Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 13 June 1938, Page 4

Timely Topics

“Fear is a powerful motive to right conduct and behaviour, which are demanded by the State under penalty. The mind of the child (as FEAR, shown by evident manifestations and gestures) is highly susceptible to fear (says Sir Robert Armstrong Jones. M.P.. in “The Times”). A burnt child dreads the fire and adults practice prudence and' forethought—which are among the highest virtues —through fear, the claims of the future being felt, in the present, and it is essentially the work of the Church to impress this upon the young. The Church has mere experience of matters of conscience than any ether authority, and its influence through exhortation, admonition and reproof upon public morals and upon the public welfare must be solicited and supported as of paramount importance. It is not an analysis of temperaments that is needed but the building up of character. Is it not the fear of epidemics—for instance, of typhoid and diphtheria—that the State i employs as a cultured apprehension | to preserve the public health? Fear is ja necessary element in rewards and I punishment and even the withdrawal lof approbation is punishment based on fear.” •

R'R R S “As civilisation advanced,” Miss Marjorie Bowen writes, “people began to discover that more was to be gained by flattery than by FLATTERY, force—and that flattery had a larger purchasing power than coin of the realm. It has been used to sway individuals and to influence crowds, it has generally been the keenest weapon in the armoury of the rogue and adventurer, and great men and saints have often net been able to dispense with it. Flattery has no-tf vanished in most of the cruder forms, but is still just as powerful in more subtle ways. Our manners are founded on flattery, and it is still one of the most powerful aids to worldly success. Flattery is the secret of most modern advertisement; the judgment, taste and acumen of any possible purchaser are skilfully flattered—even by such frank, blunt statements as ‘You want the best,’ or ‘You , mustn’t miss this,’ and it still remains most valuable in oratory—oratory is, in itself, a kind of flattery, for you imply that your audience is valuable to you, in some way important, and worth the obvious effort you are making.”