SOCIAL AND NATIONAL REFORM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 4368, 12 October 1916, Page 2

SOCIAL AND NATIONAL REFORM.

MR. THOMPSON’S LECTURES. At the Scottish Hall last night Mr J. Ross Thompson, of Auckland, lectured to an interested audience on “Reincarnation applied to Social and National Life.” Reincarnation, the lecturer stated, was tho method of evolution applied to the life side ot man, and is a universal principle, applied not onlv to individuals but t-o nations and planetary systems alike. "With each embodiment in a material form the life within, as well as the form which enfolds it. evolves a stage higher, and no body is ever struck awav by death save it is in the interests' of tho Divine life within. As the individual human unit contributes to the good or ill of the communal or national life, so do the respective nations contribute to the racial life of the globe as a whole. The nation which neglects or fails to provide suitable social and moral conditions for the higher type of souls to incarnate within its borders, is a nation which is practically committing national suicide and is*inevitably doomed.. The quality and purity oc our social and national life will therefore largely determine the class of egos which will seek incarnation in our midst, and so we must see to it that our fair and happy land, New Zealand, nobly plays her part in providing the very best conditions for inducing great and noble souls to incarnate among iis. Nations, like individuals, it must be understood, reap what they sow; the slum dwellers iu the oluer lands or Europe are really the reincarnated savages, slain by the respective nations in their wars of pillage, in earliei times. In brief: Our life’s the sum of vice indulged or overcome. One of the greatest menaces to true and permanent national stability and heal thy oTowth, is the over-zealous reformer, who sees only the apparent and surface abuse —all the obvious defects of our social fabric, without at the same time seeing the causes winch ever inhere in the lives or the people themselvs. i\ lterations in the exteimil conditions of the people do not necessarily alter their internal condition If however a man’s inner condition is radically changed Ins environment speedily Lulls into line. J 'l an thinks in. secret, and it comes to pass, environment is but his looking glassIn his enthusiasm the impetuous reformer will destroy ruthlessly any existing institution without even stopping to think whether the removal of un effect over removed the cause. Revolutions, be they domestic, social ornatiomil, are never profitable investments, for revolution is merely only those institutions which time itself has played its part in building up That which violence wins for us to-day another act of violence may wrest ’from us to-morrow. Those stages of growth are alone durable which have rooted themselves m the character and minds of the people—in the conscience of mankind, before receiving the final sanction of legislators. The only means of permanently realising what is good, socially an nationally, is to teach it by education and propagate it by example. Every action is horn pi thought; change the current of national thought into lot y idealism and you have laid tiie fouudations of permanent progress.