"HERE WE ARE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 297, 15 December 1936, Page 14

"HERE WE ARE."

MAN IN THE UNIVERSE

RIDDLE OF EXISTENCE.' SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. (By E. J. HOWARD, M.P.) Man is a wonderful animal, but he cannot see the back of his neck. In what we call the struggle for existence, which simply means keeping the viscera in touch with the larder, he has made many changes in his internal combustion engine and in his machinery generally.

Whether he dropped from the trees or climbed down we do not know. In what country he first came to earth is also a mvsterv.

If we take all the land lapped by the Indian Ocean he is black. In ail the country lapped by the Pacific Ocean he is yellow, red or brown. By the North Sea he is white. But white seems to be a neutral colour or a loss of pigment. Originally the inhabitants of India were black. Now they shade off from black, red, yellow and coppercoloured.

Draw a line down from north to south and separate the Melanesian from the Polynesian islands, and the Melanesians seem to be a distinct race from the Polynesians. The first is black and the second is copper-coloured.

In South Africa we have remnants of a dying race called Bushmen. They arc different from the people we call Kaffirs. In the centre of Africa we have the Pigmies. They are fully developed, except for their legs, which are short as compared with, say, the Kaffir or even the European. These Pigmies have upset all our professors so far, but they are getting closer to the "reason why."

The Australian black again will not permit us to generalise. We don't know why he is so black and yet in other ways so different from his black brothers "of Africa. The African negroes appear to be closely related to the Melanesian natives. But why did they skip over Australia and land in the Pacific?

We don't know when, where or how we came down from the trees. We do not know our next of kin—looking backwards—but our learned men have brought four of the family of apes so close to our heels that we can almost see their shadows. "foor Relations." As McCabe says, their- anatomy, embryology, histology and even logy bring them into our family group even if we look upon th°iti as "our poor, relations."

As man then dropped or climbed from the trees, he brought with him many monkey tricks. He had to depend on his wits to' live. He had to beat the lion in South Africa, the tiger in Asia, tlie leopard north and south, and many other fearsome animals. He had to

train and tame animals for milk, meat and hides. He had to group for protection from his fellow humans. All civilised people have come from sava?e people. And so we must interest ourselves in the savages to know how far we have advanced, and to find out what we really mean by advancement. Bickerton says, "In the age of reptiles there was one named Tyrannosaurus Hex." (Let's call him King Billy for short.) He was nearly 50ft long, 20ft high, heavier than an elephant, and with teeth 18in long. He could run like a deer and jump a decent stream. Bui he had vcrv few brains.

Now ilr. Man, brains count, and vet. and yet, and yet ... In Spain they arc tearing one another to pieces. lii days gone by these gentle people burnt and racked and stretched their fellow men to convince them that the sun moved around the earth. To-day they are shelling and gassing one another to convince as many as are left that slaverv is better than freedom. But, fellow Christians, don't jump. Three thousand years ago there were no English or Welsh or Cousin Jacks. There were two or three savage tribes around about Denmark. They were Angles, Raxons and Jutes. These came ove" and settled in what we now call Great Britain. Bend all you can about them, because they were your grandfathers. They were the pioneers, and we should be' proud of them because they had taking ways, and now we have this great Empire of whites, blacks, browns and yellows, not forgetting the reds of Canada. Struggle For Existence. In the struggle for existence the fittest survive. Think of the- millions and millions who were never born. Every young human at birth brings with it the possibilities of millions of young. But there, there, we have agreed to keep this a kind of secret among ourselves and blame it on the stork. To conform to the proprieties, then, let us say we entered the world on a million-to-one chance. And here we are.

In spite of war, famine and earthquake, here we are. Even if we are on sustenance or the No. 5 scheme, we are lucky to be here. There are about four thousand earthquakes annually, and we have escaped. There is a war going on somewhere annually, and we have eseaped. But each generation to survive must fight in some form or other. Every living animal has some kind of an insect to' trouble him, such as flies that cause sleeping sickness, malaria, yellow fever and a host of other troubles.

In 1800 the population of Britain wa; about ten millions, now it is forty-five millions, in spite of wars, poverty and epidemics. Each year has brought its troubles. We always fear the worst, although it seldom happens.