SELFISH AIM IN HUMAN NATURE

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 4 November 1933, Page 14

SELFISH AIM IN HUMAN NATURE

“JT is astonishing in how many ways human nature reveals itself as unchanged and unchanging across the centuries and under circumstances which differ as widely as can be imagined/’ says Professor N. M. Butler, of the Columbia University. “Bet the observer of the world to-day turn back to Thucydides and read his classic description of the dissolution and collapse of all moral standards in time of war and revolution. His analysis of the effects and accompaniments of the Peloponnesian War some 23 centuries ago is literally descriptive of what is going on in the world to-day.

“These are the words of Thucydides: ‘ln peace and prosperity both states and individuals are actuated by higher motives, because they do not fall under the dominion of imperious necessities; but war, which takes away the comfortable provision of daily life, is a hard master and tends to

Unchanging Across the Centuries

assimilate men’s characters to their conditions. . . . The cause of all these evils was the love of power, originating in avarice and ambition, and the party spirit which is engendered by them when men are fairly embarked in a contest. . . . An attitude of perfidious antagonism everywhere prevailed; for there was no word binding enough, nor oafii terrible enough, to reconcile enemies. Each man was strong only in the conviction that nothing was secure; he must look to his own safety, and could not afford to trust others. Inferior intellects generally succeeded best . . . when men are retaliating upon others, they are reckless of the future, and do not hesitate to annul those common laws of humanity to which every individual trusts for his own hope of deliverance should he ever be overtaken by calamity; they forget that in their own hour of need they will look for them in vain.