Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 1, No. 18 August 3, 1938

Here is an Article Worth Reading — Universities Cover the World! — Don't Miss it

Here is an Article Worth Reading

Universities Cover the World!

Don't Miss it

It is a nice question, what has been the most dangerous invention of the human race. It is very arguable that words are going to prove the most destructive. They have a habit of changing under one, as the steps of a moving stairway change, so that suddenly they are no longer stops and one trips over nothing. Our incurable habit of charging our intellectual fences encourages words in their perversity. We rush on in defence of a theory when all that has been challenged is our definition of a word. The plague of "isms" bids fair to be more dangerous than cancer. We forgot that words are symbols and that symbols may be misused, misunderstood, or not understood at all. Words are as unstable a vehicle for our ideas as veal is an uncertain meat for travellers on the Continent. And most unstable of all vehicles is the word "University."