HUMAN PROGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 14, 16 July 1937, Page 4

HUMAN PROGRESS

DEMOCRACY'S PROBLEM

POOLING ITS HERITAGE

, The Lower Hult W.E.A. Psychology Class met at the Borough Council Chambers on Wednesday, when Dr. A. G. Butchers delivered a lecture on "The Social Inheritance and the Education of the Individual."

The cerebral superiority of man, said the lecturer, had raised him above the lower animals. But where these J powers were little used the difference j between human, beings and intelligentl well-trained animals was comparatively small; Man's greatest single achievement, the foundation of all subsequent ones, was the development of spoken and then written language. By means of this the human social inheritance had been built up and passed.on.from generation to generation. The human individual died, but his work survived, incorporated within the living memory of the race, as the records of personal experience were upon individual minds. The world, was rapidly becoming a single unit, pooling its local heritages of custom, religion, philosophy, history, literature, science, art, and so on. East and West, North and South, were mingling more freely comparing notes and learning from one another. Almost within living memory Japan had assimilated the social and scientific inheritance of the West. Turkey was doing the same thing. The new National Government of China, composed of young Chinese educated for the most part in Western-.-.and Japanese universities, was rapidly, bringing the Chinese nation into line."- . ' ; " But even amongst so-called civilised nations much remained to be done. The social inheritance was as yet but little assimilated by the masses,' who were led in many countries as blindly to the polling booths as they were to labour and to war. There were, however, abundant signs of a great awakening fraught with evolutionary changes of far-reaching importance to the race. Time and distance had been annihilated, it was true, and power had been increased beyond reckoning; but the complete enjoyment of those developments was as yet mainly the privilege of the, wealthy. ■ ' ; : i ' . The problem of democracy was to bring the rustic and the ■factory-hand into as full a participation as possible in' the social inheritance. To throw open the doors of the kingdom to every human being alike! was the great meal that lies before mankind. That it can and will be done no student of history land of the evolutionary progress of humanity could doubt for a moment. Instead of life being an aimless fatalistic journey ; from the cradle to the grave it should.be an ordered development of conscious' power, entering into the magnificent heritage of the race, and meeting the problems of existence •with an inspiring faith :in the evolutionary march of mankind. _. An interesting discussion followed, .the lecture. The subject of Dr..But-; chers's final lecture will be "The Intelli-; gent Use of Habit." . The following committee was elected to arrange for the continuance of ; the class for the future:—Mr. J. G. Graham (chairman), Miss E. Holmes (hon. secretary and treasurer), Messrs. H. a. Ward and W. A. F. Hall, Mrs. A., K. Jones, and Miss E. M. Judd. It was decided to invite Mr. L. F. dc Berry to deliver at Lower Hutt a course of lectures on "Man and His Leisure," and Dr. John'Nicol.a course on "Greek^ Art and Architecture." J ■ j