MORAL EVOLUTION.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 861, 6 July 1910, Page 4

MORAL EVOLUTION.

LECTURE BY MR. M'CABE. ;';. Mr, ;Joseph M'Cabe, in his. lecture at the Town Hall last evening, dealt with "The Evolution of Moral Law." A large number of excellent lantern slides, many of which illustrated characteristics and. manners of savage and other peoples in different parts of the world, were employed by the lecturer to make his points clear. In the course of his lecture he stated that the position accorded to woman in society was a good index of the stage of civilisation and morality. reached by any people. Papuans were seen, in one of his pictures, arranging for the purchase of a wife. In another the. King of Dahomey's regiment of female soldiers seemed to.show the hollowness of the argument that women should not vote because they could not fight. It was an instance of the law that power grew or declined with use. The squaws of some Red Indian tribes were so generally sterner and more cruel than their men, that when a warrior took a prisoner he usually, handed him over to his wife to torture. In the Pacific Islands there were, before the Europeans came, some of the healthiest and happiest peoples in the world, but Europeans had tried to impose their own moral and other, ideas upon, them, with the result of unhappiness and racial decline. Burmali, under the noble gospel of Buddhism, was the paradise of women. It was a great hindrance to progress when a moral code was written down and declared to be of absolute devine origin. This process was the cause of some of the worst and most cruel practices of ■the East. The teaching of Buddhism —"Thou shaft love thy neighbour as a mother loves her. child" —had made Burma!) a happy country. Tibet, on the other hand, was a miserable and backward .country, though its religion was originally the same as that of Bnrmah. The explanation of the contrast was priestly domination in Tibet. China was referred to as showing that morality'was not dependent upon religious belief. The reply of Confucius to one who asked what to believe about spirits was: "Respect all spirits if there-an) any, and have nothing to do with them," The lecturer had a large audience, which listened with keen attention. Mr. Joseph M'Caolc lectures this afternoon at 3.30. in the Unitarian Church, I.ngestre Street, on the evolution of the social position of woman.