SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1928. THE EXPLORED WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 255, 27 October 1928, Page 8

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1928. THE EXPLORED WORLD.

Long ago it was said of the Renaissance that it was the discovery of Nature and of man, and it may be said to-day that the invesr ligation of the vast new worlds then opened up has never ceased. In some directions it is being pursued with greater zest than pver before. Jn one direction, however, effort has been slackened by force of circumstance. The world has been explored. When we look back to-day, on the eve of the bi-centenarv pf Cook's hirth, to those days when men couM s,ay with liberal truth that they were "the first who ever burst" into some "silent sea," we are struck by the fact that with thp exception pf the territpry at the Poles, and a few relatively sip?)} areas elsewhere, the whole world has bpen mapped, and the occupation of explorers such as Cook is gone. There are no surprises left for an explprer to find. The great changes that have come over the world may both help and hinder us in trying to imagine what Cook's task was like. As the traveller looks pijfc pn the ocean from a lounge chair on the deck of a liner he may be suddenly thfijled and humbled by the thought of Cook's voyages in small sailing ships through unknown ppd perilous se.as. On the other hand, his imagination way have been so dplled by comfort thpt he dops not give Cook a thought. That is why §|&ch anniversaries should be kept. They are invitation to understand and praise famous men. In tlie wider sense, however, exploration is not dead. In every age the spirit of enterprise apd daring, pf the search for the unknown, is horn anew. To-day we see it in the determination of mankind to .explore every square mile of the world's surface, to climb to the very ppak qf Eyerest, thpugh nothing njateria) is to b© gained by .conquering that last bit of snow and ic,e. Some of the energy used to be directed to geographical exploration is now spent in flying across continents and oeeanß. Also, a man may be an explorer without Jeavipg study pr his laboratory his voyaging, like Newton's, is "pn strange of thought alone." And this stayratrhome investigator way expose himself to bodily risks as grave almost as those that beset the geographical explprers of old.

The world has been charted, but there lie ahead tasks that may tax the brains and .character of jqapkind even more than did the old indifference and hpstUity of Nature. We have it pn the authority of a poet —apd really it does not require genius to see it—-that man may conquer Nature and then drop into himself and be a fool. Or, as a greater poet put it, knowledge comes but wisdom lingers. Man has to conquer disease and poverty, his own raging appetites and insensate prejudices. He must use science, but woe tp him if he a|lo|v science to become bis roaster. His hardest tqsk of aU may be to control the machipes he has made. In short, he has explored and cppquergd the world, but not himself, and in the present and coroipg struggle he will need just suph skill, determination and courage as tpade Cook so great a figure in the history of exploration.