Vol. 54. No. 9 SEPTEMBER 1949 Threepence Prof. G. W. Keeton · The MONTHLY RECORD Threepence...

•Vol. 54. No. 9 SEPTEMBER 1949 Threepence

Morals in the Current Novel

Legal Fiction and Political Reality

A Psychologist Looks at Culture ...

The Spectre of Malthus ...

Kierkegaard and Humanism

Cod or Man?

Notes of the Month

South Place News

S. IL Ratcliffe

Prof. G. W. Keeton

Prof. T. II. Pear

Archibald Robertson

Hector Ilnwton

R. A.

Correspondence

Book Reviews

•

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETYSUNDAY MORNING MEETINGS AT ELEVEN O'CLOCK

September 11.—S. K. RATCLIFEE.—" The English Middle Classes "

Soprano and Bass 'Ducts by G. C. Dow/MAN and GWEN EMBLEy:

Arise 0 Sun .. .. Maude Craske DayLet us Wander, not unseen .. . Purcell

Hymns: Nos. 73 and 123

September 18.—HAMILTON EYEE.—" The Future of Democracy"

Piano Solo by ELLA ItnivEY: Sonata in C -Beethoven


September 25.—ARCHIBALD.ROBERTSON, M.A.—" Public Opinion "

Violin and Piano Sonata by LINA TANNER and ,ELLA Imirive: Sonata in F Schumann


Pianist: ELLA IvIMEY. Admission Free. Collection.

Society's ActivitiesRambles

Sunday, September 4, Ridge, Shenley, Colney Heath and London Colney.Meet at Amos Grove Station. 10.30 a.m., and take No. 84 bus to " WhiteHart ", South Mimms. Bring lunch. Tea at " Wayside Caf6 ", North Mimms.Leader: F. James. -

Saturday, September 17. Royal Naval College and National MaritimeMuseum. Meet at Tower Pier. 2.15 p.m. for waterbus to Greenwich, singlefare, adults 1 children 6d. Visit the Painted Hall and Chapel. Tea (I16d.)may be booked in advance, and will be followed by a tour of the Museumuntil 6 p.m.

Sunday, September 25. Epsom Downs, Headley and Mickleham. Train1.58 p.m. London Bridge to Epsom •Downs. Day return 2/7d. Leader:Miss W. L. George.

Social Evenings in the Library, at 7 p.m.These evenings will recommence on October 6.

New MembersMr. F. M. Compton and Mrs R. M. Compton, 109 Norwood Road, S.E.24.

New Associate MemberMr. K. Nobes, 174 Wood End Gardens, Northolt Park, Middlesex.

Change of Address of MemberMiss R. Cane, 22 Draycott Place, S.W.3.

Change of Address of AssociateMr. R. F. Chambers, It Tynybedw Terrace, Treorchy, Glam.

OfficersHan. Treasurer: E. J. FAIRHALL

Han. Registrar: MrS. T. C. LINDSAY

Secretary: HECTOR HAWTON

I Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.I.

TheMONTHLYRECORD

Vol. 54. No. 8 • SEPTEMBER 1949 Threepence

CONTENTS PAGE

NO MS OF THE MONTH

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MORALS IN THE CURRENT NOVEL. S. K. Ratcliffe 5

LEGAL FICTION AND POLITICAL REALITY, C. W. Keeton 8

A PSYCHOLOGIST LOOKS xr CULTURE, T. II. Pear .. 10

THE SPECTRE OF MALTHUS, Archibald Robertson .. I Z

IERKEGAARD AND •HUMANISM, Hector Hannon 14

GOD OR MAN/ R. A. 16

SOUPH PLACE NEWS .. 19

CORRESPONDENCE 21

BOOK REVIEWS/ 3

The views expressed in this journal are nal necessarily those of the Society.

Notes of the MonthRationalists at Oxford

The R.P.A. held a very successful conference at Magdalen College,Oxford, last month and it was gratifying to find that Mr. F. C. C. Wattshad recovered from his long illness and was able to attend. The SouthPlace contingent included the secretary and treasurer and several membersof the committee.

They had the pleasure of hearing, for the first time, Surgeon Vice-Admiral,Sir Sheldon F. Dudley, 'who has agreed to give a Sunday morning address.in November. Also of special interest to ourselves was an informal accountgiven by Dr. Van der Wal of the successful establishment of a Humanistsociety in Holland. This is a post-war creation but already the DutchHumanists number five thousand and there is good reason to believe thatthey will continue to .grow.. Some of us, who may feel discouraged at times by the slow progress—measured by membership—of the Ethical and Rationalist movements inthis country will feel heartened by this evidence of the vitality of what westand for. Dr. Van der Wal played an active and dangerous part in theDutch Resistance during the war and it can hardly be doubted that thecourageous activity during the Occupation of many who have now ralliedround him has helped to give Dutch Humanism its present prestige.

He emphasised the need for carrying ethics into the practical field andsaid that at present much work was being done for homeless children. Thereis, perhaps, a lesson here on which we might well ponder. Numbers arenot everything, and ethics is not merely a subject for academic study. The'example of the Society of Friends shows how a numerically small institutioncan do good work and win world-wide respect.

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Can We Be Rational?Lord Boyd Orr's public lecture was the most outstanding feature or the

Oxford Conference. It was a stirring appeal to remember that the gravethreat to our civilised standards was not merely the risk of war but the con-sequences of our failure to utilise for the benefit of mankind the scientificknowledge that we possess. Lord Boyd Orr has often spoken on this theme,but with a Humanist audience his words did not fall on deaf ears. Therapid development of scintific technique, he said, made it necessary toadapt the social structure to the situation in which more goods could beproduced by machines than could be distributed by. existing means.

In some ways the liveliest evening of the Conference was when LordRaglan raised the question of how far we should outwardly conform toreligious usages of which we theoretically disapproved, lie argued thatthere was no reason why a Rationalist should abstain provided that he re-garded the ceremonial in which he took part as a form of play. Indeed,Lord Raglan suggested that the Church of England might even be supportedas a bulwark against the Church of Rome. The vigorous debate was con-tinued in the Common Room into the early hours of morning. The issue isonc that deeply concerns us all, for in one sense Rationalists and Humanistsform a resistance movement in an occupied country. To what extent iscollaboration possible?

Ethical Thought in AmericaMr. O'Dell writes: Someone recently asked me: Are there anymew develop-

ments in ethical thought in America? As regards academic works on ethicsI cannot say, having been for some time out of touch. Just now I have beenre-reading Radoslag A. Tsanoffs book, The Moral Ideals of Our Civilisation(Dutton and Co., 636 pp.), which is seven years old; I can recommend itas an admirable compendium of moral theory from Plato to Dewey. Tsanoffrecognises Dewey as the foremost American thinker in the sphere of ethics,though he gives passing credit to Felix Adler—which most other writers ofsuch books do not. Dewey, one may say, has achieved his immense influencelargely because he belongs, as did William James, in the stream of Americanadventurousness. Furthermore. like Dewey, the American Ethical move-ment has become increasingly sociological in its outlook and interests. Witha world as distraught as ours it could hardly not be so. So far as there areintense moral anxieties in America, doubtless leading to new or enhancedethical concepts in masses of people, three illustrative instances may lac •offered. One, the intense fear of Communism as a danger to that veryindividualism of initiative and enterprise which the foresaid adventurousness •has fostered in the United States, has helped bring about the feeling •ofresponsibility to shard in the recovery of Europe, with its traditional free-doms. Two, the probable widespread approval of the startling advocacy byten U.S. Senators of the idea of a United States of the Atlantic. Three,the growing pro-Negro sentiment, a tardy recognition by more and morecitizens, both. North and South, that divisive grievances within a nationconstitute a profound danger.

Browning and W. J. FoxThe summer number of the Cornhill Magazine contains an article by S. K.

Ratcliffe on the early friends of Robert Browning. It recalls the associationwith W. J. Fox, so fortunate for the young poet, his affectionate relationswith Eliza and Sarah Flower and their delight in the wonderful boy's geniusand his mature conversation. Fox was then living at Hackney. the liberalcircle in that suburb made a stimulating contrast to Browning's companions

• in Camberwell where all his 'early years were spent.

4

Morals in the Current NovelY

S. K. RATCLIFFE

ONE Of the most experienced novel reviewers said recently that the qualityof English fiction was markedly lower today than it was a generation agoand still declining. He was speaking before a large literary gathering andhis opinion was not challenged. The decline of the novel has long been afamiliar theme; yet the production does not slacken, even in a time of papershortage. As a literary form prose fiction must clearly remain unchallenged.It is the only medium for narrative, adventure and character, together withdescription and reflection. That fine craftsman and critic, Frank Swinnerton,wrote in wartime one of the best statements on the present situation. Fleaffirmed that the tragic novel as we knew it until Thomas Hardy had ceasedto exist, and he found two governing reasons. The first was the generalacceptance of the Darwinian theory. How, he asked, could an authorpresent men and women in conflict with fate or the gods, if he believed themto be merely helpless victims in the toils of a cosmic struggle for survival?His second reason .was the impact of the newer psychology built up byFreud and Jung. Mr. Swinnerton, I should argue, exaggerated the effect ofDarwin, who certainly did not hamper thc romantics. It would be hard tofind traces of him in Bennett and Galsworthy, or, as a matter of fact, evenin the stories of so confident an evolutionist as H. G. Wells. The Freudianinfluence, however, is a different matter. Its extent in fiction, English andAmerican, could hardly be overestimated. From D. H. Lawrence to thelater Aldous Huxley and his followers we traverse a devastated area. Mr.Swinnerton added that Conrad was the-last novelist to divide his charactersinto heroes and •villains. Well, perhaps not quite the last, for readers ofMiss Compton-Burnett, our one technician in acute dialogue, remark thatshe is given to making play with moral contrasts, and Mr. O'Dell wasquoted in the Record as counting no more than two thorough rascals in thecollected short stories of Somerset Maugham.

" Books follow morals," said The'ophile Gautier, " morals do not followbooks." But the social fact cannot be stated thus sharply. Novels and playshave a great, if incalculable, influence upon standards and conduct. Yetthe Frenchman was obviously right in assuming that the main business offiction is to reflect the contemporary scene. This is strikingly true of the twogreat English periods—the middle of the eighteenth century and theVictorian age. Both were vigorous and abundant, though strongly cOn-Basted in one important respect. The eighteenth century was freelspoken;particularly as regards the relation of the sexes, while the eminent Victorians;addressing an immense and respectable audience, dared not over-ride Thetaboos. They envied the liberty enjoyed by Defoe. Fielding and Smollett.Thackeray lamented that it was no longer possible to portray the wholeof a man's life. His pains over Arthur Pendennis in London are an illustra-tion of the dilemma.

The rules of reticence were kept until the closing decade of the century.and were then transgressed by novelists with a reputation to lose only withinwell-defined limits. We may recall the fuss made over The Woman Who Did;in which Grant Allen described a free union, ending in a tragedy that wasentirely orthodox. Even more absurd were the storms aroused by Tess andJude the Obscure. On account of Hardy's eminence neither could bebanned by the " select " libraries, as George•Moore's Esiher Waters was,despite its intrusive moral. The line marking off what was proscribed was

5

firmly drawn, but no Continental writer could have understood where itmight fall.

In England- the question of how far a novelist can .be allowed to go inthe printing of obnoxious words has not very often come into the Courts.Apart from gross obscenity, which is a matter for the police, an authorthreatened by the law has usually known that the danger lay in situation andincident rather than in the use of certain ugly mono-syllables. Leadingexceptions, of course, can be cited—Joyce's Ulysses, for instance, and theone D. H. Lawrence novel from which the ban will not be lifted. As a rulethe provocative novelist of the recent past took care to be discreet in lang-uage. He challenged authority in the behaviour of his characters, thcir de-fiance of the accepted moral law. Today, however, we see the experimentof the forbidden word being steadily pushed to the fore. Since the waradventurers have contrived to slip in some vocables that no reputablepublisher would have passed ten years ago. One glaring example has latelybeen under discussion. A Sunday editor of high standing demanded a Courtorder against The Naked and the Dead, which is the rawest of the warnovels so far sent over from America. He had a strong case, fo'r the bookis an extraordinary morass of. beastly words. In reply to a question in theHouse, the Government's law officer said the book was so long and dullthat it might safely be left alone. The problem here is baffling, and it is notmade any easier by the fact that the call for an injunction resulted inimmediate sales. One point only is beyond dispute. If the question wereput to the vote in any public body, the decision would be emphaticallyagainst a.book of this sort being in the open market.

Two things in particular may be said about it. First, that the soldiers'talk filling thesc 600 pages is a shocking revelation of the grossness andvacuity of young America as turned out by the schools into the army;their field of expression is bounded by " goddam " and " sonofabitch ".And secondly, that no pacifist writer in the world could approach this youngnovelist in depicting the horror and boredom and foulness of actual war.

When considering morals in the current novel, however, we are con-cerned with problems far larger than the limits of what is permissible inrecotded speech. The novel is always an ethical barometer. From ToniJunes and Humphry Clinker, Vanity Fair and Middleniareh, we learn plentyabout the contemporary scene an& the standards that belong to it; and weknow that the general picture is accurate. An important question for ustoday is, whether the novel of 1920-50 is to be taken as similarly faithful?If the answer is in the affirmative, then we have to conclude that the moralchanges of the past half-century amount to an amazing revolution. TheVictorian family bore all the marks of a stable institution. It has disappearedfrom the novelist's sphere. In the novels we are now reading the ethicaland social results of the emancipation of women are startlingly displayed.Down to 1900, roughly speaking, English novelists 'as a body maintainedtheir homage to the old virtues, especially of course in womanhood. Therewere signs of revolt, but they were sporadic and not over-serious. Thesituation today makes an indescribable contrast to that of any previousepoch of the modern age, as regards both practice and ideals—if any. LordRosebery once asked Anthony Hope whether Dolly of the Dialogues, inwhom readers of the 1890s found delight, was a virtuous woman. Theauthor confessed that he could never be quite sure! In an assembly ofpresent-day novelists, we may assume, the question would be almost withoutmeaning.

In brief summary, I would suggest that there are two aspects of the novel—as we have it, say, after Lawrence and Galsworthy—that are new in Englishfiction. The first is its a-moral character. Tolstoy, in a famous essay, passed6

severe judgment on Maujiassant because his stories revealed no moral relationbetween the author and the characters. Tolstoy was not urging that theartist ought to preach. He was simply reaffirming the old principle thatthere should at least be an indication of difference between good and evil,the noble and the base. Too many present-day novelists, obviously, are of thecontrary way of thinking. They seem to agree with Huxley's flint-heartedwanton in Point-Counterpoint, who told a comparatively decent fellow thathe 'was talking utter drivel when he showed a surviving belief that someactions were good and others bad.

And the second aspect to which I refer is the limitation of scene and themeagre range of character. Novels of the earlier time were broad andvarious. The great romancer gloried in the width of his canvas. Withoutit, needless to say, he could have reproduced very little of the world he wasinterested in, nor could he have handled the contrasts in groups and individ-uals without which, in his view, no novel could be built. We have still afew novelists who work upon a broad plan and are at home among thecommon folk. But the majority—who would deny this?—are restricted intheir interests and manifestly dependent upon narrow lines of experience.It happens not seldom, however, that in England, more than in America,the young novelist possesses a literary gift going a good way beyond hisknowledge of life and human nature. He can't write about men and womcnalive in the world—how should he? Hence he resorts to autobiography andthe activities, too often vicious, of the people among whom his own youthhas been wasted.

These circumstances, however, account for no more than a section of thewide area we are discussing. There remains the question. of current fictionas a mirror of Society, as " abstract and brief chronicle of the time ". Booksmust follow morals, although the favourites of the hour may afford onlya distorted reflection. The glory of the English novel in its great periodswas breadth and variety, humour and a genial temper, the natural contrastsof character, and the constant recognition of an ethical standard.

It cannot be inaccurate to say that among the many changes in ourgeneration there is none more conspicuous than the neglect of those con-trasts without which, until yesterday, the writer never dreamed of makinghis story. Nor can we deem it a matter of minor importance that in atime of sustained abundance we come so often to the end of a novel withone feeling uppermost, a sense of relief that we are not likely to meet anypeople such as these.

(This article includes some passages from an address delivered on July 17)

" If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if hewill be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties."—Bacon.

*

" One is all for religion, until one visits a really religious country. Thenone is all for drains, machinery,.and the minimum wage."—Alrious Huxley.

" The essential task of all sound economic activity is to produce a statein which creation will be a common fact in all experience; in which nogroup will be denied by reason of toil or deficient education, their share inthe cultural life of the community, tip to the limits of their personalcapacity "—Lewis Mumford.

7

Legal Fiction and Political RealityB Y

PROFESSOR G. W. KEETON, M.A., 'LL.D.

THAT silent revolution, the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, separatesthe ownership of land from its use, and attracts to the State a substantialshare of the development value on a change of use. There is a compensa-tion fund for loss of development rights, with a fixed ceiling of £300million. The Act is theoretically a product of our 'new social consciousness,and it has been fulsomely praised by collectivist lawyers, though theordinary citizen fails to grasp its implications. Behind this legislation liesa grim social reality. For example, a cobbler erected a shed behind hishouse at a cost, of 3:10—and received an assessment for £400 developmentcharge. Suppose a firm with a capital of £10,000 purchases a field andwishes to put a factory costing £25,000 upon it. This will attract a develop-ment charge of 3:10,000—or more if the Board says the land could befurther developed. In fact, therefore, either the land is sterilised or onlythe State can use it. The Act is therefore the most reactionary statute thathas ever been placed on the statute-book, and must be repealed as soonas possible.-

It is more important today than ever before to •study the implicatio-nsof what is being done in Parliament, and to study our political institutionsfrom this standpoint. What are the underlying assumptions of Parlia-mentary government in England? In the first place, we have a legislatureof three parts—the King, the Lords and the Commons—in which theexistence of the King and the Lords checks the exercise of despotic powerby the Commons. The first great inroad upon this was made by the Parlia-ment Act, 191I—a temporary Act, pending reform of the second chamber.In fact the second chamber was not reformed, and the result will be thata single popularly elected chamber will have a power vastly exceeding thatof any other chamber in the world.

Secondly, technically an M.P. is chosen for his personal qualities toexercise frce judgment and to represent not only his constituents of allparties but also the nation at large. This today is a fiction owing to thevast growth in the party's control of its members, and the open supportof members' by outside bodies, such as the trade unions, in return forsupport inside. The third underlying assumption of Parliamentary govern-rnent in England is that although there are differences of policies and meansof achieving them, there is•general agreement on the basis of our politicalassociation—that is to say, in the settlement of 1688. Today, however, theunderlying agreement no longer exists, and we also have a political partywhich repudiates freedom of thought altogether. Yet it is only the accept-ance of certain underlying principles of political association which makesmajority rule tolerable. Only lately a Minister of the Crown suggestedthat if there were a change of government at the next election, the wayto progress would be closed except by violent revolution. This is extra-ordinary language.

The fourth assumption is that Ministers are responsible, first to Parliamentand second to the electorate. But owing to the intensity of party discipline,a Ministry is responsible to nothing but the party which secured its returnto power, and once in it exercises the most uncontrolled of despotisms forfive years. Neither the U.S.A. nor any other constitutional country goesnearly so far. Again, Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and many otherstatutes say that justice shall be denied to none, and that no one shall beimprisoned, except for a proved offence. Habeas Corpus was developed8

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a complete guarantee of this,for it caused the prisoner to be produced and tried; or else freed. Duringthe Napoleonic Wars and in successive Irish Coercion Acts during thenineteenth century Habeas Corpus was suspended, thus giving Ministerspowers of indefinite .detention. These served as-a model for the famousRegulation 14B of D.O.R.A., 1914-18, and for Regulation 18B of theDefence Regulations, 1939. This was for war, but similar powers can beenjoyed.by Ministers if an emergency is proclaimed under the EmergencyPowers Act (e.g., during a general strike). No court could then questionthe legality or duration of these detentions. This is totalitarianism in timesof stress.

Fifth, there is the so-called Right of Public Meeting. This has beendefined as the right of every subject to go where he likes, and say whathe likes, so long as he is not breaking the law (or the peace). In thenineteenth century, when the Common Law was all-powerful, this wasquite adequate. Today the position is impaired by (a) the rise of Admin-istrative Law (under the Emergency Powers Act, meetings can be banned)(b) a more restrictive interpretation of the Common Law (for instance,in a case in 1936 involving a meeting of unemployed workers in a cul-de-sac, the opinion of the policeman concerning the possibility of the peacebeing broken was accepted by the court as final); (c) the possibility ofrestrictive legislation.

What conclusions then, can be drawn from this enquiry into the modernposition of the underlying assumptions of Parliamentary government inEngland? Our modern flexible constitution was settled in. an age oftolerance when all accepted its underlying assumptions. Its flexibility isa menace in an age when two parties repudiate the basis of our politicalassociation. It is used as an instrument for one-party rule. We are lessdemocratic in reality though more so in form, than our predecessors inthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is due to tyranny of partyrule, causing the insignificance of the voter in mass electorates, and theinsignificance of the Member in Parliament in face of party dictatorship,coupled with the absence of an effective second chamber. Today, a govern-ment is responsible, not to Parliament, nor to the people, but to the partywhich elects it. The Common Law no longer controls. the Ministers, forthey legislate themselves to a privileged position outside it.

These are symptoms of a world tendency, but England shows it in anextreme form, because of the lack of a formal constitution, with specialmachinery for changing it.

(Sununary of a lecture delivered on Sunday, June 12, 1949)

" It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that sofew enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth,"—A. J. Balfour.

" Those who resist improvements as innovations will soon have to acceptinnovations that are not improvements."—Melhourne.

.*

" Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues."—Thornas Hobbes.

" I-le who forgets the today will be forgotten by the tomorrow."—Goethe.9

A Psychologist Looks at Culture

PROFESSOR T. H. PEAR, M.A., B.Sc.

TIlotK311 T110, term "culture" seems indispensable, it is avoided as far aspossible by many people who write about human behaviour. Others use itsemi7apologetically. In this scnse, " culture" resembles the term " gentle-man ". Both words can cause trouble to the social psychologist who, how-ever, should not yield to the temptation to ignore the present confusioncaused by the word or to avoid embroiling himself by inventing a neologismwhich few would adopt,.

The ambiguity of the term was well shown in Clyde Kluckhohn's andW. H. Kelly's imaginary symposium on " The Concept of Culture ".2 Themost inclusive. concept is the anthropologist's—" a culture" refers to thedistinctive ways of life of a group of people (a society) who have learnedto work together. Both " society " and "culture" are conceptual con-structs, not first-hand recordings of actual observations. To the anthropolo-gist, a Benares tray made in Birmingham or the " New Look " are as muchproducts of culture as a Shakespeare play or the Parthenon. For him—the " arts-men " may learn this with surprise—the unique culture of a singleperson, say Leonardo da Vinci, appears to be scientifically meaningless—•" an individual cannot have a culture ".

Some American psychologisth have defined culture as " social habits".From this side of the Atlantic, however, it has more than once been sug-gested that scientific terms are used to make, not to blur, distinctions. If" habit" is interpreted as including socially valued attitudes, sentiments andcomplexes, one might use the term with care.

Another description of culture is " traditional ways of solving problems ".Yet cultures create as welLas solve problems; the early, simple, and to somepeople amusing experiments in the physical sciences led to aviation, radio,television, the V.2 and the atomic bomb, as well as to team-work in medi-cine. And administrators are saddled with consequent problems perhapsmore difficult than any the physicists encountered.

One school of psychiatrists viewed culture as something repressive to the" natural " man. Culture, they said, moulding individuals in ways uncon-genial to their native temperament, produces needless' neuroses.' BuTculturefulfils as well as frustrates. Not all the words spoken by aid of a microphoneto millions (instead of to a dozen in a lecture-room) are fatuous or withoutresult, as all propagandists, whether for good or evil causes, know well.Moreover, some theories of frustration rest upon assumptions concerningMan's primitive natural needs which are at present being subjected to carefulscrutiny in the light of the culture-pattern theory (Benedict, Mead), thehypothesis of the transformation and functional autonomy of human motives(G. W. Allport), and the concepts of primary and secondary character-structure (Kardiner,-Beaglehole, Dicks).

In the symposium some economists viewed culture as " social heredityemphasising that man inherits not only a body, externally shaped and intern-ally organised as the results of events in his racial past, but also a " socialframework ". Yet this concept, useful when properly interpreted, imputes

1 The argument here is partly taken from the present writer's Personality in its CulturalContext, Manchester University Press, and Bulletin of the John Rylands Librgry, Vol.30, 1946.

2 The Bernice of Man in the World Crisis, ed. R. Linton, 1944. Columbia UniversityPress.

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to man too great stability (as events since 1914 have shown almost every-where) and too passive a role, for man incessantly seeks to create and tomanipulate culture.

Not all culture is adaptive in the sense of promoting sheer physicalsurvival. At times certain features of a culture may be elaborated far beyondtheir utility or survival value. As the late Ian Suttie pointed out in The

Origins of Love and Hate, the cult of " toughness ", and the consequenttaboo upon tenderness, may have caused the last two generations to run updebts which the civilised world is trying desperately to pay off. But to thelong-range process of adaptation; man's ingenuity has added adjustment,i.e., behaviour which produces temporary lowering of tensions. Artificialadjustment may be more important than biological adaptation : the ultra-microscope, radar, short-wave telephony, air-conditioning, all aids to forminglife-long habits, may determine the course of human events while giving nochance for biological adaptation. A desperately ill person, a weakling frombirth, may be flown to hospital and his life gived, with no reference at anypoint to its biological value.

Used as a descriptive concept, culture means " the documented treasuryof human creation, books, paintings, buildings, knowledge of ways of adjust-ing to our surroundings, both human and physical, language, custom,systems of etiquette, ethics, religion and morals built up through the ages ".For the participant in it, much of his culture is " unverbalised ", i.e., ithas never been thought of by him in words, through which he can expressto himself or to others its essentials or peculiarities.

Dr. Kluckhohn's working concept of culture is " all those historicallycreated designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational and non-rational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behaviourof man. Such a design for living denotes both theory and praetice ", i.e., both" sanctioned " and " behavioural " culture-patterns.

Though a psychologist is -likely to regard the culture of the individualas extremely impOrtant, " culture " is supra-individual; objects as well aspersons show its influence. Moreover, its continuity never depends entirelyupon the continued existence of any particular individual.

In the opinion of the " arts-man " however, (whose profession is olderthan that of the social anthropologist) there is -still some meaning to beattached to the phrase. " a cultured person ". Indeed the relative neglectof individual minds by the anthropologist is only just being realised; thehitherto fashionable nomothetic approach will have to be supplemented byidiographic methods. Perhaps we may suggest, borrowing and extendinga concept used by the neurologists, Head and Rivers, that a cultured personshows an unusually delicate discrimination between situations (perceivedor imagined) and an unusually high degree of graduation in his responsesto them. We might call the relatively uncultured person " protopathic " andthe cultured person " cpicritic ". And if to this be added the concept of inten-sive and extensive personal culture, there may be hope of bridging the gapbetween Arts and anthropology.

Is, it possible that the anthropologist's concentration (for comprehensiblereasons) until recently, upon simple cultures, often relatively isolated fromothers, has made him less delicately percipient of his friends and relationsat home, in whom several cultures are clashing and seldom fusing? Iteven appears politically expedient, in the short run, for some rulers topersuade their people (not only the illiterate ones) that the great culture-patterns of today have nothing in common. But, as Stuart Chase argues allthrough his brilliant book, The Proper Study of Mankind, it is the commonpatterns of mankind which today urgently need investigation and descriptiom

(Summary of a lecture delivered on Sunday, July 24.)11

The Spectre of MalthusB Y

ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON, M.A.,IN 1798 Great Britain was fighting with her back to the wall against revolu-tionary France. The Revolution had thrown down a challenge in the nameof reason to all institutions founded only on tradition and supposed divineright. Feudal Europe had taken up the challenge; and the England ofWilliam Pitt had entered the fray on the side of the old order. But the newFrance had proved more than capable of defending herself; and by the endof five years' war- the sword of Bonaparte was carving up Europe, andBritain, alone of the enemies of the Revolution, still battled with the deluge.The ideas of the Revolution had found expression in England in twonotable books. One, Paine'.s Rights of Man, was a "best seller " of its time.The other, God win's Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, escaped prosecutionbecause in the opinion of Pitt no danger could be apprehended from a workpriced at three guineas. Godwin was what we should call a philosophicalanarchist: he held that man was moulded by his environment, that govern-ment was inherently evil, and that, if all coercion were abolished, mankindcould by the exercise of reason alone bring about a Utopia without punish-ment, property or marriage. Soon after the publication of Godwin's workthere appeared in France Condorcers much more serious Tableau historiquedes progrès de l'esprit Thiamin, in which that philosopher maintained that, asman had already advanced from savagery to civilisation, he could, givenfreedom from priestcraft and arbitrary rule, progress further to heights ofenlightenment at present inconceivable.

When these works appeared, Malthus was a young clergyman of theChurch of England in a curacy at Albury, Surrey. He was a Cambridgewrangler and, armed with the weapon of mathematics, entered the listsagainst the subversive ideas which threatened his country and his cloth. Hiscase can be very briefly stated. Population, when unchecked, increases ina geometrical ratio. He illustrates this by the instance of the United States(then, of course, an undeveloped country with immense open spaces), inwhich the population up to his time had doubled every twenty-five years.This, he assumes, is the normal rate of increase in the absence of checks.The means of subsistence, on the other hand, increase only in anarithmetical ratio. Malthus does not attempt any exact proof of this (anexact proof, indeed, would have needed a prophetic foreknowledge of futurescientific development), but he is unable to conceive, given the known qualitiesof land, that a higher rate of increase will ever be possible. Simple arith-metic, therefore, shows that however much the means of subsistence increase,population will always press on them and render a happy society for everimpossible.As a matter of fact, except in new countries like the U.S.A. in Malthus'time, population never increases without check. The checks which operetc,according to him, are, firstly, rational restraint—the fear, among the upperclasses, of a lower social standard or, among the lower classes, of starvation;and, secondly, failing this rational check, actual distress, which kills offsurplus mouths by starvation and promotes prostitution, disease, crime, andwar or, in Malthus' words, " misery and vice ". The effect of these checksis to keep the actual population within the means of subsistence. Whereverthey are absent, population will inevitably increase in geometrical ratio andrestore the reign of scarcity. In, fact the Whole of human history has been,and will be till the end of time, an " oscillation " in which every increase infood supply is immediately neutralised by the reproductive instinct.It should be noted that Malthus, though a Tory and a parson, is entirely

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free from the acrimony against the working class which characterises somany of his present-day disciples. He is himself a member of the com-fortable class addressing other members of the same class, and takes theclass structure of society for granted. But he does not scold the workersas vicious for producing children. On the contrary, he regards the produc-tion of a family (provided it be in lawful wedlock) as the path of virtue.If the path of virtue leads to misery, that is one of the mysterious ways ofProvidence—probably designed by God " to awaken social sympathy, togenerate all the Christian virtues, and to afford scope for the ample exertionof benevolence ". Unlike his Evangelical contemporaries, he does not gloatover the damnation in the next world of those whose misery he finds sonecessary in this. He is a Broad Churchman and prefers " conditionalimmortality " to hell-fire.

The'weakness of the.Malthusian theory lies in its uncriticised assumptions.Malthus assumes, rather than proves, his geometrical and arithmetical ratios.In dealing with the United States he makes no attempt (beyond a vaguesurmise) to determine how much oF thc increase in population which hedescribes is due to reproduction and how much to immigration. Thea priori nature of his thesis is evident if we compare his prognostication ofthe increase of population in Britain if unchecked, with the actual increase,allowing for the operation of the checks ,which he admits. According toMalthus the British population, neglecting checks, would have grown from7,000,000 in 1798 to 14,000,000 in 1823, 284X10,000 in 1848, 56,00,000 in1873, and 112,000,000 in 1898. The actual increase was from 10,500,000 in1801 to 14,000,000 in 1821, 21,000,000 in 1851, 26.000,000 in 1871, and37,000,000 in 1901. (I give round figures.) There is thus a difference whichhas to be explained by one or other of Malthus' " checks "—amounting to7,000,000 by the middle of the nineteenth century,•30,000,000 by the seventies,and 75.000.000 at the end of the century—between the potential populationunder Malthus' " law" and the actual population. What kind of checksaccount for this rapidly accumulating difference? Rational restraint? Iwish I could think so. Emigration? The total emigration from GreatBritain from 1815 to 1905 was less than 8,000,000. Misery find vice? Butduring the century the standard of living and morals decidedly improved.

Again, Malthus assumes almost without discussion the division of societyinto a productive and an unproductive class. Its contention is that themaximum possible productive capacity of society, except in rare cases,always has been and always will be incapable of sustaining the populationwhich an irresistible impulse constantly brings into the world. Yet, unlessthe productive capacity of society normally sufficed to sustain not only theproducers and children to the number necessary to take their place, butnon-producers also, how could an unproductive class (slaveowners inantiquity; feudal lords in the Middle Ages; the receivers of rent anddividends today; priests, like Malthus himself, in all ages!) ever have comeinto being? Malthus does not answer this question; nor does it seem tooccur to him that it needs an answer. The picture of society on which hisessential argument depends ignores class structure, and assumes that man-kind at all times work their hardest to produce food and at all times defeattheir object by reproducing too fast. Yet it might have occurred to himthat men, when their standard of living rises, do not always degrade it againby begetting children up to the limit. The man with £200 a year has notnecessarilY twice the family of a man with £100 a year, nor the man with£1,000 a year five times as many again. The geometrical ratio, in short, is notinvariable.

A sharp distinction must be drawn between MalthuS and the neo-Malthusians. In so far as neo-Malthusianism diffuses the knowledge ofcontraceptives, it does good work—not the less good because a faulty theory

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is used to justify it. And of course there is a real population problem, towhich Lord Boyd Orr has drawn attention. It can be met, as Lord BoydOrr points out, not only by birth control, but by ending the wasteful pro-duction that creates " dust bowls "; putting agriculture everywhere on ascientific basis, and stopping the criminal preparation for world war. Weneed not a one-track but a many-track approach, to which our neo-Malthusian friends are welcome to contribute if they will.

(Summary of a discourse delivered on Sunday, July 10, 1949)

Kierkegaard and HumanismBY

HECTOR •HAWTON

HUMANISM is not an easy word to define, but for the purposes of this articleI shall take it 'to mean an attitude of mind which requires evidence insupport of beliefs and does not look for divine intervention in humanaffairs. In this°wide sense Epicurus was a humanist; he did not deny theexistence of the gods but thought that they did not interfere. I wouldalso include such Christians as Dr. Barnes as humanists, because they holdthat our knowledge of the universe is the result of scientific method, andthat religious beliefs must not contradict the findings of science.

Liberal Protestantism and Rationalism have this much in common; theyboth employ reason as an instrument to obtain knowledge. They areboth suspicious of short-cuts. The Christian Modernist, for exaniple,endeavours to apply the ordinary methods of historical research to theBible. He is perfectly well aware that many of the foundations oftraditional Christianity are mythological. If he were to carry his logicthrough he would probably become a Unitarian or a Rationalist. Andthat, after all, is what has been steadily happening during the past hundredyears or so. The' process is very clearly illustrated by the history of theSouth Place Ethical Society.

It seemed at one time an inevitable and irreversible procesX The morethat knowledge grew, the more religious faith seemed to decline. Beforethe First World War the Churches seemed to be in full retreat before theadvance of liberal theology and scientific knowledge. Then, however, theclimate of opinion began to change.

The 1914-18 war shattered many illusions and challenged .the Victorianconfidence that the continued progress of civilisation could be taken forgranted. The loss of faith in religion was replaced for many people by a lossof faith in science. Very few—as statistics show—went back to church.There was a general loss of faith in everything as we moved inexorably to-wards the Second World War with the atomic bomb as its horrific climax.

No one writer had done more to encourage a faith in science and pro-gress towards an cra of " Men like Gods " than H. G. Wells. But Wellslost that faith in science and progress utterly before he died. He declared, infinal despair, "There is no way out, or round, or through ".

In these circumstances it is small wonder that the retreat of the Churches •

has been halted, that the logical progression from Modernism to Rational-ism has suffered an arrest. The fruits of " unbelief " are now said to bethe appalling condition of the world in which we are living. Science, weare told, so far. from saving us will more likely destroy us. The idea thatman can save himself by his own unaided efforts is " the Serpent's lie ".We must therefore return to thc beliefs that we too hastily discarded.

Now it is simple enough to make " materialistic science" appear to be14

the cause of our misfortunes by brandishing the atomic bomb, but it isnot so easy to make people believe what nowadays seems franklyincredifile. To achieve this it is necessary first to undermine confidencein the scholarship that has -exposed the fairy-tale elements in orthodoxreligion, and then—more boldly—to assert that it really does not matterthat a doctrine is incredible, because the whole universe is incredible any- .how. Modernism, we are accordingly told, is out-of-date. Scientists nolonger believe that the universe is rational, and so Rationalism is alsoobsolete. Indeed, to argue about the truth of religion is to show oneselfto be hopelessly behind the times.

This is undoubtedly a fashionable mood of the moment, hence the vogueof so-called existentialist philosophies. I have no space to summarisethem, but 1 can show that they owe their main inspiration to that tormentedDanish mystic, Soren Kierkegaard. I regard his influence on contemporarythought as wholly pernicious. It seems to me of vital importance forhumanists to close their ranks against the insidious threat to all they havefought for. If Kierkegaard is right we must abandon science, make anend of rational discussion, shut our eyes, and believe.

To Kierkegaard Christianity is the great Paradox—he bluntly calls itthe Absurd. To accept it the mind must take a Leap. Only by an actof blind faith and by the crucifixion of the intellect can we end the un-bearable tension caused by our separateness from God. But the God ofKierkegaard is a dark and terrifying conception. Omniscience watchingthe sinner in silence, the God who may forgive but who never forgets.The psychopathic quality in Kierkegaard's thought may be gathered fromsome of the titles of his books—Sickness Unto Death, Fear and Trembling,The Concept of Dread.

Soren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen in 1813. The family patternwill be familiar enough to students of Freud—the timid mother, thedomineering father, the mixture of eroticism and religiosity. In 1830Kierkegaard began a revolt against his father which lasted eight years.For a period he indulged in riotous living and fell heavily in debt. Thenhe learned that his father as a young man had once, while herding flockson the heaths of Jutland; solemnly cursed God.

On both father and son this left a memory of unspeakable horror. How-ever, the father died in 1838, and Kierkegaard was left enough money tomake him independent. Two years later he became engaged to RegineOlsen, but after twelve months he broke the engagement in a wholly dis-graceful manner. Even such a devoted apologist as T. H. Croxall admitsthat " he acted like a scoundrel in order to force her hand ".

Freed from outer responsibilities, supplied with a comfortable privateincome, Kierkegaard plunged into a world of inner fantasy. The plain truthis that he was a schizophrenic of genius and his old morbid dread and hatredof his father was translated into a symbolic drama of guilt and God.

The subtle psychological descriptions in Kierkegaard's work must notblind us to the distortion of his vision and his fundamental obscurantism.Yet even within the humanist movement there are those who are notimmune to his dangerous spell. The uniqueness of Kierkegaard is that heattracts atheists and Christians with equal power. Both Catholics andProtestants draw inspiration from him.

This remarkable contradiction is exemplified in Personalism—a move-ment founded by Emmanuel Mounier in France, and acknowledging itsphilosophical roots in Berdyaev, Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Marcel. Itregards "Scientism "—the humanist faith in science and reason—as theenemy. The humanist should clearly understand this. Que diable allait -ildans cette galere?

The modern cult of Kierkegaard is primarily a product of disillusion-

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ment. The shameless use made of it to stop the rot in the Churches isnot likely to succeed on any scale. Having been defeated in debate, theorthodox theologians are merely saying that it is old-fashioned to argue. •But there is a grave social danger in this contemporary recoil from reasonand science. For one thing, unless we use every scrap of scientific know-ledge that we possess—and use it quickly—the world will not be able tosupport its growing population. Famine and disease will kill more peoplethan war—even with atom bombs.

The price of turning our backs on the suffering world and indulging ininner fantasies is a physical disaster of unimaginable magnitude. Prayerswill not save us if we neglect to employ the knowledge that we have. Ifhumanism is " behind the times "—as the fashionable coteries tell us—then so much the worse for the times. We cannot return to the somewhatfacile optimism of the nineteenth century, but there is not the slightestneed to despair, as far as I can see. The faith of the humanist is that mancan solve his problems by using his reason. If he fails to do so the respon-sibility lies squarely on the shoulders of those who encourage the rejectionof reaSon. At such a crisis in human affairs as confronts us now, theenemies of reason are surely the enemies of mankind.

The humanist refuses to look skyward and ignore the plight of the world,because whether or no the solution he holds to the problem is taken, thereis no other solution. We need penicillin and antrycide, all available dis-coveries of materialistic science, in order to cure painful diseases, to destroypests that are so gravely threatening our food supplies, to check the spreadof soil erosion that eats into the earth's crust like a cancer. We needatomic energy, too, as an additional source of power if the wretchedstandard of living in industrially backward countries is to be raised.

It is true enough that man does not live by bread alone, but withoutit he will surely die. There is a story about St. Nicholas, whose ikonswere once so popular in Russia.. He had an appointment with God, butstopped on the way to help a poor moujik whose cart was stuck in themud. A priest passed him and urged him to hurry, but he said that firsthe must drag the cart out of the mud. St: Nicholas, of course, was latefor his appointment, and perhaps in some respects the humanist resembleshim. We may be sure that Kierkegaard and his disciples would have beenthere at all costs on time.

God' or Man ?B Y

R . A .

I MINK this antithesis sums up fairly the issue between organised religionof all sorts and humanists of all schools.

We must begin of course by defining our terms.The word " god does not mean the same to everybody. I begin by

ruling out and putting completely aside the pantheistic God or Absoluteof the metaphysicians. By equating God to all intents and purposes withthe whole universe or nature, they deprive the term of all practicalsignificance. A god who is everything does nothing; and saying that youbelieve in him makes no difference. The only use of such aflirmations isto throw a mantle of respectability over your basic atheism.. The word " god ", if its use is to make any practical difference other than that, rnvans a being distinct from the world; a being sufficiently like our-

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selves to be designated by the terms " mind " or " person": and a being,moreover, sufficiently interested in our behaviour to prescribe or forbidcourses of conduct and to enforce his commands by rewards and punish-ments. That is the God of the churches; and no other god matters a" tinker's cuss ".

Now if such a God exists, His existence must be known somehow. Noneof us know it by the ordinary avenues of knowledge. None of us have

seen Him, heard Him, touched Him, tasted Him, or smelt Him. No lineof reasoning can deduce Him from anything we see, hear, touch, taste, orsmell. His existence is not logically demonstrable. We may argue thatevery effect has a cause, and that thc total of effects must have a first cause.That is, as a matter of fact, a fallacy. But even if we let it pass, there is noreason why a, first cause, assuming its existence, should be a mind or aperson or should be particularly interested in our behaviour. We may arguethat adaptation in nature presupposes a benevolent, designer. This is nomore and no less true than that nnaladaptation in nature presupposes amalevolent designer. If the one is an argument for a personal god, theother is no less an argument for a personal devil. There is no reason forretaining the one belief and dropping the other, except that the one is com-forting to silly, people and the other frightening. Since the fact of evplutionis now established, we have no longer any reason to believe in either.

Since belief in God depends on no actual or possible experience of ours,those of ux who accept it must do so on authority. That raises the question:

'What authority? Evidently the only authority which would justify belief inGod would be the authority of people who once upon a time by altogetherexceptional means had personal experience of Him. That in fact is the

claim made by the churches. Once upon a time, we are told. God becamemanifest in human form. He proved Himself to •be God by working miracles,suspending the laws of nature, rising from the dead and ascending intoHeaven. He commissioned a select body of men to continue His work, gavethem authority to " bind " and " loose to remit or refuse to remit sins,and to ordain their successors. So was founded the infallible Church, whichto this day guarantees the fact of the revelation and prescribes faith andmorals for all mankind. -

Very pretty! Only, who guarantees the truth of the story? Why, weare told, it is in the Bible. Good! And who guarantees the truth of theBible? Why, the Church. So the Church guarantees the Bible, and theBible guarantees the Church. But which Church? Why, says the Catholic,naturally the Church of Rome; for Christ said to Peter: " Thou art Peter,and on this rock I will build my Church "; and the Pope is Peter's successor.But wait a moment! Who says that the Pope is Peter's successor? And ifhe is, where in the Bible or anywhere else is Peter auaranteed infallibility?Was he infallible? Paul did not think so. -Have his sclf-styled successorsproved themselves " Only in faith and morals ", we are told. Inmorals. The whole line of Popes, Inquisition Popes, Boraia Popes, MediciPopes, Fascist Popes, infallible in morals. Ye gods and little fishes!

And if we reject the Catholic claim, what other Church is in a position toguarantee the truth of the Bible; the fact of the Christian revelation; thelife, death, and resurrection of Christ; the existence of God Himself? Searcheast and west •or an answer. The whole business of revelation boils downto a gigantic confidence trick. The outstanding fact is that this allegedrevelation, the alleged commission of Christ to the Church, and the allegeddivine authority of its recipients have been made, and are still made, thepretext for endowing in every Christian country an elaborate Church

hierarchy at the expense of the community; for giving that hierarchy thecontrol of, or an important share in the education of the young; and forsubmitting to its veto utilitarian measures in the matter of divorce, birth

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control, the prevention of venereal disease, and a hundred other issues vitallyaffecting the every-day happiness of men and women.

The beneficiaries of this racket have the impudence to justify it byclaiming that they and they alone stand for humanity, the rights of theindividual, the sanctity of personality, democracy, and so forth.

Let us submit this claim to the dry light of history.When we say that the proper study of mankind is man—that man is; not

indeed the centre of the universe (the very phrase " centre of the universe "is meaningless in the light of modern astronomy), but necessarily the centreof interest to himself, we are not speaking of man as an individual. Manis of necessity a social animal. Were he not so, he could never have survivedin the struggle for existence against other animals or the powers of nature.Other animals have survived by tooth, claw, or other individual equipment.Man has comparatively poor teeth, no claws to speak of, no fur, and onlysecond-rate sense-organs. He would be nowhere if it were not for his longhabit of mutual aid, of banding together in hordes, tribes, cities, nations,and other associations, and if it were not for the apparatus of language, tools,house-building, town-building, writing, tradition, myth, literature, science,and philosophy which he has evolved to cope with increasingly complex •social situations. 'Man has made these things; and they in their turn haveremade him.- There is no need to bring God into it, except as one of thefigures in the many myths which men have told one another to explain whatthey do. Besides all those other things, man has made God too:

It is of the essence of social life, that is of human life, that members of-a mutual-aiding group, be it horde, tribe, city, nation, or what you will,should behave as if they had rights and duties in the group. Rights andduties are not revealed to a naturally anti-social man by a transcendentalGod. They are part of the apparatus by which man becomes man. In thesavage state they are taken for grlinted. The trouble begins when groupclashes with group, when tribe enslaves tribe, whemclass society arises, whenwhole communities are uprooted and set down in a new, unhappy, terrifyingenvironment, as happened in the sunset of the ancient world, and as is stillliable to happen so long as there is not yet a world-community. Then oldmyths are reshaped and new myths Invented to explain why everything wentwrong. And because in the clash of group with group and the enslettementof tribe by tribe, city by city, and nation by nation evil things are doneand suffered, men invent the myth of original sin, of an angry God whopunishes it, and of a kind God who redeems. And this myth, too, isexploited by a rapacious priesthood who, believing or not believing it them-selves, use it as an instrument for the exaction of tribute and the accumula-tion of wealth and power. " These advantages we enjoy ", said Leo X," thanks to the fable of Jesus Christ

In the struggle of the under:log against this sort of thing, in peasant revolts,in Puritan or Jacobin revolutions, the ideas of the rights of man and ofdemocracy arc born. Far from the Church hierarchy fathering these ideas,it hates them like the devil. It fights them with stake and gallows, withexcommunication and civil war. Only when that game is up, when the .forcesof human liberation have won the first round, and when it is no longerpossible to govern men without at least lip-service to the rights of man anddemocracy, does the Church hierarchy make the discovery that it alwaysbelieved in- them—was always, indeed, their chief champion!

The claim is not even honest. The Church which makes it has behind ita 'record of 1,600 years of lying, fraud, chicanery, corruption, and murder.Why should she have learnt honesty now? Why, when her wealth andpower are at stake, should she stick at any lie or any crime? Why should i'vebe deceived?

Forward in the name of man. Ecrasez linfame!

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South Place News" As Others See Us

We print a few extracts from an article, " A Voice from Bloomsbury byEric Glasgow, which appeared in The Inquirer of July 30, and has been sentto us by Mr. R. H. Vickers.

" Although. no convictions worthy of the name should be too fragile tobear comparison with other and rival ones, it can be dangerous to flutterlike a butterfly from flower to flower, tasting every creed and believing innone. There are people who, having resolved to gain at all costs breadthof outlook and to avoid doing injustice through ignorance, divide their at-tentions between as many organisations as possible, no matter how diametric-ally opposed they may be, and in the end founder through failure to attaina secure anchorage. Such wandering often serves as a substitute for thought,and disguises lack of faith and courage necessary for a final decision and asolid achievement. If it is important to have an open mind, it is patheticto have an empty one, and promiscuous browsing may in fact lead to that.

" I cannot claim that 'I had these considerations in mind when, findingmyself in London one Sunday morning a short time ago, I visited ConwayHall, that elegant and spacious building in Red Lion Square, which housesthe South Place Ethical Society. My reason for so doing was that the near-est Unitarian church was some distance away and the Underground railwaywas still for me a bewildering and exhausting novelty. Yet I need have hadno misgivings, for there is a good deal in common between the approach totruth which the Conway Hall enshrines and our Unitarian outlook. I dis-cerned nothing cold, arid or negative about the Rationalism preached there,but rather an ample recognition that it is .reasonable enough to allow feelingand emotion to play a large part in operating and interpreting the world.

went away convinced that men were reaching God there, however reluctantthey might be to acknowledge the source from which their aspirations sprang,and however slight the ceremony with which they avowed them.

" The Society's association with W. J. Fox, faint as the memory now is,would have been sufficient in itself to fill me with elation as I entered theirmeeting-place on that bright, sunny morning, for continuity with the past,particularly in a period of rapid change, yields a reward in terms of refresh-ment and inspiration which is not easily obtainable by other means. But whenI attended it happened to be rather a special occasion, and I had the addedjoy of hearing Dr. Karl Wollf deliver an excellent lecture on the German poetGoethe (1749-1832), to commemorate the bi-centenary of his birth.

" It was an impressive address, sensitive, sympathetic and persuasive, reveal-ing with clarity and sobriety the greatness of its subject and the nature ofhis massive achievement. The whole theme was pervaded by an insightwhich swept like a strong and steady light over the dry dust of the facts,and gave them vitality and significance. No attempt was made to gloss overGoethe's mistakes and shortcomings, but the conclusion was that our debtto his genius is heavy—a conclusion which was strengthened by the exquisiterenderings of some of his songs, set in the rich, wine-like medium of theGerman language, which supplemented the lecture. If I venture in anotherarticle to make a few comments about Goethe, it is not because what I heardleft me unsatisfied, but because Dr. Wollf's insight and enthusiasm havebeen infectious and stimulating."

July SocialThe Thursday Evening Social on July 21 proved a successful winding-up

to the season; Miss D. Walters, Miss H. Hutton, J. Cummins, R. T. Smithand G. C. Dowman were the entertainers. At the close Mrs. Westbrookrecited an apt little poem. We should like to make special mention of the

19•

reading of a one-act play—" Mr. Sampson "—performed by Miss Walters,which received a great measure of appreciation from the audience. Whenthese pleasant little gatherings are resumed on October 6, we look for anincrease in attendance, and every effort will be made by Miss R. Halls toprovide attractive entertainment. The co-operation of any members whoare willing to help in this way, will be most welcome.

The necessary labour of providing refreshments was willingly and. ade-quately accomplished by Miss P. Snelling and Miss Halls,

Clements Memorial PrizewinnerReaders will be pleased to hear that Peter Racine Fricker, 29-year-old

Finchley composer, who won the 1947 Clements Memorial Prize with a windquintet (which received its first concert performance at the South Placeconcert on February 27, 1949, by the Brain Wind Ensemble), has recentlywon the Koussevitsky (Boston, U.S.A.) Award of 500 dollars offered toBritish composers for a symphony.

The adjudication was in the hands of the Committee for. the Promotionof New Music, whose President is Dr. Vaughan Williams.

Conway Discussion Circle

The Conway Discussion Circle will begin its autumn session on Tuesday,4th October. The meetings will be held in thc library, starting at 7 p.m.,and every attempt will be made to enable as many people as possible to joinin the discussion after the opening address. An attractive list of controversialsubjects is in preparation, beginning with a series of three talks on " What isRationalism? Early next year there will be another series of three even-ings devoted to an examination of ethical theories and probably one meetingin the large hall. These Tuesday evening debates have proved exceedinglypopular and we shall be glad to welcome again those who•enjoyed them lastsession, and anyone else who is interested in a forum that, provides anopportunity to exchange views on urgent problems of the day. Clearthinking is hardly possible in solitude; we need the clash of opposing ideasor we may go very wrong.

Ramblers at Ashridge'The July 31st ramble from Berkhamsted to Ashridge was a pleasant

occasion, cool with a fresh breeze. The highlights were—a gallon pot oftea for our party of nine, supplied by a farm at our lunch under the trees;the view of Aldbury, with its stocks, from the wooded hills above; theaddition of •live more friends at the Bridgewater Column, our. tea 'place;and the walk through Ashridge Park to the historic House, now a college forpolitical and public-service training.

Edmond, Earl of Cornwall, nephew of Henry 111, built the house in 1283and placed in it nineteen brethren and their Rector of the order of" Bonhommes " of Augustine rule, introduced into 'England by him. Themonks guarded and exhibited a holy relic of " real blood " brought fromSaxony by Cornwall, and during 250 years waxed rich on their charges.On 25th February, 1538, the time of the Reformation, the Bishop ofRochester showed the assembled crowd that the " real blood '' was clarifiedhoney coloured with saffron.

Edward VI gave this manor to his sister Elizabeth, who played on thevirginals and lute there, embroidered in gold and silver, read Greek andtranslated Latin. She took refuge from the " sweating sickness " there in1551, and in 1554 her sister, Queen Mary, had her arrested early one morn-ing and sent to the Tower.

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Annan)] ReunionThe Annual Reunion will be held on Sunday, September 18 at 6.30 to

9.30 p.m. The General Committee of the South Place Ethical Society

cordially invites members of the Rationalist Press Association, the Ethical

Union. the Forest Group, the Hampstead Ethical Society, the English Posi-

tivist Committee and other friends to attend. Mr. Hamilton Fyfe and Mr.

S. K. Ratcliffe will he the guests of the evening. There will be a short

musical programme and light refreshments will be served.

Fire Fighters in Action

On Saturday afternoon, August 6th, we were privileged to witness a first-class spectacle when the London Fire Brigade demonstrated their efficiencyin up-to-date fire-fighting methods. These included the " human fly " actwith hook ladders, used when internal staircases have collapsed, rescue withescape and lowering line and by 50 ft. wheeled fire escape. The use ofpumps and division of available water between as many branches as possible.The application of water-fog to extinguish highly inflammable liquids, andPossibly the most spectacular piece of fire service equipment—the turntableladder. It was shown how in the hands of competent operators these latterare capable of the most delicate movement. We then had the exhilaratingexperience of watching a complete fire scene, with all the thrills of a real fire,including the discovery by a passer-by, the calling of the fire service, personstrapped in'the building, rescue operations, the extinction of the fire.

In conclusion, visitors were invited to inspect the appliances used in thedemonstration, and we came away greatly enlightened as to the progress thathas been made in this most vital Service.

CorrespondenceTo the Editor of the Monthly Record,DEAR S1R—Although I would style myself a Rationalist rather than aHumanist, I have nevertheless been interested in reading the Monthly Recordfor July.

Rationalism means the supremacy of reason in human judgment and takestruth for authority, not authority for truth. Humanism seems to mean thedevelopment of man to his full capacity along the lines advocated andpractised by Goethe. Rationalism means concentrating on reason and truth.and Humanism involves concentration on development, rather than reason.

I think that by trying to remove false creeds and dogmas and tyrannousreligious fears, we can make a big contribution to humanity, but there stillremains the fundamental question: " Is there a purpose in the universe? -

Living unto death, as the thinker must if he rejects supernatural religion,is not a particularly inspiring experience. We have two problems: (1) Toremove irrational fears; (2) To find some source of inspiration.

Yours faithfully, -S. A. C. WEBB.

DEAR S1R—As an old member of South Place, I write to thank you for theexcellent Record you provide us with every month.

Also I wish to say how much I appreciate the Sunday musical arrange-ments for the service. I enclose a cutting from The lnquirer—today's issue—

it has a marked sympathy and appreciation of our services. Perhaps anextract might be useful for the Record.

I think we could work in close harmony with advanced Unitarians—certainly man cannot live by bread alone!

Yours sincerely,R. H. VICKERS.

21

DEAR SIR—The reasons for the prevailing industrial discontent, despite theundoubted progress in the standard of living during the last few decades,both in Great Britain and apparently also across the Atlantic, baffle socialworkers, some blaming lower moral conceptions due to loss of religiousfaith, others advancing their equally fallacious notions.

Previously people suffered in silence for lack of education, of opportunityto voice their grievances, always cowed under the authority and afraid oftheir betters, and pent-up misery found redress only by violent• means.Freedom of expression and for propagating one's views, vouchsafed onpaper for centuries, is becoming a reality only now for the masses. Thepopular Press, whatever their other merits or demerits, reflect the aspirationsand the mentality of their readers, and may not deviate from this policyon their peril. To this negative sign of the times should be added the positiveopportunities offered to all and sundry to have their say, as members oftrade union, of professional associations, at meetings prior to general andcouncil elections, and in the various debating and discussion societies andcircles.

Instead of bloodshed and countrywide uproar, as before, nowadays thewithdrawal of their labour by workers, commonly called strikes, is certainlya much superior means to bring about improvements, either in wages or forthe restoration of human dignity in industrial relations. Exciting and excit-able headlines of some dailies reflecting the opinion of the vast majoritynot directly concerned in the issue, are not a sure and infallible guide to -solve or to understand the underlying problems.

The S.P.E.S. has during the best part of its history offered a platformfor the dissemination of progressive and independent ideas, sometimes evenin opposition to the government of the day or to the prevailing moodwhipped-up by irrational sentiments. •This worthy example should encourageus to delve into the delicate problem of the human factors in industrialrelations, the lynchpin of increased production and therefore of Great Britain,remaining one ofi the leading powers.

This suggestion may lead to a lively correspondence in your columns andto interesting and beneficial discussions at our meetings.

Your truly,

L. CAMERMAN.

DEAR SIR—In your August number Mr. Archibald Robertson writes on " Warand Peace ". The essential words in his article are these: •

"The incomes paid out are never enough to •buy up the total suni ofcommodities which modern industry is capable of producing."

Consequently, the great manufacturing countries are forced to fight formarkets, and war results.

That is-commonly called the Marxian theory, and was once held by Marx,but he finally repudiated it. In " Capital", Vol. 2, page 476, he says:

" If any commodities are unsaleable, it means that no solvent purchasershave been found for them . . But if one were to attempt io clothe thistautology with a semblance of a profounder justification by saying that theworking class receive too small a portion of their own product, and thatthe evil. would be remedied by giving them a larger .share of it or raisingtheir wages, we should reply that crises are always preceded by a periodin which wages rise generally, and the working classes actually-get a largershare of the annual product expected for consumption. From the point ofview of ' simple ' (!) common sense, such a period should rather removea crisis ".

I entirely agree with Marx on this point, but surely the real truth has

escaped both him and Mr. Robertson. All densely populated manufacturingcountries are obliged to import a large part of their food and raw materials.To get these, they must sell large quantities of manufactures abroad, inopposition to their competitors, and such competition may lead to war. Thatis the Malthusian theory of war. Surely it is simpler than anything putforward by either Karl Marx or Mr. Robertson.

Yours etc.,R. B. Kerr.

Note by Mr. Robertson.—It would waste your space to discuss whethermy theory is or is not that of Marx. Personally, I couldn't care less! Thealternative theory advanced by Mr. Kerr is certainly " simple ", but at thecost of omitting a lot. It is a truism that if a country specialises on manu-facture at the expense of agriculture, as we did from 1850 on, it becomesdependent on foreign food and raw materials. That by itself does not leadto war. We obtained food and raw materials from 1850 on by peacefultrading. What Mr. Kerr omits to consider is the necessity, facing all coun-tries practising eompetitive industry on a big scale, to export capital- goodsin order to keep the wheels of iMiustry revolving. The export of capitaldiffers from the export of finished articles, in• that it may necessitate thepolitical control, or even annexation of the country to which the capital

• is exported. Hence that " scramble for Africa " which preluded the warof 1914.

Lord Boyd Orr in The Times, August 9, points out that world food pro-duction could be doubled in twenty-five years if Governments co-operatedin a world food plan (involving the intensive application of science andthe scrapping of -the ruinous expenditure on war preparation). But as longas competition governs national policy, neither will be done, and we shallhead for the destruction which Malthusians myopically attribute topopulation only.—A.

Correspondence, not exceeding 200 words, will brwelcomed.

Book ReviewsMY EARLY BELIEFS (Two Memoirs), by J. M. Keynes. Rupert Han-Davies;

7s. 6d.h was inevitable that religious apologists should seize on this volume as

though it were a cautionary tale—another awful example of the failure ofHumanism to provide a satisfying philosophy of life. Keynes, Bertrand

' Russell, G. E. Moore and Lytton Strachey were leaders, before the first -World War, of a brilliant intellectual group which professed an -ethicalrationalism that worked admirably in the shelter of a college cloister butProved—to Keynes at least—inadequate in face of the tragic turn of history.,

The underlying principle was that " nothing mattered except states ofmind ". The good life consiStcd in the cultivation of a rational outlook andcontentment. When D. Lawrence made a brief contact with this aridintellectualism he recoiled from it in dismay. He said it made him dreamof beetles.

Keynes, very much to his credit, was concerned about Lawrence'sreaction; it led him to realise the superficiality of his own approach toproblems of real life. Looking back, he wrote: "We were among the lastof the utopians, or meliorists as they are sometimes called, who,believe in

, a continuing moral progress by virtue of which the •human race alreadyconsists of reliable, rational, decent people, influenced by truth and objectivestandards, who can be safely released from the outward restraints of can-vention and traditional standards and inflexible rules of conduct, and left,from now onwards, to their own sensible devices, pure motives and reliableintuitions of the good."

23

This is a frank admission that the intellect cannot provide a sufficient basisfor morality. There was never any justification for supposing otherwise:Lawrence had Freud on his side in this matter—indeed, the whole experienceof humanity. What is illegitimate is to conclude from the catastrophichistory of our time that mankind is hopelessly depraved and that we mustturn aside from reason and scientific knowledge and bludgeon ourselves intobelieving what is incredible.THE PLAIN View, July 1949. Published for the Ethical Union by

Watts & Co; ls.The current number of this excellent quarterly well maintains . the

prestige that it has 'acquired. No one interested in the latest trends ofHumanism can afford to miss it. The emphasis in the July issue is onpractice, rather than on theory. Honor Earl writes on " The Criminal andthe Community with considerable psychological insight. She draws onher extensive experience as a prison visitor. Among other good things isan article by Eustace Chesser on " Marriage Guidance ", a problem towhich •the Ethical Union is giving practical attention. A short course isannounced by the Union for the autumn on various aspects of marriagefrom a Humanist point of view.THINKER'S DIGEST, Summer 1949. Watts & Co; Is.

The summer issue caters for a rich variety of intellectual tastes. Dr.Edward Glover attacks Jung from the point of view of a Freudian, andthe even more debatable field of psychic research is dealt with by ProfessorJ. B. Rhine, a pioneer of the statistical method. The 'industrial possibilitiesof atomic energy are discussed by Professor P. M. S. Blackett, and thenow fashionable decrying of science is severely criticised by Professor F.Joliot-Curie, who is in charge. of atomic research in France. Other con-tributors include Dr. W. E. Swinton, on the Age of Reptiles; ProfessorA. .E: Heath, on Freewill; Professor Lancelot HOgben, selections fromConway Memorial Lecture; Professor E. 0. James on the Quakers. Onc.of the most absorbing articles is Professor C. D. Broad's account of theinfluences that moulded his own philosophy.

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS. 59th SEASON Conway Hall. 6.30 p.m. Doors open 6 p.m.) Admission ls.

October 2.—Blech String Quartet. Colin Horsley. Beethoven, op. 132 inA minor, and Haydn, op. 64, No. 5 in D. -String Quartets.Schumann Piano Quintet.

9.—Ruhbra—Grueneberg—Pleeth Piano Trio. Schubert, op. 100in 13 flat, Bloch Three Nocturnes and Beethoven, op. 97 inB flat. Piano Trios.

16.—VAUGHAN WILLIAMS CONCERT. Aeolian String Quar-- let. Both String Quartets. " On Wenlock Edge ". Song

Cycle for Solo Voice, Piano and String Quartet.23.—The James Whitehead Chamber Music Group. Svendsen and

Mendelssohn String Octets. Haydn Echo Sextet. BoccheriniQuintet.

30.—Hunvitz String Quartet. Mozart K. 575 in D, Bartok No. I,Beethoven, op. IS, No. 5, in A,

. Bartok Eine of the-most important composers of the century, has written six string quartets. They will all be played at the Concerts during this season:

The Moiahly Record is posted free to Members and Associates. The annual chargeto subscribers is 4s. Matter tor publication in the October issue should reach the Editor,G. C. DONVMAN, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.1, by ,September.10. .

FARLEIGII PRESS LTD.(T.d.), BEECIIWOOD RISE, WATFORD.

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Vol. 54. No. 9 SEPTEMBER 1949 Threepence Prof. G. W. Keeton · The MONTHLY RECORD Threepence...

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