NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22950, 31 January 1938, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS

SOCIAL CREDIT AND DEBIT The possibility that with the continuance and development of the social services there might come an increased State control was suggested by Lord Amulree, chairman of the Council of the Royal Society of Arts, in a recent address. Pursuit of these matters opened vistas that were not always pleasant. They saw ahead, for example, the possibility of compulsory vocational training, restriction of choice of employment, and regimentation and control in other directions where at present they shrunk from it. The questions were, therefore, whether if the social services were to continue to develop they would be able to refrain from such interference; and, if not, whether the good they desired to do to their fellow men by conferring material advantages outweighed the price they might perforce require theni to pay by some sacrifice of freedom. ESSENTIALS OF DEMOCRACY In Britain there seemed to be three things which were characteristic of the liberty enjoyed, said Lord Meston, president of the National Association of Trade Protection Societies, in a recent speech. The first was the habit of free grouping of men and women interested in the same things, following the same avocations perhaps, or occupied with the same type of service to their fellow-men. Now that was an essential concomitant of a true democracy. It was essential that alongside the political movements and the growth of political opinion focusing in Parliament and ultimately in the Cabinet there should be this grouping for expression of opinion all over the country. The second great characteristic of the country was the habit of free discussion. The essence of democracy was toleration of opinion and the habit of free, unfettered discussion, subject only to the laws of libel. The third great characteristic was the habit of open diplomacy.

BODY AND THE MIND "What would we not give to understand why it is that we grow old, why it is that the arteries harden and the lungs lose their old resilience?" said Dr. Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, at a gathering of chemists. "It seems to be something in the nature of things, and maybe by some combination in physics and chemistry man will learn how to modify the onset of time so far as this affects his own frame, and then if ever that time comes and we achieve something like a limited immortality—for I doubt if ever more than that will be allowed —then it may be we shall begin to understand the interrelation of the material and the mental. Your analysis is ultimately an analysis of matter, but it is carried through by the mind, and we are always conscious of the intimate way in which our minds are bound up with the working of our bodies. Understand the latter and possibly we shall be a stage nearer to understanding how we think, and then possibly we may get a hint of the mind in which the whole apparently lies."