WISDOM AND GOLD

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 7, 30 March 1927, Page 13

WISDOM AND GOLD

KNOWLEDGE TO-DAY OUTSPOKEN PROFESSOR AMERICA’S MATERIALISM t (From Our Oxen Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. It is the opinion of Professor Murphy that men to-day are too specialised to see life steadily and to see it whole. “There is,” he said, •when speaking to-day, “a barbarous contempt for knowledge, because it was knowledge of pecuniary values which entirely dominated us, and we assumed that wisdom and gold were the same thing, and that the possession of gold necessarily entailed the possession of wis dom. America had not produced a single figure of first rank in art, music, literature or philosophy, but she had produced a ■ incredible amourit of material wealth, and a race of standardised men, wearing standardised clothes, reading standardised newspapers, with standardised minds. This could not be advantageous to the world in the long run, or even the short run.” “Almost all people can now read,” he continued, “but few can think, the result being that there is ordinarily no effective public opinion, only the rigging of the political stage by energetic minorities in the face of uncritical public apathy.”