CIVILISATION—A TO M.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 221, 1 September 1932, Page 11

CIVILISATION—A TO M.

(To the Editor). Sir —According to Sir John Lubbock (18711), and various other authorities, the civilisation of mankind has been a gradual expansion and development from primitive savagery—step by error and error by step. Granted, the most elementary research tends in this direction and no scholar will dispute the correctness of the theory advanced or deny the fact that modern civilisation a 3 it flourishes to-day —has rtot evolved in accordance with the organic laws of nature, or yet rendered obedience to the ever-changing fundamental laws of substance. An exhaustive review of man’s evolutionary conception of a perfect system of enlightened civilisation is a comprehensive reflex of man himself, his attributes and his characteristics. Possessing all the enchanting devices of his progenitors, man’s creedstripped of its spiritual halo of immortality—/has continuously been pleasure, and his virtual god, self; and he now (collectively speaking) stands—in the year of grace 1932—a confessed human bounder, who cannot see his way out of the labyrinth of obstacles and difAcuities which he himself placed m the wav and created; and, as the hero in Ray Lankester’s “Nature’s Insurgent Son,” he now masquerades about m flying goggles, proclaiming himself as. the Ille ego of the Roman world and the identical It of the West. Our semi-civilised world of to-day reeks with problems of every possible description and of every grade of intensity—all garnered from man s harvest home on the plains of civilisation. Throughout the ages pseudo-civilisation has really never entirely superseded pagan barbarism. What with the blessing (?) of religion on the one side ano the curse of war on the other, the wonder is that such an enforced and imperfect system of social and moral welfare ever held sway at all. . On one point only do the units of the human race agree—they agree to differ. Nations follow hard upon the heels of individuals in this particular. The divergence of opinion need not arise from the expression of unfriendliness or incivility in the individual in stance, nor from racial hatred or national animosity in the allied sense; but from the incidence of varied and irreconcilable interests and the pressure existing from points at varianeewhich, also, cannot bo reconciled. Few nations possess exactly the same interests in common, and self-interest, is the first law of a nation as of an individual. It is just possible that the ultimatum of the present international impasse will restore itself into national separation—which consummation will practically imply that the door of the Temple will never be shut. This menace, once accomplished, and the principle of Darwinism among nations will become dominant and triumphant. Great Britain’s bete noir is over -population, and the unemployment embroglio. Rid of these two encumbrances and tho members of the British Cabinet would be seen dancing a ean-can diatolique on the Thames Embankmentright under Cleopatra’s Needle. When the Hon. J. G. Coates, returns it is up to the Dominion Ministry to give all we relief workers a day off. We intend having all the statutory holidays, anyway. But I am only speaking for myself. —I am, Hastings, 31/8/32.