ENGLISH HYPOCRISY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20425, 2 October 1934, Page 5

ENGLISH HYPOCRISY.

Mr Bernard Shaw Gives Explanation. NO TECHNIQUE OF LIVING. (Special to the “ Star.’’) LONDON, August 22. j Mr Bernard Shaw spoke of “ English hypocrisy ” w-hen he presided at a | lecture given by Mine. Levinskaya, the pianist, at the New Health Summer | School at Malvern. Commenting on her address, which [ was entitled, “ A New Technique of | Living,” Mr Shaw said: “ That does not concern me very | much because, as I am in my seventyninth year, it is rather late lor me to get a new technique of living. I would have to acquire a new life before that [ would have any effect for me. “ But I would like to know how I should have lived. I am fairly convinced that I have not always been successful in finding out the right path, and although it is too late really, I should like to know what I ought to have done. There is still time for me to find salvation. “ As you are a generally English audience I may safely assume that none of you have any technique of living at all—that you have tumbled through life as best you can. “ In all qestions of this kind you have to consider the psychical fact that in English society everybody has grown up on hypocrisy. That is what makes people .so extremely awkward in many ways. It is not a mere physical awkwardness. but very few people know how to behave nicely and tactfully and get through life. Gentlemen—And Men. | ‘‘ The reason is owing to this general j demand for hypocrisy. If you are a ; female you are taught to behave like j a lady, and you know perfectly well | you are not a lady but merely a j human being. [ And if you are a man you are

taught not to be a man but a gentleman. There is a very great difference between an ordinary human man and a gentleman. “ I have long been convinced that the notion that the brain is in your head is a complete mistake. I have known men who have brains in their fingers and none in their heads whatever—in the ordinary sense. “ You often find an extraordinarily clever and inventive mechanic who, if you asked him to describe what he does, is pitiably helpless. A brain is a J thing that is all over you. A football j player’s brains are in his shins or in his J toes.” i Madame Levinskaya said that the j basis of her new technique of living | was to teach people how to co-ordinate their muscular actions with their brain j “So few people,” she said, “ have any I sort of co-ordination in their ordinary every-day actions. I once told a wellknown doctor that 90 per cent oi the English people have no co-ordina-tion. He replied: ‘I entirely disagree. Ninety-eight per cent have no co-ordina-tion.’ ” Madame Levinskaya said that if one sat on a seaside promenade and watched people going by one would be impressed by the awkward way most people walked. “ Many men,” she declared, “ walk either too stiffy or with a slouch, while most women walk either with a mincing little step or with a sort of coquettish swagger. Most of this failure to co-ordinate is due to our faulty educational system. “ Children are never taught how to co-ordinate mind and muscle, and many of them learn bad habits when they are first taught to write. Many of them sit in a cramped position with their arms unnaturally contorted, and usually with their tongues sticking