THE ROOT OF THE MATTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 816, 18 March 1955, Page 27

THE ROOT OF THE MATTER

Sir-I have not read Margaret Isherwood’s The Root of the Matter, reviewed by James K. Baxter in your issue dated March 4. He says she suggests: "that the spiritual devastation wrought by loss of faith can best be avoided by removing faith from the young, and replacing it with intellectual tolerance." If that is an accurate statement of what she says, I would first observe that one cannot "remove faith" from any mind. One can remove faith in some particular thing-e.g.,. any specific religious, political or social conception. And I think the author was recommending something of that kind. ‘But what, I ask, is wrong with teaching a child intellectual tolerance? Mankind is more or less. desperately attempting to mould a new human world from the pitiful mess of material that is what it is, largely through intolerance. To attempt to make a new human world while educating the child in all the intolerances cherished by its parents and the community in which it lives, is a hopeless proceeding. In the religious world discussed by your reviewer, a multiplication of those he calls "inbetweeners" might well be a hopeful development. We like to think that we have got past the stage when religious intolerances persecuted those whose views were different from the authority in power. Intellectual tolerance does not involve sacrifice of the right to do battle against what one regards as mistaken or evil; but it does involve the sacrifice of the wish to employ either physical or spiritual terrorism.

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).