I spend a small part of each day correcting OCR records in the National Library's 'Historic Newspapers Collection', and today, I was digging in 1949. There is a method to my digging, but it is hard to spot: at one point, I went through and corrected every story published on the day I was born, though you would be hard put to find it now, because so many newspapers have come on line since then.
No matter: for those who know something of my affairs, I am solidly into the Cornish Boy series again, and that is eating my thinking time. More of the Cornish Boy and his adventures some other time, here is a fascinating series of excerpts taken from a lecture in 1949: the source and a link to it appear at the end.
One thing: I have picked two elements from this to use in Cornish Boy, so I am off to amend the ms as soon as this goes. See if you can guess which ones they are.
* * * * *
HENRY TONKS, a surgeon and one of the greatest art teachers
England has produced… diagnosed one of the principal complaints of modern
civilisation. I think it was Max Beerbohm who said that he was tired of the expression,
'the age of the common man.' What he wanted to hear about was the age of the
uncommon man. The aim of civilisation is surely not to produce a uniform and
dull level of shared mediocrity. Still less is it to produce a society, such as
we see in certain parts of the world, where the voice of the uncommon man is
effectively silenced. We must be on guard, therefore, against the dangerous
cult of mediocrity which is steadily spreading throughout the world. One of the
symptoms of this growth is the hostility that is increasingly shown to personal
distinction in manner, in speech, in dress, and, not least, in intellect. No great
nation seems to be exempt.
* * * * *
In the United States and Great Britain second-rate film
actors, writers, and even crooners are mobbed as if they were national heroes;
whilst in Soviet Russia painters who perpetuate the worst academic traditions
of the nineteenth century are hailed as masters of the modern movement. I have
already referred to the tendency for members of mass formations to impose their
collective opinions and values on other members of the community. Scarcely less
deplorable is the way in which the taste of the people is regulated and
controlled by commercially standardised changes of fashion. It is a question,
not of choice among many new looks, but of the one and only new look, which the
public is allowed to take but not, alas I to leave.
* * * * *
Respect for the past
has ceased to be, for many sections of the com- munity, an important factor in
regulating and guiding political decisions; for these sections the past is
merely something to be swept away as quickly and thoroughly as possible. During
the period of rebuilding that followed World War One a member of the Georgian
Society remarked that the highest praise to be given any beautiful house in
London was to say: 'It is almost good enough to deserve demolition.' The remark is equally applicable to the lovely
early Colonial architecture of Sydney. This architecture should be as
inviolable as the parks. Like the parks, It serves no industrial or commercial
purpose. Like the parks, it is a reminder of values other than those of industry
and commerce. But in an age without respect for the past, and with little heed
for beauty, these gracious memorials of Australia's past seem doomed to
disappear.
* * * * *
THIS careless and ungrateful destruction is more than a
symptom; it is a symbol. An age of mediocrity not only dislikes the past: it
fears it. Fortunately ours is still a free society, and it is possible to draw
attention to the dangers both of historical neglect and of false history.
History teaches us that those societies which have turned to the past for
inspiration have also best adapted themselves to changing circumstances.
* * * * *
A student of the Eighteenth Century may be forgiven if he
draws attention to certain peculiar merits of that century. I should like to
argue, if there were time, that it produced the last civilised society the
modern world has produced. The century had a rational approach to life, an
approach which is summed up in Its splendid title, the 'Age of Reason.' The
basis of this rational attitude was not only good logic, which is rare, but
good manners, which are rarer still. It was an age of tolerance, but not of
undiscriminating tolerance. Its governing principle may be summed up in the
sentence: 'Let us tolerate all but the intolerant.'
This spirit of tolerance made it possible for an atheist,
the historian Gibbon, and a Christian Bishop, Watson, to exchange sincere
compliments in the midst of the most heated controversy of the age. It also
made it possible for the far-reaching reforms of the nineteenth century to be
initiated, if not without bitterness, at least in accordance with the peaceful
machinery of a democratic constitution. In other words, the 'Age of Reason' is
a reminder of those values of reasonable conduct, tolerance, free enquiry, and
humane sentiment. which the world needs so badly to-day.
* * * * *
BUT there must be one reservation in our praise. The great
qualities of the eighteenth century, its merits and its benefits, were,
confined to a very small class. Very few members of this class seem to have
worried, because this was the case. This was a grave fault, and I think we can
claim an improvement in our own times. To-day, there are much fewer people who enjoy
some peculiar privilege or benefit and do not look forward to the day when the
same privilege or benefit can be enjoyed by every member of the community.
Most of us, I suppose, have some idealistic friend who talks
of the classless society. I must confess that I do not fully understand this
phrase, for even if we eliminate the classes made by man, there will still
remain the classes instituted by nature. But there is a sense in which the
ideal of a classless society was realised even within the limitations of the eighteenth
century. Let me venture upon a somewhat heretical definition.
* * * * *
A classless society is one in which the members address one
another, not as 'comrade,' but as 'sir.' It is a society based not on universal
familiarity, which is a low ideal, but universal respect, which is a high one.
Such was the society of the famous Literary Club, of which Dr. Johnson, Reynolds,
Goldsmith, Burke, and others were members. If we are to set before ourselves an
ideal community, as we should, let it be one in which all members, however
moderate their gifts or humble their occupation, show respect to others, and
deserve it themselves. If man cannot only master his machines, but return also
to the standards of the 'Age of Reason,' the future of democracy will be safe,
and the common man will recognise and respect, both in himself and in his
neighbour, un common potentialities.
* * * * *
The author is Joseph Burke who was then the Herald Professor of Fine Arts in the University
of Melbourne, in the Syme Oration delivered in Brisbane to the Royal Australasian
College of Surgeons the previous night
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