THE INTELLECTUALS

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 546, 6 July 1920, Page 1

THE INTELLECTUALS

SALT OF THE EARTH.

PRESERVE IKE "'SPECIf'S."

FROM PLEBIAN DESTRUCTIVE NESS.

There is a passage in Plato's "Apologia" which affords food for reflection to a ruminative mind. Socrates confronted with his hostile judges, is represented as telling them how astounding "Jje" had been when the Delphic Or&Te proclaimed him the wisest man Si Greece. He had, he said, far too intimate a knowledge of .his own limitj|ions to accept so improbable a statement ns true. Yet the god» had spoken, and the gods cannot He. And at last he had grasped the meaning of the hare], saying. He was the wisest man in Greece, not in spite, but on account of the fact that he realised his ignorance. His soundest knowledge was his very cleaiujperception of how little he really knew. There is much ironic wisdom in this agreeable anecdote, and it is more than possible that the Pre-

sident of the English Board of Education (Mr. H. A. L. Fisher) had it in mind whan he took "Our Ignorance" as the subject of his address to the annual conference of Educational Associations. For, as*Mr Fisher pleasantly pointed out,' ignorance is a fund in which we all have extensive holding, though, unhappily, "the larger holding the smaller our fortune." To exchange ignorance for knowledge is perhaps the worthiest, as it is in many respects the most satisfying aim in life. But tho exchange cannot be made by those who refuse to pay the price; and Mr. Fisher. Cabinet Minister though he has become, is still far too much of the student to care to disguise unpalataole truths in specious phrases. Mankind, he tells us, is but poorly

equipped by Nature for the fight against ignorance. Indolent accept-, ance of fallacy, and the chanting ofcurrent phrases is to nine-tenths of the human race at once an easier and a more pleasant thing than facing the facts and thinking out their meaning. Biometrists estimate the total number of really intellectual families in the world in very modest figures, and men of outstanding mental attainment bear but a small proper tion to the general mass of population. "It follows," says Mr. Fibber. and his weighty words are well worth pondering. "it follows that an all-powerful proletariat government with an animus against intellectual eminence without difficulty arrest the progress of science in a most effectual way, by disposing of the comparatively small handful of men who carry and transmit the sacred seed of discovery, and it follows

also that one of the great responsibilities of social science is so to protect and encourage the thinking part of the community in the pursuit of its proper avocation, and so to devise means for reinforcing the all too slender numbers of men qualified tc contribute to the advancement of knowledge, that public policy through all its ranges may, in an over-increasing measure, be grounded upon a true appreciation of the Tacts and forces of the world in which we live." , . .. These things being so, how is the destructive force of probably wellmeaning ignorance to be counteracted, and the thinking part of the community to be safeguarded in the light to think freely those fruitfu thoughts which in due season will tupply to the world at large the intellectual food it stands in need of .' The answer is obvious. For botn these lines of activity Mr. Fisher would have us look to the educational institutions of the country. It is

from them that the community must Beek to derive sound habits of study, and the wise habits of thought. But iu this quest it will inevitably fall unless the aim of those who teach is a high one. To turn out men and women true to type, average samples of the commonplace, will work no deliverance. The aim must be to raise the average, and this can only _ne effected by producing in increasing bulk the exceptional. So convinced is Mr Fisher of the urgency of tins need that he does, not hesitate to assert that "it is o'nly by striving foi the excellent that we can succeed in Maintaining the average only in the quest of the unattainable that wc can in sober fact attain." The warning is no new one. Mam decades have gone by since Cardina Newman, in the striking discourse;

published in the Idea of a University, uttered a protest against confining education to particular and narrow ends, in .-the foolish belief that it should always issue in definite limited work that can be weighed and measured. To make utility our watchword, and to ask what there is to show for the .expanse ot a University, what is th& marketable value of a'liberal education, may sound practical and wise, but is in fact -the outcome of confused thinkin* and of the inability to discriminate values. It will no doubt be said that much water has flowed under manv bridges since the days of Cardinal Newman, that the world has crown wiser, and the practical man hV at last come into his own. And no doubt much may be adduced in support of this view. It is not however, the view of Mr. Fisher. He has no patience with those -ignorant people," as'-he calls them, who criticise universities -because they make provision for recondite subjects, and expect of their alumni acquisitions in the sphere of polite o scientific learning beyond those toi which they have immediate use in after life." Such auloctrme, if widely accepted, would,, hj% thinks, be fatal to the intellectual integrity of the country. It is the highest function of universities to kindle in the minds of their students at least some smouldering fire of the scholars passion, to awake in them at least the longing "to grapple with problems only to be mastered by the brain at fullest tension, and then with a surviving sense of contiguous tracts ot cloudland beyond/' . These impassioned words, it should oe remembered are not the dithyrambics of an eloquent professor, but the deliberate expression of the mature reflection of a man who is looked on today as probably the most outstanding figure in the politico-educational world. The widest range of the deepest learning is what he postulates of the universities, which nave entrusted to them the almost overwhelming task of forming and informing the best minds of-Sie race. The electricity we use to light our streets and houses is generated by s> power whose source is in the clouds upon the mountain top. Ihe pure thought generated in the universities that have the courage to maintain high aims will, in Ida man- ' rer, spread throughout the whole community diffusing through a mil--1 lion channels its light and sweetness.