PURPOSE IN LIFE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 22 January 1927, Page 11

PURPOSE IN LIFE

DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER

Ifcto pROEESGOR Ernest Wood, a well--I;riowa educationist of India, who 13 on a visit to Dunedin, is travelling; round Hie world, having visited many of the European and Asiatic countries and America. In the course of a lecture. Professor Wood said that where necessity ended character began. Yet man was not merely obeying a. law of material existence. There was something heroic in human life, and in that heroic, part of; life was found the true character of man. Many could rise to something great when compelled to do so, but men who had stood ou in history were those who had not been driven by necessity. but had felt an inward necessity for progress. Man always wanted to expand his powers—for example, the men who developed the art of /lying. The early experimenters were all men of ability and intelligence, who could have made much in ordinary paths, yet they set aside material gains for the sake of their ideal. They had nearly all met with death, but they faced more than death even, that was the ridicule of their fellow-men, who said ’ that it would always be impossible for men to fly with machines heavier than air. The professor then told the story of a great fndian prince, who. though having all that man could desire of material happiness, yet left all his palaces and pleasures to try to find out the cause of human suffering and to relieve these troubles. The professor continued by quoting Emerson and Sir Alfred Russell Wallace. who had said it was clear that

the passion for .justice, delight in beauty, and the thrill of exultation on hearing of some great act of heroic self-sacrifice were indications of the presence in a. man of a principle which could not have been developed by the material struggle for existence. The law of Nature was the law of decay. Build a house, and it would soon decay and need repairs, which meant that life was put into it. The body itself decayed with use. Professor Huxley alluded to this when he said, “It. may seem to you that while you are watching me lecturing you are seeing an activity of life, but what you are seeing is really a process of death. For with every word I utter I am wearing down the ceils of my body. But do not be alarmed. T shall go home and eat and so stretch mv protoplasm back to its original size." ft was consciousness within the body that was building up this body, said the professor. Everyone wanted'-more and more life. The force in man was Jilce the power in a little seed which took matter from the soil and the air and built them into the predetermined form of a certain tree. This force in man was the instinct for self-expan-sion. All the material efforts of man had decayed, continued the professor, as history proved. One had only to think of the ancient civilisations that had decayed. If, looked ns if human effort was doomed to decay. But there was no loss, for the result was in man himself. Ho was building himself. Thus development of character was the purpose in life.