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New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 383, 25 October 1946, Page 17

Sir,-Surely it is an exercise of wisdom to pass by an obituary in silence and to forgo criticism of it; but G.H.D. will have none of this niceness; he must take the occasion of the obituary to H. G. Wells to parade his own particular values. The better to depreciate

those qualities which H. G. Wells typifies, he says the author did not mellow with his years but was petulant and was not calm. For ineptness this can be likened to the charge that Socrates was an inattentive husband. To turn a prayer wheel, to extol the pearl in the lotus flower, may induce calm and humility, even as it puts to sleep dangerous thought but habits more enterprising could, I suggest, tolerate an occasional cry of impatience, The real purpose of G.H.D.’s letter was to advance his own spiritual diet. And we can excuse him, as we hope to be excused who share this human fault. But G.H.D. is more clamorous than good argument requires. Claiming for his faith "many of the best minds in every age" (with their private thought, doubts and vacillations!), he also claims "all that is best in our western civilization.’ Thus he .ignores our indebtedness to the non-christian scientist, to the pagan ancient, and to the Arab, Hindu, Chinese, and Jew. The "best" he would put under a Christian monopoly. Then he must be at some pains to ignore the evidence that dominant Christianity was ‘not always the "best," and was not a quintessential goodness unchanged in all time. The history of. Christianity is not a record of unmixed goodness. It is a technique fabricated and grown complex out of the needy exuberance of the human mind. And unless it forsakes its mysteries and becomes a conscious working method for social good, it shows itself as blind to its responsibilities and will be left in the discard, or will be a factor in the frustration of the human pnotential.

V.

WASMUTH

(Onehunga)_