NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22211, 11 September 1935, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CHINA'S LOST FAITH No question was more important to the world to-day than what would be the result of the awakening of China and Japan, said Dr. Ramsay Muir in a recent lecture in London on Pacific problems. Now that tho League of Nations and the world had failed to make Japan observe the obligations she had accepted, and to protect tho slowly-growing power of China, what was going to happen? The Chinese had inevitably lost faith in the justice and willingness of tho West to give them a fair chance. The Chinese liatod their Japanese neighbours, but they might feel that their kinship with Japan was a nearer kinship than their relation with tho West. The future lay in whether they would reorganise on progressive Western lines, or whether they would throw in their hands and say, "Oh, well, in the circumstances let us join with Japan to make a great Oriental Power of the yellow races which can, and will, dominate the world." If they decided on the latter course it would bo an ominous decision for the rest of the world. NOT BY BREAD ALONE A reference to "the business of being a Christian in the world" was made by the Rev. G. F. Macleod in a recent 8.8.C. broadcast. " If," he said, " your prevailing passion is social, for the upbuilding of mankind here and now; beware of making Christianity simply a hobby-horse on whicli to dress up your own man-made ideals. The idea that Christ came primarily as the Great Revolutionary to build a perfect world on earth for men will simply not hold water, for those who study the Gospel honestly. He certainly came that men might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. But the promise to the individual was essentially immediate, and not dependent on a perfect kingdom of men being formed first. The idea that we must get the material wants of men supplied first, before we can dare to speak to them of their souls, is genuine heresy. It is, I know, a tempting proposition. Indeed it was one of our Lord's temptations at the beginning of His Ministry: ' Command that these stones be made bread'—the temptation to feed the people first, before launching the idea of so spiritual a Kingdom. But our Lord renounced it as a temptation of the devil; and with serenity he preached the gospel of abundant life, quite regardless of the economic strictures of His times. Men were to seek the Kingdom of God first, whatever the prevailing conditions; only then would all things be added to them."

INTELLECT AND INTELLIGENCE Distinctions have often been drawn between intellect and intelligence, remarks the Times. At the International Neurological Congress a physical basis of differentiation was provided by Dr. Brickner, of New York, who described the mental condition of a patient after that patient had lost both the frontal lobes of the brain. It might have been supposed that, in such circumstances, intelligence would have suffered a great diminution, but such was not the case. There was damage, but it was damage to "ingenuity." Dr. Brickner declared that the patient was like a child who had not yet learned that there is a world in which it is necessary to meet people and situations and to become adapted to them. "The frontal lobes, ' ho summed up, "have given us ingenuity—intellect if you will, but this is to be distinguished from intelligence. Intelligence may bo thought of as the combined emotional and intellectual output." These findings seem to place the seat of intelligence in the emotional rather than in tho intellectual areas of the brain and, consequently, to suggest that the quality of intellect is adaptive rather than dynamic. The distinction may not seem to possess great value, but it should be remembered that students of psychology are tending, more and more, to emphasise the importance of emotional as opposed to intellectual processes. The bearing upon education is obvious, the Times concludes. There can be no virtue in an increase of "ingenuity" unaccompanied by developing wisdom.

THE RIGHT KIND OF GARDEN The right kind of garden is, of course, the one that suits and satisfies the owner, writes Mr. Jason Hill in the Listener. But, although the English are the most assiduous—some say the best—gardeners in Europe, English gardens, taken by and large, are much more uniform than the diversity of their owners would lead one to expect, and it is tempting to infer from this want of individuality, and from a certain wistful discontent that many gardeners express, that our gardens do not always give us what we want. If this inference is correct it is perhaps worth asking ourselves why we make a garden or, more exactly, what we want from it. Bright colour seems to be the commonest and most urgent demand from the garden; it is fulfilled by the perfect herbaceous border, that rare achievement which unfolds a sequence of tinctorial brilliance from June till December. This longing for colour has been ascribed to the greyness of our northern skies, but the explanation would be more convincing if a similar taste were not even more evident in the tropics, and it seems reasonable to suppose that it is not colour as such that we desire, but rather the stimulus and excitement that colour provides. If this is what we want, wo need not. fill the garden blindly with masses of colour, for we can gain our end as well, or better, by choosing plants of vivid brilliance and setting them in small pyrotechnic groups or as solitary coruscations against a dark background. Few people, however, unless they are in constant need of relief from an extremely drab emotional life, look to the garden at all times for thrill and oxcitement; there are, indeed, many who turn to it solely for relaxation and tranquility. Their most perfectly restful garden might be composed in different tones of green, with massive shrubs and evergreen trees, and they might find itworth while to defy the convention that, if you have a garden, you must have flowers in it, in order to create at least a small viridarium as a refuge from the glare and dazzle. An entirely rjreen garden too obviously suggests a ivell-designed crematorium to be permanently in tune with any but a peculiar temperament, and most people vho like a quiet garden find their effect n associations of cool, delicate colours, harmonies to striking con;rasts.