1937-04-26 — Page 11

THE CHINA MAIL, APRIL 26, 1937.

Henry Harris says that sometimes it may be.

Page

TELL THE TRUTH!

TO TELL

A SIN TO

HERE are times when

Thighly immoral

truth.

to

it is Ask yourself this. Which would tell the you appreciate most in the. long

run?

You can use an axe to fell a 'tree commit a and you can use it to murder. You can use the truth to

help people and you can use it to

harm them.

It is not the truth that matters It is the use you put it so much.

to.

If you lived alone on a desert is land, the truth would have no great significance. In any civilised community, the truth brings with it social obligations.

Used to harm others, it is anti- social, immoral.

Used to help others-even though it inflicts pain-it is social, highly moral.

TH

The whole truth? Part of it?

Or none of it?

You suffer from an incurable but comparatively painless illness and survive six will probably not. months.

Would you prefer your doctor to tell you the whole truth? Or part of it? That you have a serious ail- ment and should naturally put your affairs in order. Just in case....

After all, it is not Death-but the Fear of Death-that darkens Life.

!

Better to be taken suddenly. Without warning, dread or pain!

If you were the doctor, would you tell the whole truth? Or part of it?

Berdyaev's Philosophy Of Human Destiny

You and your wife have spent fifteen happy years together,

Would you be grateful if she or another told you of an early indis- cretion before marriage?

То almost you

On all occasions. everybody. Hot and strong give it 'em.

For their own good, of course! If so, the good Lord preserve me from you!

My own experience of you truth- addicts is that you tell only a part of the truth.

Usually the nasty part. The part that hurts and harms. Too seldom, the part that helps.

.

Of an experience whose suffering may have strengthened her charac- and sweetened her personality? ter

Or would you prefer not to have known something that might em- bitter the years of happiness that you still have to come?

The whole truth? Or none of it? Your real purpose is not to do Your only daughter is shunned good. That is only your excuse.

What you really want is to vent by other children. They will not

not. W play with her, because their par- your spleen against a world which ents know you were once in a TB you consider has given you a raw sanatorium, although you are now deal.

Frankness is one of the grandest cured.

Your wife knows of this, but is and commonest excuses for abus- ing the truth. Too often, it is a afraid to tell you.

Would you rather she spared social sin. your feelings?

Tell all or some of the truth if Or would you rather know? So that as a sensible father you in the long run it will help some- might move to another neighbour one. Tell none if it cannot help.

Or if there is a wiser, less hurt- hood. For the sake of your child.

The whole truth? Or none of it? ful way.

**

with another man.

+

*

If the issue is dead, no problem

Your wife knows you are having to be solved, why drag it up? THE MEANING OF HISTORY, of the purely "historical." In great

Whom does it really concern that detail and with clairvoyant luci-

a stupidly dangerous affair with a By Nicolas Berdyaev.

husband you were brought up in an institu- original of this dity he proceeds to define "histori-

younger woman....Your HE Russian.

book, first published in 1923, cal reality," which is by no means has detected your secret flirtation tion for children, that you once broke the law and paid the penalty, bears the subtitle, "An Attempt at dependent on the abstract use of

Would you prefer to be told that there is family skeleton that a Philosophy of Human Destiny" documents and the study of his- which is omitted from the English torical monuments, however neces-frankly that your secret. is known? cannot affect the present genera- edition. Indeed, in

So that you know where -you-tion? ... this, perhaps sary these may be. But an under- the profoundest of his books, Berd- standing of historical tradition is stand. So that you can make your yaev attempts nothing less than to important, and with this is asso-decision. Before you are inextri-

cably tangled. unravel the puzzle behind history ciated historical memory, without and discover in it elements beyond which no great cultural epoch can a mere disconnected series of hap- be understood. This memory is a hazard events imposed upon hus sort of special sense conferred by manity, as it were, by accident or tradition, and by its means we are accidental individuals, and various enabled to commune inwardly with ly interpreted by historians and the historical, and ultimately to philosophers, but rarely in a way grasp the meaning of human des-the whole and brutal truth?

for tiny. In a certain sense, says Ber-

dyaev,

that will console humanity what it suffers and endures in his- tory's name. History, even as life itself, can be justified only by hav- ing a goal. Otherwise, all human endeavour is foolish and useless, and all that we call history merely folly and futility on a vast scale.

a

historical memory implies merciless war between etern-, ity and time, and the philo sophy of history is always the witness of the triumph of eternity over time and corrup- tion. It signifies the triumph Berdyaev, then, seeks not only to

It is a of the incorruptible. find a meaning in history but a

monument to the victory of worthy meaning. Being a religious

the spirit of incorruptibility. philosopher, possibly the greatest

over that of corruptibility. The of his kind among the living, he

goal of historical knowledge cannot dissociate the problem from the problem: of God. Economic ma- and philosophy is not natural,

but supernatural. terialism as an interpretatinof history he finds deficient, because Berdyaev develops this idea in it does not explain the things that countless ramifications. A single really matter, the things he most chapter, sometimes a single para- wants to know. He cannot accept a graph, even a sentence, is sufficient historical process which eliminates to stimulate the delighted reader soul,, the inner mysterious life; a to a train of thought vibrant with process which regards economic possibilities.

The author credits the Jews with forces as the primary forces, and everything else as "secondary, con- being the first people to contri- tingent and superficial." It is a pro- bute the concept of "historical" to cess, he says, which presents re- world history, thereby discharging, ligion, spirituality, culture, art, hu- in his opinion, the essence of their man life itself, as "the merest ac- specific mission." They not merely cidents of matter in movement and grasped the significance of the past devoid of substantial reality." It and present; they were also the does not explain, he maintains, first people to link these up with "the origin of the intellect mani- the future. The Book of Daniel is fested by the prophets of economic one of the first well-defined expres- materialism themselves, of that sions of the true philosophy of his- manifested by Marx and Engels, tory. "In it we are made to feel which towers above the mere pas dramatically that mankind is-en- gaged in a process that tenda to- sive reflection of economic re

ward a definite goal." In Daniel's lation."

After disposing of the various interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's unsuccessful attempts to formulate dream Berdyaev sees the first at- philosophies of history, Berdyaev tempt in the history of mankind to invokes a bold and brilliant dialec attribute a design to history "an tic to establish main processes attempt which was later to be ra-

of history onious basis, re- peated and developed in Christian

legating its remaining manifesta philosophy. tions to a secondly place meriting.

Berdyaev explains all modern

the consideration of the psycholo- historical phenomena in the light principles he has gist and sociologist, but not, in the of the basic

volved. first instance, of the man in quest

Would you prefer the truth to be concealed? Or revealed?:

As you can see there is no uni versal answer.

If the issue is alive, if there is a problem to be solved, an injustice to be righted, tell as much of the truth as will help.

It requires moral courage to in- flict pain on others for their ulti- mate happiness. It may be too that

I wonder, are you one of those your conscience is bearing a bur- frank souls who boast of telling den that someone else would gladly

-share.

KNOWN THE WORLD OVER

FOR ITS PURITY.

MARTELL'S 3 STAR

Sole Agents:-

BRANDY.

MARTEL

GANDE, PRICE & CO., LTD. :HONG KONG.

Telep: 20135.

STOCKED BY ALL CLUBS, HOTELS.

- AND WINE STORES.