* * * * PROFESSOR DEWEY'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.
On Sunday Professor John Dewey, the philosopher, will be seventy years old and the occasion is to have a fitting cele- bration. Scholars of national and international repute, social workers, and others are to join in a two-day discussion of the profound and far-reaching contributions which in more than forty years of productive work he has made to education, philosophy, and social progress. In social and political thought Professor Dewey is a searching critic of the American order, but at the same time one of its ablest interpreters and most heartening prophets. Where younger men see nothing but gloom, he looks ahead with undiminished cheer- fulness. Moreover, true to his own teachings, his cheerfulness is based upon the closest contact with the actualities about him. Modern organization, science, and machinery, he predicts, will become " a means of life and not its despotic master." Democracy he sees headed not for disaster but for emancipation by self-discipline and intelligence to " a life of free and enriching communion." He has been well called " the philosopher not only of a new world but of the New World." In honouring him America pays tribute to something of the best in itself.
Previous page
