation. Starting from this thesis, Professor Murray turned to Europe for illustration. "Amid its strong delusions 5 the task of the man Of liberality is tokeep his mental balance. The Vast majority trill be against him, for the vast majority in an age Of f»erpl*xity seek refuge in the Simple philosophies which successful demagogues know how to teach. There is the fallacy of Marx that all huniafl action, at any rate all collective action, is based oil the pursuit of direct material interest. The simplicity of the doctrine is an intellectual refuge for the perplexed, and this enormous convenience the political agitator seizes upon. But the doctrines are obviously, untrue, as Murray is at pains to point out. Marx him&elf, and the immense book which was never likely to be a financial auceelS, disprove it. Then turn to communities and Bee the Motions of revenge, vanity, inherited prejudices which devastate the world. It is madness to suppose that it is an - economic motive which makes Germans prefer guns' to butter, and £ri tbs hate the Jews, whose presence in Palestine has increased their wages and improved the value of their land. Anti-Semitism i& a similar simplicity. And'aitfid slogans, catch-cries and false philosophies, some new, some traiditional, Jbairbarism has risen . again.

Neurotics on the Throne

And .liberality is tho remedy. 4 'lt is «ara Murray, "it; is. atf ?ilititua6 ofifiina, an effort to get rid bf prejudice so as to see the truth, to g6t rid of selfish passions so as to do the right." But what chance has truth SotP Or rightP Or huraanitarianism P ietzsche called truth "a repulsive old woman," and Nietzsche has many disciples to-day. And Hitler called humanitarianism "a mixture of stupidity, cowardice and superciliousness. Can wd". neglect words like this as tho ravings of a neurotic? Cambysfes and Caligula are not the only necrotics who have been a danger On, a throne. Time was when truth would filter through. That was before tho day of the totalitarian with itß grim efficiency and cruelty] Persuasion and Force, said Plato), art* elements in all society, and the better the society more of the former. Force is now supreme. Men's souls are stormed, their thoughts dragooned. Myths, says Murray, are the modern substitute for truth. There arc the varied and contradictory myths of thf* War which this people and that must believe. There is the Italian myth of a conquering Rome and a new.Augustus in a world of decadent democracy. There-is the myth of China which all Japan believes. There is the Russian myth .that all social reform wan thw MStilt and. invention of the Revolu- ■ 7

• Cynical Murder of Truth But- it takes the genius of totalitarian States to' give their myths success and stifle all dissent. The Nassi Minister of Education has cynically stated thnt the "falso idea of objectivity" is well killed, and the Heidelberg Professor of Philosophy (a man must live!) declares: "We do not know or recognise truth for truth's sake."

"What matters." says Goebbels, "is not who is right, but who wins." Where have, the glad gods led ? This is the product, we must observe of our generation. The Napoleonic wars were bad enough, but, as Murray remarks, we rub our eyes to read in a letter of Gibbo'A, written while they were raging, a remark that ho really fears that this time it will be necessary to return from Geneva via Ostend since "the long. War has rendered even the polite French somewhat peevish.'' Depressing reading 60 far. We pass over much more. Professor Murray's lectures are admirably documented, and show the universality of the disease. Hubris; a Greek would say. has done its work. That is the name lie gave to that overweening arrogance on the part of tho stronger, to a contempt for people he would not understand. The modern world, with its talk of higher and lower races, has known much of this for a century and more. Professor Murray ends with a call to repentance and nn appeal for loyalty to the League; for a loyalty mingled with valour and sclf-saerificc which will rise above fear and give tho nations back their manhood. Pessimism will say: "A voice crying in tho wilderness," but, even optimism can hardly tee safety elsewhere.

"Liberality and Civilisation," by Gilbert Murray. (George Allen and Unwin).