The Viceroy on Learning Judgment and Conduct

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17973, 19 March 1930, Page 15

The Viceroy on Learning Judgment and Conduct

Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, at the Inter-Universities Conference at Delhi, reports the “Times of India,” said: — “If learning and research are to have their real value, are to be more to a man than mere graceful accomplishments and decorative adjuncts of his life, they must be human enough to fit into, and join up with the various categories of man’s activity. I think this is true of all learning. “The technical sciences are obviously related to the necessities of our ordinary existence at every turn. History, and philosophy and literature, whether ancient or modern, all have their points of contact with everyday life and their lesssons rinor most true when we fe.cl that wc can read our own experience in them. “A man's training has definitely failed if he leaves it without such an appreciation of values as may give him a just sense of appreciation—a knowledge of how much for all his store of learning there is yet for him to learn —and some instinctive sense of the mystery of the universe and of the mystery of man’s place in it. “In playing his part in the world and in his dealings witn other men, whether as politician, administrator or employer, in professional or business life, a man is trebly armed who knows intuitively the relative importance of all th© numerous elements which every human problem must contain. “At least he must have sufficient of the quality—call it imagination or what vou will—to appreciate that such elements exist, and if, by fault of training or fot any other reason he lacks this facultv ho is as a man who sees himself in a mirroi which shows him his own face magnified and nothing more. His own problems hia own position, his own perspective absorb too much of the picture and hopelessly obscure aud distort his view of persons and things beyond himself. “Three standards—learning, judgment, .and conduct—each playing its part, will form human character.”