page 289 note 1 As an Australian who is now in South Africa, I feel that a few comments are in order, even at the risk of being parochial or intrusive. I do not feel that Professor Anderson's failure in this regard is primarily due to his lateness in understanding the importance of classicism. Even more important, I do not think that it is due to the character of his adopted country, in spite of the stereotype that is apparently being revived in recent decades. The Australians are really a quiet and orderly people, with a certain scepticism and a keen sense of the ridiculous that is a good antidote to immoderation, and in spite of great difficulties have shown sufficient sense of conservatism for Anderson's type of classicism to make a powerful appeal. But this is not enough, least of all at the present day. The trouble is that these–in general–worthy characteristics of Australians seem to be capable of functioning only negatively, that is, in making any course of action, or even non-action, seem just a little ridiculous. Under these circumstances, Andersonianism is a most dangerous philosophy, as its natural effect would be (and has been) to exaggerate this tendency even to the extent of rendering a real classicising movement impossible, by dissolving both religious faith and the tradition of purposive activity. This is confirmed by the almost complete nullity of present-day Australia socially and politically, indeed, in every way beyond the sense which Metternich is said to have attributed to Italy, a geographical (not to say geological or minerological?) expression; the country counted for much more in the days when, by any formal criteria, it counted for much less. My friends and acquaintances, for what they are worth, feel that this decline is closely liked with the decline in religion, and the contrast with South Africa, whatever one thinks of what is actually done there, abundantly confirms this judgment. These two countries, as they are today, are excellent commentaries on the truth that, although the supreme fact of our election, justification, sanctification and effectual calling are reserved to God in Christ himself, Christian faith is, at all lower levels, the stimulus to action par excellence.
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