SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 95, 16 January 1943, Page 4

SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Legislation Not A Panacea HUMAN PERSONALITY Dominion Special Service. DUNEDIN, January 15. No doubt, after the ■ war ended, radical changes, adjustments and farreaching actions would be undertaken to promote material progress with contributions to social evolution, stated Dr.’ J. A. Hanau, M.L.C., Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, when addressing members of the senate today. The solution of the stupendous problems of the future, lie said, would depend mainly upon the creative capacity and the training of young men and young women for citizenship and life, with full opportunity for the enlargement and enrichment of human personality. “This personality to flower requires conditions of personal freedom so essential for tlie individual to grow to full spiritual stature,” he said. “Such conditions do not obtain where coercive discipline, bureaucratic regimentation aud standardization are enforced in the interest of a dictatorship which is a form of armed dominating government which glorifies the State and material ideals. Its purpose is not to set men free, 'but to reduce them to slavery. Moral and spiritual freedom must be maintained if liberty shall endure and Christian civilization persist. Character determines action. The whole structure of life is built upon it. In the realm of conduct, what we call wisdom is a compound of that which is intellectual and iffioral, and when expressed with truth into experience finds roads to knowledge. Through the concrete the mind can naturally upon this firm basis grapple with the abstract.

“The motto of the University ‘Sapere Aude’ (Dare to 'be Wise) is one of tlie finest mottoes for any university. The advice conveyed here is of such inestimable value that all students and graduates would do well to engross it upon the tablets of their mind. It cannot be too strongly impressed, not only upon university teachers and their students, but upon public opinion. Wisdom is needed in our democracy, in our educational system, and in social life, in order that the superstructures may have sound and enduring foundations, not only of material, but of ethical and spiritual strength. ’Age,’ said an eminent judge, ‘does not dry up the fountains of wisdom. The old have wisdom the young (know not of.’ Experience Counts.

“Speaking of the benefits of experience, a great American is reported to have declared ‘I have but one lamp by which any feet are guided and that is the lamp of ‘experience. I know of no way of judging the future, but by the past.’ These words should be taken to heart by our people, because experience, when intelligently interpreted, tells us what will make for spiritual an'd intellectual, moral and material, personal and social welfare, and what will not. , , , . “In this critical age, when the future of this and other countries with their problems is in the hauds of young men and young women, they should have a knowledge of ancient and modern history, with its record of experience and its services of wisdom. This knowledge and a study of philosophy are required in order that they may be guided to choose wisely those doctrinesnnd to shape those measures which will solve those pioblems of great magnitude and complexity now clamantly coming to the front and calling for effective settlement. . . "Bearing in mind the wide gaps between the material and the intellectual, the ethical and the spiritual, the question may be asked what in addition to radical economic measures is required for R new world social order regarded from the standpoint of ethical and spiritual needs. For that object there is required a revival of tlie studies of Greek humanism, with the cardinal features of its great moral system, intertwined with the application by individuals and society of these virtues and the spiritual impulses of Christianity. This revival is essential, ns legislation is not the panacea for all the ills. The State may do something in curing evils, but not everything in the nature of Sufficiency, the test of life. To attain what is highest and best in mental, ethical and spiritual values, the spiritual element in education is a vital thing both for society and for the individual, and especially so in an age of great mechanized anil scientific industrialization, with materialism frequently preponderant at the cost of spiritual, the ethical and intellectnal.”