Hutchins at the Bridge

"Victory cannot save civilization. It can merely prevent its destruction by one spectacular method. Since civilization was well on its way to destruction before the war began, success in war will not automatically preserve it."

So says President Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago in a new little book, Education for Freedom (Louisiana State University Press; $1.50)'. He considers that prevailing U.S. ideals--above all, as reflected in U.S. education--must take a good part of the blame for the disintegration of civilization.

The Golden Calf. "At the root of the present troubles of the world we must find a pervasive materialism, a devastating desire for material goods. . . . We know now that mechanical and technical progress is not identical with civilization. We must conclude, in fact, that our faith that technology will take the place of justice has been naive.

"We look upon our neighbor either as a customer or a competitor or an instrument of production. The eminent dignity of human beings forbids [this]. . . . Man is a moral, rational and spiritual being. He needs material goods*. . . but he does not need them without limit. . . . Every act of every man is a moral act, to be tested by moral, and not by economic, criteria."

Justice, Truth, God. "The . . . reformation for which the world waits depends, then, upon true and deeply held convictions about the nature of man, the ends of life, the purposes of the state and the order of goods. . . . This means that we must reconstruct education, directing it to virtue and intelligence."

Instead, says Hutchins, "the tendency is more and more to drive out of the course of study everything which is not immediately concerned with making a living. . . . To discuss with [the student] the nature of justice, or the theory of the state, or the problem of truth, or the existence of God, does not seem to have a very direct bearing on his economic future."

Will Democracy Survive? "We must believe that man can discover truth, .goodness and right by the exercise of his reason" in the tradition of Aristotle, the medieval philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas and the foremost living lay Thomist, Jacques Maritain (TIME, Oct. 28, 1940).

"We are losing our moral principles.

But the vestiges of them remain to bother us and to interfere with a thoroughgoing commitment to amoral principles. Hence we are like confused, divided, ineffective Hitlers. In a contest between Hitler and people who are wondering why they shouldn't be Hitlers, the finished product is bound to win.

"To formulate, to clarify, to vitalize the ideals which should animate mankind--this is the incredibly heavy burden which rests, even in total war, upon the universities. If they cannot carry it, nobody else will; for nobody else can. If it cannot be carried, civilization cannot be saved. The task is stupendous."

* Says Hutchins: "Like all university presidents, I have a high opinion of money. . . ."

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