PASS ON THE LIGHTED TORCH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16888, 28 December 1916, Page 6

PASS ON THE LIGHTED TORCH

SIR ARTHUR EVANS'S ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. " Sir Arthur Evans, who gave the presidential address at the British Association, is a distinguished archteologist, and, like every scholar who is worth anything, he keeps his learning fresh with the living sap of our own times," says the Manchester Guardian. His address was a fine plea that- the torch handed down to us from the ages shall be passed on with a still brighter flame.

Sir Arthur Evans himself has done a great work in opening up the wonders of prehistoric Crete.

"Suddenly we are given a vision of a high and ordered civilisation in that island far older tlian the culture of Greece, and belonging to a period when we have thought of man as in the Stone Age," says the Westminster Gazette. " Our whole conception of human history is changed by these discoveries, and by the pictures of the cave-dwellers, which speak of accomplishment in tho arts at, a time when an earlier generation woula have placed our ancestors in the trees and just beginning to branch away from the apes."

—An Austere Duty.— At the close of his fascinating address Sir Arthur said: "We who are met here to-day to promote in a special way the cause of truth and knowledge have never had a more austere duty set before us. I know that our ranks are thinned. How many of those who would otherwise be engaged in progressive research have been called away for their country's service! How many who could least De spared were called to return no more! Scientific intercourse is broken, and its cosmopolitan character ia obscured by tho death struggle in which whole continents are locked. — A Lamentable Fact.— "It is a lamentable fact that beyond any nation of the West the bulk of our people remains sunk, not in comparative ignorance only—for that is less difficult to overcome, —but in intellectual apathy. The dull incuria of the parents is reflected in the children, and the desire for the acquirement of knowledge in our schools and colleges is appreciably less than elsewhere. So, too, with the scientific side of education, it is not so much the actual amount of science taught that is in question—insufficient as that is—as the instillation of the scientific spirit itself—the perception of method, the sacred thirst for investigation.

— Economy of Truth.— " But can we yet despair of the educational future of a people that has risen to the frail height of the great emergency with which they were confronted? Can we doubt that, out of the crucible of fiery trial, a New England is already in the moulding? "It will be a hard straggle for the friends of science and education, and tho air is thick with mephitic vapours. Perhaps the worst economy to which we are to-day reduced by our former lack of preparedness is the economy of truth. Heaven knows! —it may be a necessary penalty. But its results are evil. Vital facts that concern our national well-being, others that even affect the cause of a lasting peace, are constantly suppressed by official action. The negative character of the process at work which conceals its operation from the masses makes it the more insidious. We live in a murky atmosphera amidst the suggestion of the false, and there seems to be a real danger that the recognition of truth as itself a tower of strength may suffer an eclipse.

— Truth Will Prevail. — "It is at such a time and under these adverse conditions that we, whose object it is to promote the advancement of science, are called upon to act. It is for us to see to it that the lighted torch handed down to us from the ages shall be passed on with a still brighter flame. Let us champion the cause of education, in the best sense of the word as haying regard to its spiritual as well as its scientific side. Let us go forward with our own tasks, unflinchingly seeking for the truth, confident that, in the eternal dispensation, each successive generation of seekers may approach nearer to the goal. "Magna est veritas, et pwevalebit."

— Greatness of Crete. — "Sir Arthur Evans drew his learned instances from the early civilisation of the /Egean and the Adriatic, which he has done so much to unveil/' says the Manchester Guardian. "Crete has a permanent fascination for historians; the greatest of them all, Thucydides, begins his narrative of the war between Athens and Sparta with a disquisition on the seapower of Minos. In Crete European civilisation began, and reached an extraordinarily high level long before political life began in Greece, Cretan civilisation reached to Sicily on the west, Egypt and the shores of Palestine on the east, Mycenae and Troy to the r.ortli. The earliest legends of Athens are of the human tribute that she paid to the Cretan Minotaur, and Crete, too, has given her back in Venizelos her hope for the future. "There are evidences of an elaborate orgenisation of government and of advanced artistic design in Crete thousands of rears older than the earliest monuments of Chaldea. This civilisation was hopelessly decadent by the time of the Trojan war; but even its ruins inspired perhaps the most famous legislation of antiquity— that of Lycufgus. Yet but for casual allusions in Greek historians and Egyptian records the whole of this empire had disappeared from knowledge until the excavations began in Crete, and showed that even legend had not guessed at its wonders. Compared with these monuments Pompeii is as modern as Golders Green. " Something may be said for a theme which drew their minds from present anxieties to that still passionless domain of the past which lay behind the limits even of historic controversies," said Sir Arthur. — The Mighty Past.— " In re ont years the patient labours of arclwcologists had enabled them to reconstitute the successive stages of whole fabrics of former civilisation, the very ; existence of which was formerly unsas- | pected. Even in later periods archaeology | had continually checked, supplemented, and | illustrated written history. Thus evoked, the past is often seen to hold a mirror to the future, correcting wrong impressions, the result of some temporary revolution in the whirligig of time, by the more permanent standard of abiding conditions, and affording in the solid evidence of past wellbeing the 'substance of things hoped for.' Nowhere, indeed, has this been more in evidence than in that vexed region between the Danube and the Adriatic, to-day the home of the Serbian race, to the antiquarian exploration of which many of the earlier years of my own life were devoted. "What visions', indeed, do those investigations not recall! Imperial cities, once the seats of wide administration and of prolific mints, sunk to neglected villages, vestiges of great engineering works, bridges, aqueducts, or here a main line of ancient highway hardly traceable even as a track across the wilderness! Or. again, the signs of mediaeval revival above the Roman ruins—remains of onco populous mining centres scattered along the lone hillside, the shells of stately churches with the effigies, bullet-starred now, of royal founders, once champions of Christendom against the Paynim —nay, the actual relics of great rulere, law-givers, national heroes, still secreted in half-ruined monastic retreats!"

It tells "of a phase of humau culture which goes so far back beyond the limits of any continuous story that it may well be said to belong to an older world." After pointing out how arc'nccological reseaich'iiad helped to fill omissions in the written rccords of Greek and Roman civilisation, and referring to the researches which showed that "Crete of 4000 years ago must unquestionably be regarded as the birthplace of our European civilisation," Sir Arthnr asked if that even took us appreciably nearer to • the fountainhead. His reply was that the investigations of a brilliant band of prehistoric archaeologists, with the aid of representatives of the sister sciences of geology and paleontology, had brought together such a mass of striking materials as to place the evolution of human art and appliances in the last quaternary period on a far higher level than had ever been suspected before.