HUMAN PROFIT AND LOSS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23442, 5 March 1938, Page 14

HUMAN PROFIT AND LOSS

A confession of his continuing faith in the ascent of man, in spite of present tendencies, is penned by Professor Gilbert Murray in the Listener. He writes: I still believe in progress and liberation; I believe in the emancipation of women; I believe strongly in the need for justice between nations and classes, and of better treatment, far better treatment, for subject races. My hopes. I think, have largely come true. People are kinder than they used to be, more intelligent, more public-spirited, as well as better nourished and better dressed. The world has advanced enormously. The depressing thing about it is the bad use it has made of its advances. The secret of flying, for instance, a thing man has dreamt of from the earliest ages. That has at last been solved; man can fly, and we use that splendid discovery mainly—though not of course exclusively—to make innumerable bombers and fighters which fill the whole world with terror. The secrets of psychology, again. Wonderful advances have been made in the study of man himself, and what things move him and influence him. Above all, research has shown how little claim man has to call himself a rational animal. He is fo little moved by reason, so much by utterly irrational lusts and fears and follies, and mere senseless repetitions, and instead of concluding at once that we ought most carefully to cultivate as much reason as we happen to possess and to be on guard against all these follies, the world as a whole has preferred to exploit the follies for all they are worth so as to bamboozle and be bamboozled more completely.