The Henson Journals
Thu 9 August 1917
Volume 21, Page 133
[133]
Thursday, August 9th, 1917.
1102nd day
I finished "Higher Education and the War" by John Burnet, Dean of the Faculty of Arts in St Andrew's. It was strongly recommended to me both by Lord Haldane and by Hadow, and I think with good reason, for it is an unusually informing & thought–provoking book. Mainly it consists of a careful examination of the German system of education, and a severe condemnation of it. This leads up to a comparison with the Scottish system, and some valuable suggestions for improvement. His obiter dicta are illuminating. Jowett would hardly have endorsed his verdict on the value of translations. He holds that "there is not and never will be any possibility of contact with the spirit of antiquity except through the language", and adds, "people who talk about learning it through translations only show that they do not know what it is". It would be an ill thing if translations were equally useless in the case of the Scriptures, and yet, if the argument be sound, it is hard to see why they should not be.
I worked at the Warden's Life until the post came bringing a letter from Ernest. Then I wrote to him, & to the flying–boy Norman Henderson.
The weather has been bad today. All night it rained, and continued raining all day. However we would not be wholly confined, but donned our mackintoshes & walked on to the moors after lunch. The water–courses are everywhere in a plethoric bubblement, and the Derwent has grown into a considerable stream. We put up a brace of black–cock, and several companies of grouse & returned to the hotel very wet & well content.
I wrote to Carissima, and then started to read Lady Markby's monograph on her husband, which has been published by the Clarendon Press in a form which suggests itself as suitable for my account of the Warden. One great defect as a biographer is becoming daily more apparent to me. I instinctively criticize where I ought merely to describe, or relate, or record. But the indiscriminating & invariable laudation into which biographers commonly drift offends my sense of truth and generally provokes a disgust in my mind.