CIVILISATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 306, 22 September 1936, Page 11

CIVILISATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

4 Dr. I. L. G. Sutherland’s Lecture THE EVOLUTION OF MAN Commencing a short course of four lectures for the "Workers’ Educational Association, on “Civilisation and its Discontents,” Dr. I.- L. G. Sutherland said that the science of anthropology and that of psychology represented an exciting and valuable growing point of human knowledge in their relationship to the evolution of man, and that both these sciences were in a very active condition at the present day. There now existed a vast body of new knowledge concerning man, his past and his nature, which enabled us to understand him and his story on this planet in a way that had never been understood before. If it was desired to think realistically on the problems that faced civilised man to-day, they must be considered in the light of this scientific knowledge, and the apparent failure of much of modem civilisation, as well as the possibility of its extinction at its own hands, must be faced. Modern science gave a new time scale in regard to man- to which it was very difficult to adjust our minds. We were in a position to-day to understand our own species and to get humanity in perspective in a way that was unique, for we had a much greater knowledge of history than any other epoch possessed. It was an undoubted fact that inborn human nature, the inherited structure of the human mind and body, changed very slowly. About 20,000 years ago a race of hunters lived around the shores of the Mediterranean. In caves in what was now France and Spain they painted, drew and carved animals so realistically that no subsequent artists have bettered their work. These Cro-Magnon people of the Reindeer Age were at least the bom equals of any modern race. Their skeletons and brain cases showed it, and their art proved it. “Man, then, is still what he was 20,000 years ago; the same degree of intelligence, the same fundamental instincts and emotions,” said Dr. Sutherland. But socially, man was vastly different. Those people were in the hunting age; we were in the machine age. What had put us in the machine age, however, was not an improvement in our inborn capacities, but a vast increase in our knowledge, leading to a marvellous control over natural forces. Civilisation did not mean a change in our biological inheritance, but a great enrichment of our social inheritance. Civilisation represented the capitalised gains of hundreds of generations of men. Man was still born a savage, but was born into a civilised world. , The I*ace of Change. The rate of change in man’s life had varied greatly in different ages and' places, and in general the rate of social change had been vastly accelerated in the last century and a half. It had, in fact, taken on an altogether new tempo. It took tens of thousands of years for man to pass from the old stone age to the new stone age, and, though change took place more rapidly when man invented agriculture and civilisation began, yet in no preceding age had the pace of change been in any way comparable with what it was today, We had progressed from the steam engine of James Watt to Mr. Televox —the mechanical man who pulled levers in an American power-house in response to telephone messages—at a terrific pace. The machine age had come upon the world with remarkable rapidity. Dr. Sutherland referred to scientific developments during the postwar period and to the radical changes which had been experienced in everyday life by the introduction of wireless and the cinema, aeroplanes and the internal combustion engine. Scientific invention had brought change and problems of readjustment into almost every aspect of human life, and it was clear that we must look forward to further great changes, not only in the material environment of our lives, but also in fundamental ideas and institutions such as property, marriage and the family, and education. Man must now consciously accept the idea of change and seek to bring about what might be termed ordered change. The lecturer traced the gradual development of primitive man up to the invention of agriculture, which was the beginning of civilisation and soon led on to other inventions. Man had previously been a food gatherer with no control over his food supply, but once he learnt to grow crops and harvest them and to domesticate animals, culture was able to progress with great rapidity. There were races of food gatherers still left, isolated in different parts of the earth, and representing

primitive man at the present day. These were the true primitives and they were all of our species, but they had lagged behind and were more in touch with the ancient civilisations. Most native peoples were not primitive in the true sense, but were more properly described as savages, and they were much more advanced in culture than the true primitives. Dr. Sutherland dealt briefly with the principal races that were still in the food-gather-ing stage of human development, such' as the Australian aboriginals, the Eskimos, the Veddas of Ceylon, and the Negroids of Africa and of the Philippines. He explained their origin and said that a more sympathetic interest in their history was today than ever before. ", Referring to the native races, rot primitives, Dr. Sutherland said that these included the Polynesians and the majority of the tribes of Africa and of the two Americas, and they showed great divergences of culture as a result of the ceaseless operation, since the beginnings of civilisation, of trade, colonisation and conquest. Race, climate and geographical conditions had all played their part in determining the form in which the cultural elements so derived had blended and changed and recombined. The races of mankind could be classified as the white or Caucasian, the yellow or Mongol, and rhe black or negro, and the peoples of the earth to-day represented many blendings of -these fundamental types. The Impact of modern civilisation upon aboriginal culture invariably resulted in tragedy from the point pf'view of the native peoples concerned, for it meant the decay of their tribal customs, disintegration of their social system, and gradual chaos and decay. This was rendered worse by the use of modern methods of scientific warfare. The study of anthropolgy had enabled the consideration of the situation of native peoples in their contact with modern civilisation more sympathetically, said the lecturer. He referred to a number of important books which had recently been published on the subject, and on the question of the alleged purity of modern civilised races.

A keen discussion followed the lecture. To-morrow evening Dr. Sutherland will speak on “The Cost of Becoming Civilised.”