THE ENGLISH CHARACTER.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 199, 8 September 1937, Page 4

THE ENGLISH CHARACTER.

«'It has been said of the English that they have 'a certain giiaVitation toward truth.' Their xninds are intuitive rather than analytic," said Uoetor John Murray, principal of University College, Exeter, in a lecturo on "The English Character," deiivered in Befiin, ''Bome men only know a thing when they have exhausted the detail of parts, elements and relations— a useful and necessary type. Even then, perhaps, they know rather than Understand. Others leap to conelusions, surer of a thing as a Whole than of its parts, and understand long bcfore they know. Of laborious exploration of detail the English are impatient; they rely rather on a premonitory sense of shapo, trend, meattlng, aiid the truth. They go by presentiments, and fare thus fairly weil. They are aVerso, • they wili tell you, to philosophy; and yet their groping s&arch for the totality or unity of a matter is more philosophical than the preoccupation of some other inquirdrs with the partial, the trivial, the infinitesimal— more philosophical and more illuminating.''