Brave New World to the Editor: Thank you very much indeed for sending us the December issue

of The
American Scholar, with its exceedingly interesting article by Dr. Tang about "Chinese Universities on the
March." There are few places in the world, truly, where such dramatic history is being written as in
present-day China. American scholars may rightly be proud of the part their Chinese brothers are
playing in the brave, new world being built in free China. it. A. CjARSide, Associated boards for Christian
Colleges in China New York, N. Y. A Poet-Philosopher's Research Problem To the Editor: The Winter
number of The American Scholar is excellent but the "Editorial" and "Life as the Guide of Philosophy"
call for comment. The troubles of the world today are too deep for superficial comment or to be
properly canvassed in a letter to the editor, but certain aspects can be properly touched on in such a
letter. It may be true that what we think about Hitler et al., though fresh today will very soon grow
musty, but if there is philosophic truth in our thoughts, and then they do not become musty. For
instance Plato is not musty. Read, if you wish the details of the rise of today's dictators, the eighth book
of the Republic. Plato was a philosopher and philosophic truths remain truths, whatever the
contemporary trappings of events may be. However, Plato and the philosophers of the ancient world
were half poets as well. In the rise of science in the last hundred years our exploration has been largely
confined to the physical world. We have gone on at an ever swifter pace making new discoveries and
the philosopher has become half scientist. In the enthusiasm of discovery, have we forgotten to consider
control and mastery of our inventions? In his presidential address to the British Association for the
Advancement of Science September 1932, Sir Alfred Ewing spoke as follows: "The Cornucopia of the
engineer has been shaken over all the earth, scattering everywhere an endowment of previously
unpossessed and unimagined capacities and powers. Beyond question many of these gifts are benefits
to man, making life fuller, wider, healthier, richer in comforts and interests and in such happiness as
material things can promote. "But we are acutely aware that the Engineers' gifts have been and may be
grievously abused. In some there is potential tragedy as well as present burden. Man was ethically
unprepared for so great a bounty. In the slow evolution of morals he is still unfit for the tremendous
responsibility it entails. The command of nature has been put into his hands before he knows how to
command himself." For example, the machine on the farm displacing animals has created problems that
call for research, not by pure scientists but by poet philosophers with a leaning to economics, chemistry
and so forth. Our easier transportation, our increased sanitation, our lowered death toll, and hundreds
of other discoveries and results of discoveries call for the metaphysical philosopher, the trained, poetic,
philosophical imagination rather than the man of graphs, plotting results. An army needs a general of
imagination who can foresee the enemy's moves and forestall them. Plotting them on maps and charts
afterwards is useless. They have happened. Our problems call for the philosopher who can foresee the
results of our discoveries and forestall their evils, not for those who can relate and plot them afterward.
This, I believe, is what Dr. Richard Gummere means in saying that "The traditional subjects need to be
handled more vitally and in fuller correlation with the world of action." We do not wish the scholar and
the thinker to retire into the cloisters of serenity and stay there. Retire to think, come forth to do. We
need the fruits of his scholarship, his correlation of history and economics, his knowledge of the past
correlated with today's needs and problems, so vitally put that business man and workman, banker,
lawyer and legislator will be interested to stop, look, listen - and learning, act accordingly