just thinking

gradus :: bare essentials

Professor Joad, id est Professor C. E. M. Joad, was a regular member of the Brains Trust, a programme broadcast by the BBC Home Service in the early part of the 1940s. He is chiefly remembered for quoting Confucius on air during a live broadcast. “What is the use of going to bed early to save candles if the result be twins?”

It’s very strange, but not at all unexpected, that this remark caused an explosion of outrage. (Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells  there in the forefront.) We might be totally immersed in the greatest struggle for survival we had ever experienced, but certain matters must never be expressed in public.

Professor Joad had a phrase he tended to use when faced with a tangled question. “It depends what you mean by .. ..“ and this is something which has lingered in the recesses of my mind ever since. For decades it remained quietly dormant. It came to the surface in my Sydney years with the anthropologists as I began to come to terms with the scientific method and it became part of my teaching technique. My seminars might include thinking about “What is music?” or “What exactly do we mean by scherzo?”

It’s still an essential part of my thought patterns though sometimes when I’m pondering a particular subject it takes the form “What is the one essential constituent of .. ..?” and I go on to pare away the unessentials until I am left with the one factor which stands at the heart of the matter. “What exactly do we mean by ‘religion’?” “What is meant by ‘worship’?” When asked the question “Do you believe in God?”, I have to stop myself replying “It depends what you mean by God”.

This morning I was thinking about the important steps in my life. Places I have been, people I’ve met, and the abiding influences some have left on me. “What was the one essential of Mercers’ School when you were there during the war?” And I think “the maintenance of tradition”.

And then I have another thought. I recall the lessons we had with our headmaster R. W. Jepson, M. A. He took us step by step through his book Clear Thinking. He got us literalising about some of the signs we see in public places. “Dogs must be led in this area.” So, if I have a dog, does this mean I must put him/her on a lead and take him/her into that area in order to be led there? Nonsense like this still comes to the surface now and then. On the entry door to a refreshment room was the notice “Guide Dogs only allowed”. As we went in I explained to the waitress “We’re not guide dogs but we’d still like to come in”. She met me with a blank look of sheer incomprehension. I shouldn’t have done it. I really shouldn’t. But I couldn’t resist.

francis cameron, oxford, 13 april 2012

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