SOCIAL EVOLUTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11227, 26 March 1897, Page 3

SOCIAL EVOLUTION.

TO THE EDITOR. S lE) __Our active social helper, Mrs Louisa Blake, says she cannot agree with me that the present is a time for thought rather than action, and in her able way she sums tip the evils that imperatively demand alleviation. For this we must all thank her. The world is full of;woe; it reeks with horrors; I could name a score of evils each one of which would require a volume to do it justice. In your morning’s issue there is a telegram telling us that more than one-half the entire Indian army is suffering from contagious disease. I have heard medical men say one-half of humanity is tainted., You have a leader on the foe of the human race —consumption. This, in its protean forms, is also said to kill one-fourth of humanity. Numbers of our young people lose their teeth before they come of age. Profusion and poverty jostle one another everywhere. Nerve ailments are almost the rule, so great is the strain of life. Ye f such is the present power of production that from many statistical lines it can be demonstrated that ten men can easily produce the prime products sufficient for two hundred. The statistics of such a farm as Longheach _is nearer ten to a thousand. We positively produce a plethora. Is it not thought rather than action that is required ? Are we lacking in the number of societies, guilds and institutions P By no means; hut these are sadly lacking in efficiency. Miss Clapper-* ton has investigated forty charities in a great city. She shows some to be absolutely mischievous, and most of them useless. When a great cathedral is to be built, do we jumble stones together anyhow? Not at all. Long and intense thought is spent, and gradually the plans give us a consistent whole. Then the structure is begun. Were a score of the greatest thinkers to agree upon the cause of the world’s disease, and were they to offer a simple remedy that commended itself to tho mass of the people, both scientifically and to their and emotionally to their hearts, a great tide of religion would carry all before it. Mankind would throw off the entangling net in which they are emmeshed, and would welcome the noble life of fx*eedom and high aim, of leisure and culture, that would at once be inaugurated. But first must be the awakening. We must unflinchingly look at tho loathsome present. We must tear the beautiful shimmering fabric from the face of the veiled prophet of evil, and see life in its full corruption. We must think, we must study, we must plan. What is the use to prune a tree when its roots are in the air; or to prop a pyramid balanced on its apex ? I believe there is a solution based on the method of human evolution, a solution, once seen, so satisfactory that one never afterwards wavers. It corresponds in all its generic principles with those of that great ethical thinker, the divine Teacher of Nazareth. It places no burdens on men’s backs too heavy to be borne. Its burden is light and the yoke used to bear it is easy. It is a gospel not of repression but of joy, and its principles are as scientific as they are beautiful. But to achieve them there must first be the thinking and tho teaching.—l am, &c., A. W. BICKERTON.