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The best of
Blackham
A man who claimed not
to be a philosopher, but whose words of
wisdom will inspire humanists for years to
come has died. Aiming to ensure that the
thoughts of H J Blackham live on has been
longtime humanist, campaigner and writer
Barbara Smoker, who put together a
collection – the “Best” – of Blackham’s
thoughts.
Andy
Armitage reviews her book of Blackham
gems.
Blackham’s Best:
Excerpts from H.
J. Blackham is something of a
small dictionary of quotations – but
quotations all from the same mind:
H. J. Blackham, who died at the
age of 105 on 27 January.
This book is a gem of a
potpourri, which Barbara Smoker, the
humanist campaigner and writer, originally
compiled twenty years ago for Blackham’s
85th birthday. Smoker published this
slightly expanded edition in 2003 to
celebrate his one hundredth, and it’s well
worth revisiting.
Blackham was not a
philosopher in the professional sense – but
that does not seem to detract from the
philosophy in his writing, if this
compilation is anything to go by.
“Harold Blackham claims
to be epicurean in his personal philosophy –
though in practice he often seems, to those
who know him, to be more of a stoic,” she
writes in the introduction to this 52-page
booklet.
Smoker reminds us that he
was known in humanist circles “chiefly as
the progenitor of modern humanism in
Britain, as an activist in progressive
causes, and as a compassionate counsellor”.
She writes of his
“compulsion not only to probe ideas and
think things out, but unremittingly to write
them out”, but this “can have little to do
with reward or recognition”, she adds.
He had a thirst for
Pope’s Pierian
spring, and to drink deep thereof (no
little learning for Harold Blackham, it
would seem), and she writes of his “desire
to meet the minds of great historical
thinkers and pay them homage”.
He wrote widely, and
Smoker – who looks upon him as her mentor –
draws on all sources here, bringing
quotations under various headings, including
life, knowledge, society, religion,
humanism, literature, the future, values and
morality. Consider this one on pleasure from
“Values” (taken from his unpublished A
Thinker’s Dictionary):
Is pleasure innocent?
Literally, if it harms no one, including
oneself: a good rule, though not
fail-safe. How much pleasure to go in
the cocktail? No question to answer, but
notice that it comes in two bottles
labelled Elixir and Poison.
And, under “Humanism”, he
wrote (of reason):
The great prize of
reason is reciprocity between human
vitality and reflection, by means of
which the intellectual animal becomes a
human being. When we practise reason and
make it our test and guide in the
attempt to interpret and to complete our
experience, we set out to be
distinctively and consummately human.
The life of reason in this sense is the
highest aspiration of the humanist.
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Barbara Smoker |
You can
read our
obituary of Blackham elsewhere in this
issue of G&LH, but I’d like to end
this review with Smoker’s own words of
remembrance for him:
On
breaking free from Catholicism, sixty
years ago, I used to cross London to
replace Sunday Mass by a lecture at the
Ethical Church, Bayswater, whenever the
New Statesman listings named H. J.
Blackham as the lecturer. He had a quiet
sense of humour and occasionally a witty
turn of phrase. I thought he looked very
much like John Stuart Mill, and he was a
charismatic speaker, though not an easy
one. His lectures largely comprised my
further education – not only in
humanistic philosophy, but also in the
English language, for there were always
several words to look up in the
dictionary when I got home. Later, when
the Ethical Union was preparing to host
the 1957 IHEU Conference in Conway Hall,
I volunteered to do some of the
secretarial work at Prince of Wales
Terrace, for the “three Bs” – Blackham,
Burnett and Burall – and I have remained
active in the movement ever since.
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