Editorial

Humour and the "Legal Bias"

The University Student—has he a soul? Is he a gentleman? Should she emerge? This is the age of inanity so we contribute another. Has the University a Sense of Humour? Can it Laugh?

We know it thinks. A dozen or so little Dukedoms and Bishoprics of thought will vouch for this. It is quite credible that a few of our graduates are at present marring their theses here and there with an original thought or two. Yes, it thinks, but owing to the nature of its studies, it is forced to think so earnestly and dutifully that it is blinded—not able to see even itself. Instead of being the main tributary to the stream of current thought it is damned by this deadly sense of purpose and diverted. Hide bound, it plods a narrow gorge, a relic of the Middle Ages, passing on by archaic method the words of notoriously over-rated thinkers. It executes on the major scale the domestic functions of the parrot.

Humour, asserted by science to be the most beneficient of all emotions, is the only combatant we can employ to save the University from the inroads made by the canker of earnestness. This is not meant to involve the indulgence in a hearty guffaw at odd intervals, or a daily perseverance with a Punch Joke Calendar, but simply the projection of our attention to our own weaknesses and misfortunes. This, the philosophy of the under-prized optimist—the sense of humour is something that will light up the shadows with brilliant, blinding flashes—something that will help those of us who are always "too busy" to detract and to see ourselves.

With the general endowment of this sense in our college—and especially in the Law Faculty—what fields of delicious new humour would be opened. How laughable to those of our embryonic lawyers who so noticeably lack the precious gift, would seem the irony of their own lives. Deeply immersed in legislative and political activities, members of the College Bar and Judges in our own Star Chamber, veritable Knights of the Shire, they deliver ultimatums and homilies in the evenings—when all some of them have delivered during the day-time are envelopes and documents.

Considering the abuse into which the bursary system has fallen, the dearth of briefs and the dearth of humour, it is small wonder that now, instead of being merely disabled with the Legal Bias, we have become an official recreation ground for matured and otherwise muffled lawyers, law-encrusted and crippled—martyrs to the Legislative Limp.

The song of our College might as well run—

O, Victoria officina
Justitiae procendendo
Affidavit custos morus
Negotiorum gestio.

Other objectionable features result from this utter absence of the sense of humour effected especially by a narrow legal education. The anxiety of many to denude their souls for protracted periods on the debating platform is not the least distressing. The tendency to cling too long to student days is another, the consequence of which, may be typified in the complete lack of sympathy between the general body of students and some administrators of the student affairs. According to Professor William James, "Old fogeyism sets in round about twenty-five years of age," about which time, according to the same writer the "stigmata of the profession" begin to make themselves manifest. Young men are plainly the same the world over, although some, of course, age earlier than others do.

The social side of the University is essentially dedicated to the under-graduate and it seems that our College is being maimed by those who might pardonably be accused of tarrying with us too long. Just as "old fogeys" among "old boys" and ex-students are often heard to lament quite unjustifiably that "the school has gone down lately," and "the College is not the same as it used to be," those of our graduates and what we might term the "elderly undergraduates," who have outgrown the student stage, betray themselves similarly in endless complaints, consequentially, purposeless points of order and general hindrance at meetings and debates.

No remedy is apparent but in order to preserve our faith and pride in our College it is necessary to remind ourselves frequently that although, no higher law than the constitution may be recognised, although the students and the various bodies conducting the affairs of the College might never see the other's point of view, it is not the social institution that is at fault, but always the people in it.