THE CAPITAL HERESY
A talk on Milton and the modern world was given by Professor W. A. Sewell, professor of English at Auckland University College, to the Auckland Rotary Club. The speaker referred to the seventeenth century poet as the first anti-Fascist. “All through his Paradise Lost, Milton insists on the doctrine of original sin which we tend to forget now,” said Professor Sewell. “He believed men to be imperfect, fallen things. The capital heresy to-day is that man is naturally good. This leads us to hope for too much from the future and to envisage Utopias and a perfect society. By neglecting the fact that man is necessarily imperfect, we have caused damage to our political and moral thinking and lost the social purposefulness in our lives. Life on earth is a struggle with imperfection, and in the end the dignity and triumph lie in the struggle.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 25964, 3 October 1945, Page 8
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148THE CAPITAL HERESY Otago Daily Times, Issue 25964, 3 October 1945, Page 8
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