Abstract
IT was a happy inspiration which caused the Master of Balliol to base his Memorial Lecture at Girton College, Cambridge, upon the verses in which Miss Wordsworth referred to the possible antithesis between goodness and cleverness, when “the good are so harsh to the clever”, and “the clever so rude to the good”. He set out to show that nothing will make sense of the distinction, except to acknowledge that goodness is in its own way as rational as cleverness. “Let us begin with the Greeks,” said he to his hearers, and then, as became his learning and his office, he took them through a fascinating journey from the Greeks on to the Renaissance, and thence to Rousseau, Kant and Bentham. Naturally, those of his hearers who had studied philosophy to some purpose must have got most out of this part of his discourse; but none of them could have missed the heart of his theme, which was that “the really good man may not be learned or intellectual, but though he need not be clever he is not stupid. He has the imaginative power of putting himself in other people's places, and of going right past differences of rank and wealth and ability and all else, and getting to the essential human being”. One remark will be of special interest to readers of this journal, devoted to science in its broadest interpretation. “Psychological classifications, case papers, and all the elaboration of card indices does help one to deal more effectively with people, but the most elaborate and scientific analysis misses out the authentic individual, just exactly what goodness should have the power of apprehending. If we only deal with people as specimens of this or that, sorted out in the most elaborate of ways . . . can we retain that reverence for the human personality as we meet it in ordinary men and women which is essential to any true service. . . . Good and noble work has been done in that way, but not the best.”It must have been a salutary experience for members of the particular audience addressed to be so effectively reminded that good men and women are sometimes also exceedingly wise, and that clever men and women can sometimes also be exceedingly unwise.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Good and the Clever. Nature 156, 744 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156744a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156744a0