THE ABSENCE OF TASTE

Shannon News, 30 July 1929, Page 4

THE ABSENCE OF TASTE

The absence of any cultivated taste is to be seen in modern dress, houses, and entertainment. Everyone is a copy of everyone else, because everyone is afraid to be himself. The rows of little boxes .which we call houses are disgraceful architecture by comparison with the art of the eighteenth century, and the less said about the furniture of these houses the better it is

for the credit of contemporary democracy. The incompetence of contemporary democracy in the finer graces of life is abundantly evident. An ideal democracy is a co-operation-' between very different men and women, equal only in the test applied to f;hem, and in the duty of serving the common good. For such a society further changes in educational methods arc necessary. Men must. learn that each service benefits from the abiLty of the other, and those who. have ability must learn that their ability 'is not to be used chiefly for their own private gain.' Men must learn that skill in enjoyment is more valuable than skill in getting means to enjoy. Each man's ability must be rooted in the soil of common life, and rooted in the soil of common life, and not treated as a little preserve for use in a select aristocratic group."—Dr. Dclisle Burns.