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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 14, No. 6. June 7, 1951

[Introduction]

Free Society is today in the process of disintegration. When this book was written two years ago, the author said: "Our situation is due to the inter-action of wills, each pursuing its own limited purpose and finally producing a total state of things in which the individual feels himself powerless because of the colossal scale of the influences which actually govern his life." Pandit Nehru expressed it: "Men are so often the object of events rather than the subject of action." The scientific, technological and economic advance, combined with the new technique of power over human beings, has produced a situation in which our present understanding of values and beliefs is inadequate for the task of restoring human dignity and mastering the results of our knowledge. We seem to be arriving at a position in which we can have no say in determining our environment. At present we are still in a state of chaos: our beliefs are in flux and we are undecided as to direction.

Moberly's book is an attempt to show the relevance of what happens in the university to this state of chaos in society. He believes that the economic and political set-up in the world today is only the result of the beliefs and motives of men. It is how and what man thinks that determines finally what his political and economic environment will be. The obvious task, then, of the modern university is to examine radically these beliefs and motives in the new perspective and try to impart direction and coherence to the values which emerge unscathed from the enquiry. This does not mean a leisurely modification of our ideal, always about a hundred years behind our technical progress: it means an immediate and urgent desire to probe to the very basis of our thought and culture and to produce "binding convictions" which can resolve confusion into a sense of direction. Obviously the modern university falls far short of its task. There is rarely any attempt to explain or justify existence. The student is usually left unaware that there are abstract problems to be faced in living. Values are left to "emerge. Often we have the feeling that the student is a machine, that technique is the master. The modern university is too often an adjunct of a utilitarian society, training scientists, civil servants, lawyers and teachers, never leading in thought. We should expect a university to be creative in the freedom of enquiry which it so jealously preserves. We should expect an attempt to form a coherent philosophy of living, not simply an ignoring of the question.