NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21315, 17 October 1932, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

INDIAN CONSTITUTION Referring to Lord Lothian's statement that tho "die-hard mind" opposing the new Indian Constitution was "a small section, but one which seemed for the time being to have enlisted the formidable support of Mr. Winston Churchill," Lord Sumner writes:—"lt is the case that Mr. Churchill has publicly given support to the criticisms and resistance with which the Government's plans have been met by an eminent and conspicuous grgep of retired Indian Civil servants. It is for these men that I feel bound to protest; Mr. Churchill can amply defend himself. They have spent long lives in the service of India, in administrative, judicial and military capacities, from the lowest to the highest grades. They have passed more years in India than Lord Lothian has weeks. Their honours and their work have been alike conspicuous. If they do not know India, who does ? If their opinions are not of value to the English people, whoso are ? They have retired; they have nothing to gain; what they have to lose is, as they fear, that India which they have helped to make and long have loved. Are we to be told that the Indian equivalent of these men is to be found in those persons in India who have entertained, taught, and employed the spirit of civil disobedience ? Civil disobedience is anarchy, prudently carried out with an eye to 'personal safety first.' The case against these Englishmen is that, after supporting the law and maintaining order in India, regardless of their personal safety, they presume to disagree with Lord Lothian; that they even oppose his Government's policy, and venture to trouble the complacence of English public life with warnings against official haste and rashness." SCIENCE IN EDUCATION Sir Richard Gregory spoke on "The Place of Science in the Education of Boys and Girls up to 16 Years of Age" before one section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He said science must be taught in schools because it was an essential part of our everyday life and being; and the mind had to be trained to observe and reason about scientific things. It had an aesthetic value because the world around us was full of beauty and wonder. It had a social value because of its bearings upon laws of healthy life and because its applications could be used for the comfort and welfare of the whole community. While, however, it was generally conceded that science should have a place in the education of every boy and girl, it could not be Baid that there was any unanimity of opinion in regard to the scope or method of school instruction in the subject. Young people to-day required to be given a much broader view of science and its place in modern life than could possibly be conveyed in the courses of work usually followed. They should know something about the character and phenomena of earth, air and sky, of man's development and of his conquests of nature, if only to enable them to understand what they read in newspaper reports or other forms of current literature. These subjects did not lend themselves to experimental courses of a systematic kind, yet a knowledge of them gave a wide outlook and broad sympathy which should be a part of the intelligent equipment of everyone who had received scientific instruction in school. Science had contacts with every department of work and thought in tho practical and social life of our times, and its place in tho education of the average boy and girl up to 16 years of age would be justified not by courses of training for chemists or physicists or any other type of specialised worker, but by the cultivation of an intelligent interest in 'natural facts and phenomena and appreciation of the achievements of man. AUTO-SUGGESTION Addressing the Psychology Section of the British Association, Dr. William Brown, Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford, said modern investigations in the phenomena of auto-suggestion were throwing further light upon the nature of the will. According to any systematic theory of psychology, the will was the highest form of mental activity, expressing the entire mind in action in its unity. The will in its complete form carried with it the belief that we should succeed in any effort. Where we knew that a wished-for result was impossible we could not will. The essential constituent of will, belief in the possibility of success, was absent, and we had only wish instead of will. Here there was no real conflict between will and suggestion, buji only a conflict between tho suggestion of success and the suggestion of failure—i.e., a conflict between two imaginations, unaccompanied by any special emotion. Our increased knowledge of suggestion, derived from its use in psycho-therapy, had deepened our insight into the nature of the will. Suggestion treatment was a supplementation of the will, or a help toward the completion of the will, and was important, not only for psycho-neurotic patients, but for us all. We could train our imagination so that fear could be replaced by confidence, and we ought all to do this. One should make affirmation to oneself'that, whatever happened, one was not going to be afraid or disturbed. This was more than the spirit of Stoicism. It was not the mere tolerance of evil, but the denial of evil. Dr. Brown said he wanted to emphasise the value and importance of suggestion and auto-suggestion to the normal person as a means of increasing his mental power in various directions. Often suggestion treatment from another person was needed to give one a start, and then one could carry on unaided. Perseverance in the practice of autosuggestion sometimes so transformed the temperament of an individual, that from being a worrying and sclf-tormenting hypochondriac he was changed into a man of calm_ tenacity of purpose and serene self-confidence.