MAD HATTER PAGE 27 °

 

 

predictability. The only certainties would appear to be death and conservative
governments in Ontario. But can a university with a clear conscience graduate
commerce students who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, of
translators who are fluent in five languages but have nothing to say in any one of
them, or engineers who in their tinker-toy mentality are as happy building gas
chambers as hospitals? Please do not get the impression that I am suggesting this
is actually the case at any particular university, least of all Laurentian, I am
just pointing out a constant danger.

Whatever their benefits, the Humanities are not without their disadvantages
and difficulties. One soon discovers that statements about truth, beauty, and good-
ness do not allow themselves to be reduced to simple formulae verifiable by the
experimental method. The debate between the Platonists and the Aristotelians is
not over after two thousand years, theologians are notoriously contentious, and what
makes or even what is a great play is still open to debate. Impatient souls try to
overcome this problem by reducing hard differences to mush and saying everyone be-
lieves the same thing - which is unmitigated nonsense, or else by embracing a cheap
tolerance that say it does not matter what you believe so long as you are sincere,

a position which throws the way open to a Hitler or a Stalin who, whatever else one
may say about them, were undoubtedly sincere in their beliefs.

It is a necessary part of studying the humanities, then, that one has to come
to terms with the fact that all human approaches to truth, beauty and goodness are
incomplete and one must maintain the tensions between an awareness of this incomplete-
ness and the ability to act in accordance with that part of truth one has discovered.
The educated person, then, has learned to appreciate the views of those who differ
and is therefore ready unlike the adherent of blind ideology, to consider rationally
the criticism of those who differ. Naturally this is an ideal which is seldom realized
completely, but it would be a tragedy if this ideal were to disappear. While univer-
sity is not the only place where education can take place, certainly the Humanities
taught and studied by those who know what they are doing, are one way of keeping this
hope alive. In this sense then, while in the short term the Humanities may not be
of immediate benefit, as even members of the Ontario Legislature can see, in the
long term the Humanities may be the most important study for keeping democracy - and
civilization — alive.

c"est, a partir de cette observation que je voudrais dire quelques mots au sujet
de la langue francaise au Canada. Or je sais que parmi les gens bien pensants, il
n'est pas permis qu'un anglophone s'exprime d'une facon eritique ace ,Sudet: Mal-
heureusement j'ai vecu une partie de ma vie en France et J "ai note qu'on y critiquait
¢
pas mal de gens qui parlaient néamoins francais; alors c'est une mauvaise habitude
que j'ai appris la-bas a laquelle je n'ai aucune envie de renoncer.

A l'heure actuelle au Canada 1' jon cherche a enseigner le francais chaque governe—
ment a sa maniere; le governement federal par des souventions, le —— de
Quebec par des amendes. Ce qui est curieux c'est que ni 1'un ni 1' aetne ne parait
croire que la langue frangaise soit valuable en elle-meme. Mais il s"agit ici non
pas d'une petite langue regionale, il s'agit d'une grand langue de la civilization