Good Advice from Oxford

'personal Ethics. Edited by Professor K. E. Kirk. (Milford. 5s.) THE suggestion has recently been made that the moral world of our day is suffering from conditions analogous to those which have produced so disastrous a slump in the world of economics. Just as, in the economic field, production has got ahead of consumption, bursting storehouses on the one hand, hungry millions on the other, so in the moral field there is an accumulation of sound instruction and good advice vastly in excess of human willingness, or even capacity, to make use of it. According to this view the world would have been saved long ago if good advice could save it. What we now need is not more good advice, or sound instruction, but more power to make a profitable use of what we have already. Needless to say, this view of the matter is not characteristic of our older Universities. There the prevailing belief seems to be that the world's neglect of the advice already given it can only be cured by giving it more and better. Hence this book, the work of seven contributors, all distinguished members of the University of Oxford. What advice, then, have these writers, taken one by one, to give ? It seems a fair question to ask of a book on Personal Ethics. We look to such a book for guidance.

Dr. B. H. Streeter, Provost of the Queen's College, finds that English education is best represented in the tradition of our public schools, where the main emphasis falls on the -development of character, in contrast to the education of continental countries where intellectual and aesthetic devel- opment is the object chiefly aimed at. This one-sidedness

• in our public school system Dr. Streeter would correct by a stronger infusion of intellectual and aesthetic interests, and • he would make the system so corrected accessible to every- body. His advice accordingly takes that form.

' Canon K. E. Kirk, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, writes on Marriage. He reviews three methods of "solving the problem" of sex : (1) Realism, which stands for the Christian idea of monogamy ; (2) Pessimism, which regards the whole affair of man and woman as desperate, and can think of no better palliative than cheap and easy divorce on the American model ; (3) Romanticism, which allows to young people a "considerable degree of liberty in sex- experimentation." He compares the merits of the three methods, with especial care to give Romanticism its due, and finally decides for Realism, as likely on the whole to yield better results than the other two—this mainly on the ground that the interests of the children should be the paramount con- sideration. His advice accordingly is to stick to monogamy.

In the essay on Patriotism Mr. J. R. Maud, Fellow and Dean of University College, furnishes the reader with some useful mental exercise in finding out precisely what he is driving at. He admits that groups, such as nations, are by nature habitu- ally selfish in their relations with other groups and (as at present constituted) incapable of the altruistic or self-effacing conduct becoming a good Christian or even a good neighbour. The problem therefore is—how can the moral man be a self- respecting patriot under these conditions ? It is not clear that Mr. Maud succeeds in solving it. However, by one means or another he reaches this conclusion : " The true love of a patriot for his country is of such a kind that the more he loves his country the more capable he finds himself of loving other countries as he loves his own.

His advice would seem to be, therefore, "learn to love your own country as you ought and the love of other countries will be added unto you "—a rather poor look-out for the other countries.

Mr. C. R. Morris, Fellow of Balliol, writing on Social Inequalities, or class distinctions, has on his hands a problem of the same type as the foregoing, since Patriotism is nothing other than class consciousness on the national scale. Mr. Morris deprecates class distinctions when based upon wealth as leading to hatred and strife, but believes them nevertheless to be inevitable in one form or another, and on the whole beneficial—or possibly so—when based on higher ground, such as education, culture or a conunon interest in the things of the spirit. How then are we to conduct our lives, as members of the culture-class in which we happen to be, without contracting the vices of intellectual, moral or spiritual snobbery—a problem obviously analogous to that which Mr. Maud has to solve in his essay on Patriotism, since even

cultured groups are apt to be selfish and exclusive? Mr. Morris finds his clue to the answer in our public school tradition of education and its continuation in such institutions as Balliol College, thus falling into line with the conclusions of Dr. Streeter. This tradition, or system, he thinks, has within it the potency, waiting development, of putting an end to all these class snobberies, exclusions and mutual hatreds : "It is within our power" (he writes) "to abolish the worst effects of class hostility by so overhauling our national system of education as to make full use of that mysterious power, ingrained in the British system of education, to make all sorts live together in real unity."

As general advice this is clear enough, though one would be glad of more information as to what the overhauling recom- mended by Mr. Morris would involve. How, for example, would Balliol itself be affected, and the University of Oxford in general ?

Like Richard Cobden, Mr. R. L. Hall, Fellow and Dean of Trinity College, is a believer in the moral value of an ideal bargain. Accordingly, his "Earning and Spending" is largely occupied in analysing the conditions which constitute fairness in bargaining, his opinion being that, provided buyer and seller both play the game, the moral man has no cause to gnash his teeth over the evils of economic competition. No harm, therefore, in earning a good income, provided you observe the rules of the game (which embody a good many fine distinctions) in earning it and in spending it when earned. On the spending side Mr. Hall has somewhat less to say than on the earning, but he sees very clearly that enforced equality of income (as advocated, say, by Mr. Bernard Shaw) com- bined with go-as-you-please in the spending department is an arrangement certain to wreck itself immediately.

Mr. R. C. Mortimer, Student of Christ Church, on Gambling, furnishes a contribution of outstanding interest. His essay appeals to the present reviewer as the most competent short • treatment of that thorny topic that has recently come his way. It leaves one moreover with an impression of the author as one of those genial and sensible men with whom it would be a pleasure, and in no sense a crime, to make a bet. Mr. Mortimer has grasped the truth, among others essential to his thesis, that an assured security, unsalted by risk, is a

monotonous condition highly unpalatable to human nature— a truth which the apostles of "safety first" invariably over- look in making provision for the millennium. To gambling as an amusement of the wise Mr. Mortimer has no objection, and even looks upon it with favour when practised within proper limits. But gambling as a vocation, or even as a habit, he

rightly regards as the very devil. And since, in a world largely populated by fools, the restriction of gambling within proper limits is not possible, his advice is, on the whole, to keep clear of it.

To Canon J. S. Bezzant, Chancellor of Liverpool Cathedral and formerly Fellow of Exeter College, has been allotted the teasing and tiresome problem of reconciling religion and morality, originally joined together by God but since wan-

tonly torn asunder by philosophers. Can morality stand on its own feet without the support of belief in a Personal God ?

Yes, answers our author, it can stand, but with considerable risk of falling and with little power to advance. Even in a godless world reasons could be found for preferring a good life to an evil one, but they would lack the driving power which a religious faith alone can supply. "That the universe

is the work and expression of the nature of a personal God is the belief within which the hold of morality has attained a maximum intensity and extent." "Reverence and love of God . . . will assuredly always support and intensify the demands of morality." In other words, the demand of morality up to a point is independent of religion, but in the absence of religion the power to meet the demand is likely to be lacking.

It is to be hoped that the excellent injunctions given in

this book, not all of them entirely novel, and some perhaps rather difficult to combine with others, will evoke correspond- ing action in readers. But, having regard to the bad habit of the modem world, from which even our universities are not

entirely free, of discussing good advice instead of acting upon

it, the present reviewer has his doubts. He is inclined to believe, with the eccentrics, that if good advice could extirpate original sin it. would have been extirpated long ago. Video metiora proboque, deteriara sequor. L. P. JACKS.