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. 6, No. 7. June 9, 1943

The Habitual Vision of Greatness

The Habitual Vision of Greatness

For the last 20 years man has been belittled. He was pulled to pieces by psychologists, and scientists saw him as a bottle of chemical substances. An adequate aim of education, however, should be to make him want to see greatness.

To be different from anthropoid apes, Mr. Wadman points out, you must be a Christian, i.e., sacrifice yourself to others. (One wonders.) He admits, all the same, that Christianity has not fulfilled its purpose and that dualism resulted when the West met its challenge. Greed in everyday life and saintliness at church on Sundays, The church has never offered new solutions to old problems. At its best, Christianity has repaired the damage done by others.

Speaking of the enjoyment of creative work, Russia, according to Mr. Wadman, has given even a factory-hand an interest in his work, however mechanical it might be. He is working for himself or for the community. In other countries the profit motive gets into the way. How, I wonder, does he combine this with his assumption that God is never the author of disorder. Things go wrong only when interfered with by men. Isn't there too much laissez-faire in it?

The Society of Friends is the only Christian society which stresses the necessity for simplicity and beauty.

The talk touched a variety of fields of art and showed Mr. Wadman's deep concern with the problems of life from the point of [unclear: view] of the artist and his desire to solve them satisfactorily.

The thirty [unclear: odd] people present gave Mr. Wadman? all their attention, which he deserved, and the discussion was lively.

—I.B.