Sir James Darling’s Acknowledgement of the ‘Paramount’ Need to Solve the Human Condition.
In the following essay the most eminent Sir James Darling, a very great Australian, former headmaster of Geelong Grammar School and a former ABC Chairman, acknowledges the all-but-denied existence of the FHA’s area of inquiry into the human condition, and emphasises its critical importance to the human race.
Written by Jeremy Griffith in June 1999 and published on the FHA website in April 2001
‘Our alienation goes to the roots. The realization of this is the essential springboard for any serious reflection on any aspect of present inter-human life…We respect the voyager, the explorer, the climber, the space man. It makes far more sense to me as a valid project—indeed, as a desperately urgently required project for our time—to explore the inner space and time of consciousness. Perhaps this is one of the few things that still make sense in our historical context. We are so out of touch with this realm that many people can now argue seriously that it does not exist. It is very small wonder that it is perilous indeed to explore such a lost realm.’
R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, 1967
‘It is time to climb the mountains of our mind.’
From Tim Macartney-Snape’s summit speech after his solo ascent of Mt Everest, 11 May 1990
To affirm the legitimate nature, indeed crucial importance of the FHA’s work we present a series of extracts from a speech given by Sir James Darling.
Significantly, Sir James was headmaster of Geelong Grammar School (GGS) for 30 years until 1961, the school that a number of FHA members attended, including FHA founding directors, my brother Simon Griffith, Tim Macartney-Snape AM, Christopher Stephen and myself.
During the years 1961 to 1967, Sir James Darling was chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (as today’s Australian Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC, was then known). Before that, from 1955, he was a member of the Australian Broadcasting Control Board.
In 1953 Sir James was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and in 1968 he was knighted ‘for services to education and broadcasting’. In Australia’s bicentennial year, 1988, he was officially designated one of 200 ‘Great Australians’. Of the 200—22 then living—Sir James was the only headmaster, public recognition thereby being given to his exceptional, indeed unique, influence in Australia as an educator.
Given the nature of the FHA’s work it should also be recorded that in Darling’s full-page obituary in The Australian newspaper on 3 November 1995 he was described as ‘a prophet in the true biblical sense’ to view Darling’s obituary click here).
These extracts are from a speech Sir James gave to the College of Radiologists of Australasia in Melbourne on 17 November 1954. In this most prophetic speech Sir James identifies the human condition as the critical issue before humanity, and says the answer has to come from a ‘teleological’ approach, and that such an approach will require soundness, which is innocence. He clearly identifies mechanistic science and fundamentalist religion as the two specific threats to such an inquiry. He even correctly anticipates what the answer to the human condition will be.
For brevity’s sake a condensation of the speech is presented here. Sir James’ words are in bold and my comments are in the braced {} plain text. The complete speech can be accessed by clicking here, where the extracts below are underlined so it can be seen that nothing has been distorted and nothing of substance left out.
‘On Looking Beneath the Surface of Things’
Published in The Education of a Civilized Man A Selection of Speeches and Sermons by James Ralph Darling, 1962.
{Sir James begins by pointing out that Professor Röntgen’s discovery of the X-ray was maligned, as many new ideas are.} …Professor Röntgen…made his great discovery [of X-rays]…[and] he realised, almost immediately after he made the discovery, some of the possibilities that were contained in it…There followed all the misinterpretation and exaggeration which such publicity throws in the face of the scientist whose only desire is to pursue uninterrupted the new developments made possible by his discovery…Professor Röntgen suffered from the superficiality and futility of the comments made upon his work…
{Using the metaphor of X-rays Sir James introduces his theme of the need to look beneath the surface of things.} [X-rays allowed us to] see what is otherwise hidden…[however there are] various surfaces…on which the eye can rest before one sees right through…[, is it] penetration of the truth or merely penetration of a phenomenon which is only part of the truth…? The doctor today has within his control a weapon…which shows him much more of the truth than his predecessors of a hundred years ago…
{Sir James says that looking deeper can be ‘dangerous’.}Truth with a capital T cannot be put in a bottle as a specimen; yet it is that kind of inquiry which is the need…today…[T]ruth…without apprehension is valueless, perhaps…dangerous…
{Sir James observes that humans are becoming increasingly superficial in their thinking—a trend that has led to a state of almost complete alienation/ denial amongst humans of today. This closing of the mind, or ‘dumbing down’ as it is frequently referred to in the media today, was the theme of Allan Bloom’s 1987 best-selling book titled The Closing of the American Mind.} When we contemplate our world…we must all be struck by the need for such penetration of understanding…[There is the need for] time in which to re-examine the purpose and the meaning of what we are doing…to try to understand…to estimate with some accuracy where we are…[However] we are, most of us, extraordinarily badly equipped to seize the opportunity even if it were presented…[E]ducation was [once] directed to develop…a capacity for this kind of [deeper] thinking. In our hurried age there is a danger that by lack of use the capacity [to think] will atrophy…[There is now] atrophy of even the desire to think deeply about anything which is the worst characteristic…
{Sir James says we have chosen to ‘escape’ from thinking deeply because the deeper issues appear impenetrable and ‘disquieting’.} Faced as he [the student] is by the impossibility of approaching a full understanding…it is not surprising that the student of today has allowed himself so to specialize that he forgets the need for understanding the relationships between things, let alone their ultimate meaning…[Troubled by] the world [being] too difficult for the scholar to understand,…disquieted by a lack of perceptible purpose in life, and convinced that he can make no sense of it even if he tries, modern man chooses the method of escape…
{In this next part of his speech Sir James says that to defy this escapist (alienated) thinking what is required is a more ‘sensitive’ (non-alienated/ innocent) mind, because it is only such a mind that is able to ‘seek truth at the bottom of the well’. Sir James summarises this extremely relevant point with the quote: ‘The future lies not with the predatory [selfish] and the immune [alienated] but with the sensitive [the innocent] who live dangerously [defy the world of evasion and denial]’. As I have, Sir James acknowledges that it is innocence that has to lead humanity home to understanding of ourselves.} [This] process of desensitizing our minds, [has occurred] just when the needs of the moment demand more than they ever have done the most acute sensitivity. Sensibility, which…should always be the educator’s objective…[for] as the…author, Canon Raven, says, the future lies not with the predatory and the immune but with the sensitive who live dangerously. It should be the prime object of education…to develop this sensitivity…[because] the truly sensitive mind is both susceptible and penetrating: it is open to new ideas, and it seeks truth at the bottom of the well. It is the development of this sort of mind which it should be the object of the educational process to cultivate…
{Sir James goes on to say that reductionist or mechanistic thinking has been at the expense of the now vitally needed, ‘whole’-view-confronting, holistic way of thinking.} Education is not a series of hurdles, and the tendency to regard it as such forbids…the training of the sensitive and penetrating mind…[we have an education system which is involved in] encouraging boys to try to escape from all subjects which demand theoretical thinking. The young naturally prefer the concrete and the practical…They prefer examples to principles and facts to ideas; they prefer learning to thinking…[I]n all education principles are more important than examples, ideas than facts, and you cannot train the sensitive and penetrating mind except by exercising it in that direction…[M]uch of the trouble [that exists in schools] is inherent in the present stage of the world’s knowledge. A multiplicity of new facts…has tended to obscure all sight of principle…[There has been] excessive specialization,…the necessary concentration upon the development of even the twigs upon the branches has resulted in our losing sight of the tree, let alone the wood of which the tree is part…If it is part of the art of living to see life clearly and to see it whole, this age of specialization makes living a very difficult art…It is…no new problem, though it seems today to be becoming more and more acute. Ever since man first began to study natural phenomena, he has been obsessed by the difficulty of making general sense of all the individual discoveries…
{Next Sir James says that the fundamental need is to recognise the ‘single binding principle’, which, later on in his speech he says is ‘teleology’.} It was the ancient Greek philosophers who…first…sought…for some single binding principle from which it might be said that all else sprang…[While they didn’t find it] at least they kept on trying…
{Sir James now begins to introduce the idea that a teleological based understanding of ourselves is being inhibited by the ‘divorce’ between science’s evasive, mechanistic approach and religious adherence to dogma.} The difficulty [of finding reconciling understanding] is [today] accentuated by…the recent, divorce between theological and scientific thinking…
{ Sir James then points out that older minds find it difficult adopting new ideas and that it is typically younger minds that take up new ideas. He goes on to point out that seeking reconciliation between science and theology is the new way to think.} [The problem is made worse by] the inescapable fact that societies must…be dominated by those who are already out-of-date…[I]t is very hard to…escape from the modes of thought which we adopted when our minds were ‘young…[What is required is] the wisdom of a greater tolerance…My…point is that many of us grew up…when the divorce between Religion and Science was an accepted fact. There were scientists who remained religious, and even theologians who dabbled in science, but there was still the kind of mental strain which disturbed the soul of Darwin or Huxley. The two intellectual activities had to be kept in separate compartments…In this fabric of mental habit, formed when we were at the university, most of us remain—and fail to notice that the world of thought has left us behind. Quite obviously it is a most unsatisfactory condition…
{Sir James now emphasises that, ‘The scientist can no more deny or devaluate the truths of spiritual experience than the theologian can neglect the truths of science: and the two truths must be reconcilable, and it must be of importance to each of us that they should be reconciled’. } Add this dichotomy [between religion and science] to the problems created by the multiplicity of specialization, and it will be seen how difficult it is for modern man to see life clearly and to see it whole…The scientist can no more deny or devaluate the truths of spiritual experience than the theologian can neglect the truths of science: and the two truths must be reconcilable, and it must be of importance to each of us that they should be reconciled…For truth is there to be revealed, as all scientists know; and the seeing of the truth is a discovery, not an invention. It may well be that it is on the common meeting-ground of art and music and poetry that scientist and theologian may meet to compose their differences.
{Most impressively, Sir James now goes on to actually indicate what the answer to the riddle of the human condition is. Using a poem by Poet laureate, Robert Bridges, Sir James first identifies the two protagonists in the conflict of the human condition of intellect and instinct (or conscious and conscience). He then goes on to describe how it became a ‘necessity’ for ‘conscient’ humans to defy the ‘unreasoning’, ‘determining instinct’ because, tragically, the instincts in effect saw the conscious self’s ‘necessary’ efforts to self-adjust as ‘imperfect’ ‘insubordination’. This is precisely the explanation of the human condition that I give in my books, and illustrate in the ‘Stork Story’. Significantly Bridge’s presentation is ‘hailed’ as ‘one of the greatest works in the English language’—undoubtedly because of his poem’s extraordinary penetration of the dilemma of the human condition. } Certainly it was a poet with a scientific…training, Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges who first, as far as I know…tried to produce order out of chaos…in [his] 1927 [poem] The Testament of Beauty…I do not know how much impressed the scientists were…but I do know that one theologian at least of high standing, the late Archbishop Temple…hailed it as one of the greatest works in the English language…[In the poem] Man is portrayed in the picture of Plato’s two-horsed chariot,…Reason driving…the instincts…
‘…Law of Nature,—in its grade the same / with the determin’d habit of electrons, the same / with the determining instinct of unreasoning life, / NECESSITY become conscient in man—whereto / all insubordination is imperfection in kind.’ (The emphasises are Dr Darling’s)…
‘From Universal Mind the first-born atoms draw / their function, whose rich chemistry the plants transmute / to make organic life, whereon animals feed / to fashion sight and sense and give service to man, who sprung from them is conscient in his last degree…
Thru’out all runneth Duty, and the conscience of it / is thatt creativ faculty of animal mind / that, wakening to self-conscience of all Essences, / closeth the full circle, where the spirit of man / escaping from the bondage of physical Law / re-entereth eternity by the vision of God.’
{Note that in Sir Laurens van der Post’s, obituary (Sir Laurens was a pre-eminent philosopher, author of 24 books and a close friend of Carl Jung) he also identifies the same two fundamental elements in the battle of the human condition as Sir James and Bridges of ‘reason’ (intellect) and ‘instinct’. (To view van der Post’s obituary where he is acknowledged as a prophet click here).
Please note also that both Sir James and Sir Laurens have been knighted, undoubtedly in large measure in recognition of the integrity of their thought. Also they are both described as prophets and they are two of the men my books have been dedicated to. Sir Laurens also wrote to me in support of my work saying, ‘Could you please send me an extra copy of your book? Yours to me is already out on loan because it was so appreciated, and I shall give it to my publishers to read and see whether they are as interested as we are’ (20 May 1988 communique).}
{Sir James goes on to say that it is of paramount significance to a future for the human race that we discover our purpose or meaning.} [In] This [poem] is the idea of Purpose in life, and I am suggesting that it is to the idea of Purpose in all things that we must return, if we are to discover unity in the midst of variety…[T]here should be some whys and some answers; only so will there be any chance of the required revision and synthesis. In the wider or deeper field of thought, there is no less need.
{Sir James returns to the dual problems of science’s mechanistic (teleology-evading) approach and fundamentalist religion.} But, before we return to this binding idea of purpose…we should…try to understand why the apparent dichotomy between Religion and Science has arisen. It has arisen, according to Canon Raven (a theologian and a biologist) …as a result of faults upon both sides. At a time when…the Roman Empire was breaking up…Christianity [became]…an escape,…‘faith became a creed, hope an escapism, and love a snare; to contrast the transient with the supernatural, to flee from the world rather than to convert it, and to order this life so as to secure the bliss of heaven became the object of Christian endeavour.’ For hundreds of years this kind of thought dominated religion,…the idea that salvation lay only in an asceticism which removed men from this world…To such minds the studies of the scientists…were…frivolous. Some religious thinkers have not even now escaped [from this attitude]…
{Sir James says that for its part, ‘mechanistic’ science is to blame for its entrenched evasion of teleology.} It is little wonder that the scientist…reacted against this attitude…[and] became dominated by the mathematicians and the physicists…‘This belief, with its consequent enhancement of economic and industrial values at the expense of aesthetic and moral, persisted until, with Charles Darwin, man himself was deposed from the position of controller and graded as part of the machine; and by that time mechanism was so securely established that it took two generations for the absurdity of this final step to be recognized.’ It is only today, or very recently, that the physicist has abandoned his dogmatism, and the biologist begun again to study the living creature…Meanwhile a grievous damage has been done.
{Sir James asks, ‘What, then, is the problem?’ How do we solve the impasse of ‘the dichotomy existing between the scientist and the theologian’. He answers saying, ‘The solution lies quite simply in what is known as the teleological conception of evolution’.} The result of these two kinds of thought has been to produce in our world that dichotomy…which lies at the root of our difficulty in seeing life clearly and seeing it whole. We shall not bridge that gulf unless both scientist and theologian are prepared to start towards each other…It is of the greatest importance to all our thinking that they should do so. What, then, is the problem? We have, then, these two factors which make it impossible for us to see the unity in life—the dichotomy existing between the scientist and the theologian, and the multiplicity of fragmented specialization. Because of these our life has lost coherence and significance and direction.
Far be it from me…to say what the answer is: and yet…I should like to be allowed to come back to the possibility that the solution lies quite simply in what is known as the teleological conception of evolution.
{Sir James says we have to find purpose or meaning.} Is the binding principle, the solvent idea, to be found in Purpose?…A recall to fundamental purpose might be profitable…The problem of discovering for our liberal democratic society…a purpose…is…one of the greatest needs of our time…in seeking for such purpose it will be necessary to seek below the surface…to the underlying and fundamental…
{Sir James now takes his discussion right up to the ‘all-important question’ of the dilemma of the human condition by quoting from the Bible the passage, ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?’ In other words, why did God make Christ sound and ideal and the rest of humanity corrupt and a concern? Why good and evil? Sir James says unless this question is answered ‘our existence [will become] fragmented into a rubbish-heap’.} [T]he discovery of individual purpose…is insufficient unless…we attempt to correlate what we have found in one embracing purpose. Only so can we come to a better understanding of life, to answer even the all-important question: ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?’ (Psalm 8, v.4; Hebrews 2.6). For to exclude that question from the study of evolution is indeed to play Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark—an exclusion surely as futile as to talk theology and to forget evolution? There must be a complete answer; there must be coherence and sense in the universe; and, until we find it, our thinking is degenerated into disintegration, and our existence fragmented into a rubbish-heap of sheds and patches, with coherence, significance, and growth impossible, our compass-bearings lost, and civilization foundering.
{Sir James says, ‘The theologian—and the scientist—when they study the story which the one calls Creation and the other Evolution…must from the varying standpoints endeavour to understand it as a whole’.} In the study of evolution, it is the scientist’s first duty to deal with the question, How? The theologian is more concerned with Why? But you cannot answer either question fully without answering the other as well…The priest may say that he is concerned with man’s soul, but in fact that soul is something which grows out of man’s body…So the theologian—and the scientist—when they study the story which the one calls Creation and the other Evolution…must from the varying standpoints endeavour to understand it as a whole…
{As in his earlier assertion that the ‘future lies with the sensitive’ mind Sir James concludes by pointing out that the answer will be found through the ‘incarnation’ of innocence, which Christ exemplified. In my book’s dedication to Sir Laurens van der Post I quote Sir Laurens’ reference to the stone age Bushmen people of Africa providing the clue to where the answers would come from. In many ways the Bushmen are, like Christ, the embodiment of innocence. As Bruce Chatwin said about innocent races,‘If Christ were the perfect instinctual specimen—and we have every reason to believe He was—He must be the Son of God. By the same token the First man was also Christ’ (What Am I Doing Here, 1989). My acknowledgement that innocence has to lead us home—that is, produce the reconciling understanding—is not to be promoting myself as a figure of worship; it is only to, as Sir James has done here, and as Sir Laurens did through his example of the Bushmen, point out how the ‘all-important’, humanity-saving, reconciling understanding of ourselves is found.} The answer will be found in a proper understanding of what theologians call the Incarnation, for as Bridges says, ‘…his humanity is God’s Personality / and communion with him is the life of the soul.’
{As I have, Sir James emphasises that Christ is not some ethereal, supernatural being, rather he is a human like the rest of us, albeit exceptionally ‘whole and healthy’. While Christ’s soundness was ‘the great Example’ Sir James says his soundness is also the kind that ‘is the solvent of our divisions’, that can produce ‘the cohesive purpose’ and ‘can explain and put sense into our’ world. As I have said, Sir James is saying that it is innocence that leads humanity home, reconcile the human condition. This doesn’t mean the creation of a new religion. Quite the contrary, bringing understanding to the human condition eliminates the need for faith and belief, it takes humanity ‘beyond [the insecure state of] the human condition’. Importantly also, as stressed in Beyond p.186-7, ‘religions aren’t being threatened, they are being fulfilled’. As Sir James does here, all prophets have looked forward to a time when humans ‘will be like God, knowing’ (Genesis 3:5).}‘He [Christ] is no half-brother to mankind, and therefore of a nature in which humanity can only partially partake; but Elder Brother, blood-brother, the forerunner of our race, the first-fruits of every human creature; not the great Exception but the great Example, who claims no difference either of “substance” or of “nature” from the least of His brethren.’
It is God’s purpose that men should be like Christ: they are whole and healthy only when they are so, and the purpose of evolution is, as Saint Paul says, that ‘we all come in the unity of the faith…unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’(Ephesians 4.13.)‘This is thatt excelent way whereon if we wil walk / all things shall be added unto us.’ (Bridges…)
This is the solvent of our divisions and the cohesive purpose which can explain and put sense into our multifarious individual activities. This is what we see if we look deeply enough below the surface of things…
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At the fundamental level all I have been able to add to these immensely sound and unevasive thoughts of Sir James and Robert Bridges is the final clarification needed of the human condition, namely the biological explanation for ‘how’ it became a ‘necessity’ for consciousness in humans to defy the ‘determin’d habit’ of instincts (the answer presented in my books derives from understanding the different ways the nerve-based and gene-based learning systems process information, one is insightful while the other is not—see ‘The Story of Adam Stork’ p.27 Beyond). As I have stated in Beyond p.162, ‘all I have been able to add to the perception/ soundness of Jesus Christ and Sir Laurens van der Post [and Sir James Darling and Robert Bridges] is the biological reason for the repression of our [instinctive self or] soul.’ Saying that I have found this biological reason is not to promote myself as someone in any way special or better than anyone else. As stated, and explained on p.163 Beyond, ‘Exceptional innocence played an important but minuscule concluding role in our search for knowledge.’ The fundamental thesis in my books is of the dignification of all humans, of the equal goodness of all people.
I might mention here that while all I have been able to add at the fundamental level is the biological reason for why consciousness had to defy the instincts, there are many other truths that I have been able to explain along the way. In fact thinking unevasively and by so doing solving the riddle of the human condition enables a veritable avalanche of explanations/ answers to be found. It is explained in the essay titled Demystification of Religion that the FHA is hoping to publish in the near future, that unevasive, holistic thinking, progressing as it does from a truthful basis, has an exceptional capacity to know if it is right or wrong in its thinking. What needs to be added to this point is that, unevasive thinking, being truthful rather than false in its orientation, is also an extremely effective form of thinking. Christ was an exceptionally honest, unevasive thinker and as a result, despite his unschooled background, was able to gain insight into all manner of mystery; to the point where people marvelled, ‘How did this man get such learning without having studied?’(John 7:15.) Christ succinctly explained that humans’ alienated state of evasion was the reason they have been unable to access many truths when he said, ‘you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children [innocence]’(Matt 11:25). An unevasive brain is an extremely powerful brain, it can unlock all manner of mystery—especially once it has broken through into understanding of the human condition and is no longer intimidated by our world’s lying ways—once it has, as Christ said, ‘overcome the [evasive] world’(John 16:33) and learnt ‘what was in a man’ (John 2:25). Friedrich Nietzsche was aware of the defiance of the false, evasive, alienated world that is required to think effectively when he wrote, ‘we have to await the arrival of a new species of philosopher, one which possesses tastes and inclinations opposite to and different from those of its predecessors—philosophers of the dangerous “perhaps” in every sense’(Beyond Good and Evil, 1886; trans. 1966). The central thesis of Nietzsche’s work was of the need for the arrival of what he termed an‘overman’ or ‘superman’, people who are secure, independent and highly individualistic; basically people who could and would defy the evasion/ denial/ alienation that has held the minds of humans in a vice-like grip since time immemorial. Nietzsche cited, amongst others, Christ and Socrates as models for such defiant thinkers. Incidentally Nietzsche, like Christ, has also described as someone ‘largely unread’ (Gary Kamiya in The Australian Financial Review, 11 Feb 2000).
Apart from explaining the human condition with its insecure state and need for faith—and in the process reconciling theology and biology and explaining all manner of religious metaphysics—there are many other vital explanations that I have been able to bring to light by defying the world of evasion. These include:
(The references here have been limited to Beyond)
the biological explanation for how humans acquired unconditionally cooperative instincts—in other words, how we acquired our altruistic ‘soul’ and its cooperation-demanding ‘conscience’ (see chapter ‘How we Acquired Our Conscience’ p.83);
the biological reason for why humans became fully conscious and other animals didn’t (see chapter ‘How we Acquired Consciousness’ p.101);
the biological explanation for how nurturing was the real prime mover in human development (see chapter ‘How we Acquired Consciousness’ p.101);
the biological explanation for the psychological stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood in humanity’s 12 million year development (especially pp.54-58, 104);
the biological explanation for why and when we began hunting meat (esp. pp. 61-62), left Africa (p.64), walked upright (p.126), lost our body hair (pp.90-91) and developed language (p.60);
the biological explanation for sex as humans practice it now (esp. pp.138-149), for our aesthetic for human beauty (p.144), for the rift between men and women and how it is overcome (pp.137-150), for marriage (p.146), for why we ‘fall in love’ (p.144), and for wearing clothes (p.146);
the biological explanation for our humour (p.81), anger (p.137), egocentricity (p.137), alienation (p.137), love (pp.44, 84), music (p.165), etc;
the biological explanation for the polarities of left and right factions in politics and how they are now reconciled (see chapter ‘Politics’ p.73), for the immense inequality in the world and how it is ended (pp.151,165,169), for racism and how it is resolved (p.174), for the destruction of our environment and how it is repaired (pp.172-179), for our insensitivity and how it is restored (pp.22-39).
I emphasise that to find the understandings all I did was not evade truths such as integrative meaning and the significance of nurturing in our upbringing. These are truths that we have all known but evaded because of their unjust condemnation of us. As stated in Beyond p. 166, ‘these explanations are not discoveries, but revelations of things we have known…To evade something we had first to know it…The problem had become one of revealing the truth, not of finding it. In the end it was our alienation that stood between us and freedom from the human condition…unevasive or innocent thought was required to reveal these answers.’ I am not clever and able to discover something new, as Einstein was able to do. The mechanistic paradigm requires exceptional cleverness, while the holistic paradigm requires exceptional soundness. In the unevasive, holistic paradigm cleverness is, to an extent, a handicap. Prophets are simply naive and thus able to see, say and think things others have long ago in their lives learnt to evade.
Although Sir James uses the word ‘discovery’ in a slightly different way to the way I used it when I said above that ‘these are not discoveries, but revelations’, he made the same point in his speech (see his 12th paragraph above) when he said, ‘For truth is there to be revealed, as all scientists know; and the seeing of the truth is a discovery, not an invention.’ Note also that my use of the word ‘revelation’ does not refer to religious inspiration from an external, divine being, but to instinctive knowledge within all humans.
The next essay, Sir James Darling's Vision for Education, shows that Sir James’ mission in education was specifically to prepare humans for the task of solving the human condition. In that essay, a speech Sir James gave on Anzac Day in 1961 at Geelong Grammar School is referred to in which he summarised his great undertaking in terms of people being dedicated to ‘the one paramount purpose of saving the world’.
PLEASE NOTE, the essay, titled Sir James Darling’s Vision For Education follows this essay. Click here to read the Sir James Darling’s Vision For Education.