NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21729, 19 February 1934, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE WORLD DEVELOPING "The world is still developing itself. There is throughout the world, including our own country, an inherent desire for more than we have already got," said Sir Horace Wilson, chief industrial adviser to the British Government, in a speech in London. "There is an enormous potential demand for goods and services of all kinds among the industrial towns in this country. The vast bulk of the populations of China, Japan and Africa have a tremendous desire for a great many things they do not possess. It is false altogether to assume that merely because there is a great capacity to produce certain things we are at the end of every possible outlet. With the increase of effective purchasing power, of which there is now some signs, 1 have 110 doubt that Great Britain will get its share. There are qualifications, but if there is the necessary enterprise, 1 have 110 fear for the future of this country." THE LAWS OF LIFE With the passing of the years, said Dr. Guy Warman, Bishop of Manchester, it has become increasingly difficult to hold the view that there was no arrangement, 110 order in the life of the world, or of the individual, and that all that happened was haphazard. That always* had been a stupid view, he said, but at the present time it was positively insane, for the discoveries of science had taught us that nearly all happenings, instead of being haphazard, were in obedience to laws. Every new discovery of science glorified the machine known as human life, and it was the business of science to discover the laws which operated in every department of that life. Concerning the future, Dr. Warman said our attitude should be one of obedience, for plainly wo could not have complete control. "We cannot set out on this last day of 1933 to arrange for 1934 in such- a way that the machine shall run according to our will; we are not powerful enough and jiot far-seeing onough to control the new year, though as minders and menders of the machine, we have something to do. I do not believe that we have any right to say "All will go right" unless we make a contribution to that end. EDUCATION FROM BIRTH

Lecturing on the physical and physiological education of infants under the age of one year Dr. Eric Pritchard said that Dr. Montessori once asked him if he thought he could really begin to educate a child before it was a year old. His reply was that after a year, after six months, and even after a week it was much too late to begin. It should begin as soon as the baby was born and had an independent existence. The education that could be imparted during the first week of life was enormously valuable and had a great influence on its character during the subsequent months and years. Many people, he said, thought that no attempt should be made to control a vex-y young child, that it should be left to its unguided devices, but he pointed out that from the first the child reacted to external influences and that its physical and physiological development were dependent on outside direction. Its physical development depended greatly on muscular movement. The strain on the muscles affected the growth of the bones and the direction the bones would take, and on the shape of the bones depended the shape of the whole body. It was most important to encourage the infant from the first to exercise its arms, legs, back, and abdomen. It was, of course, possible to overdo this, but in the majority of cases they were underdeveloped. Any mother or nurse of average intelligence could be taught how to give these exercises.

MILTON AND THEOLOGY Addressing the Association for Adult Religious Education, the Archbishop of York said that Milton was the source of most that was wrong in English theology, and he did not know when they were going to escape from the tyranny which Milton had laid upon the public mind by the exercise of his sublime imagination in order to express his peculiar distortions of Christian doctrine. People should read " Paradise Lost " with as much appreciation as they could, but they must also exercise every kind of criticism that was relevant —textual, historical, the kind called higher, and, above all, wherever it was appropriate, scientific, and philosophic. The same was true of the Bible. Let no one suppose that in applying this kind of criticism to the Bible they were involved in any conflict with the greatest authorities in the history of the Christian religion. They might be involved in conflict with some modern influence and convictions, but they would not be in conflict with those great Christian souls who had most affected the course of Christian experience. One of the reasons why it was so important that should be more thorough study of religion in education, and that religion should be given its fair place in education, was that there was such an immense volume of stark misunderstanding concerning what the Christian religion was. The carrying on of this education to the adult stage was of vital importance.

QUESTS OF SCIENCE " In most branches of science Britain and the United States are now leading," writes Professor J. B. S. Haldane, F. 11.5., in the News-Chronicle. " Germany has dropped out of the race since half her scientific elite, not all Jews, lost their positions, and probably ties for the third place with Japan. But in plant and animal breeding much of the best work is being done in the Soviet Union, and it is there that some of the great advances of 1934 may be made. So little serious work is being done on human heredity that few great discoveries in that field are likely. But other branches of medical science are forging ahead. Next year will see the discovery of the influenza virus confirmed or disproved. The public will hear more of the experiments which have apparently succeeded in immunising animals against certain types of cancer. Another vitamin will probably be obtained pure. How far these results will be allowed to benefit the general public depends on political and economic; developments. Will the advance of chemistry and physics merely cause more unemployment? Will our small knowledge of human biology be used largely to bolster up family and racial pride? Will the elementary school child be given a chance of learning more of the science on which our civilisation is so largely based? These are questions which will not be answered in the laboratory."