Euthanasia : and other aspects of life and death / by Harry Roberts.

  • Harry Roberts
Date:
[1936]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Euthanasia : and other aspects of life and death / by Harry Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sort of man to talk much, or even think much, about morality—about good and bad, about right and wrong. He will seem to himself merely to be taking the only sensible course for an intelligent being. One cannot help asking oneself how, and in what degree, our methods of education and our political system tend to foster the production and development of such citizens as these. To me, at any rate, the answer to the question is not very comforting or reassuring. The habit of straight, clear thinking is far and away the most valuable fruit of wise education, and this fruit is best grown and matured on an educational system in which learning and doing are coincident. In the execution of a drawing, the making of a cabinet, the growing of vegetables, or the construction of a map-to-scale of one s village or neighbourhood, no hiding from reality in the treacherous bosom of con¬ vention is possible. We are, at once and inevitably, exposed to the criticism of the ill-done deed. There can be no higher object of education than the cultivation of a personal sense of proportion. Yet, how rarely is this recognized in practice. The world in which we live is a conditioned world, calling for constant choice, and as frequent rejection. We cannot both eat our cake and keep it; and, for nearly every pleasure and grati¬ fication, a price has to be paid. The constant problem with which we are confronted is whether this or that thing is worth its price. And it is to modern education, which so often fails to instil this law, that much of our mental illness, and probably of our physical illness also, is ultimately due. Attention,