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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 3, No. 2. 1940

[Letter to Salient Vol. 3, No. 2. 1940 from J.B. Woodward]

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Dear "Salient",

The article "For Freshers Only" in this year's first issue of "Salient" succeeds in its purpose, if that purpose is, as I assume, the commendable one of provoking thought. May I also assume that the thought provoked in one "Average fresher" if, of sufficient interest to justify you in publishing this letter?

The writer of the above article enumerates seven "main fallacies" in terms of which the average fresher reasons. Some of the seven have been so long since and so thoroughly exploded that I think the freshest fresher would hardly harbour them now. Who of this generation or of the one preceding it "acquiesces wholly in the status quo"? It is on every lip that the status quo is rotten. Who now believes that poverty is natural and inevitable? Labour went into power in the 1935 elections because the majority of voters knew that poverty is neither natural nor inevitable. Who but a puny defeatist believes that war is inevitable? Certainly not the thousands who are leaving as in the brave hope and expectation of putting an end to war.

The writer's selection of a fresher's fallacies pays no compliment to the fresher's knowledge of current thought However his purpose is to edify the fresher and not to compliment him, so let it pass, and now to fallacy No. 7

Belief in the existence of the soul is cherished by many. Whether it be well founded or not is, for my present purpose, beside the point. The most that can be said on the subject is that the soul's existence cannot be proved nor can it be disproved. Why then does the writer include this belief among "the main fallacies in terms of which a fresher reasons"? He cannot prove it a fallacy. Is it not simply because it is a widely accepted belief that he calls it a fallacy? He classes himself among the "students who actually think for themselves". Is that thinking for himself or mere pose and perversity and the negation of thought. The writer would have done better had he left the soul untouched. The soul may be non-existent, but at least it has sufficed to show the sorry shallows of the writer's mind. Because, in his own words, he "does possess a mind. But it is a mind of e peculiar sort - a mind which deserves minute analysis".

Yours, etc.,

J. B. Woodward.