THE POTENTIAL OF HUMAN POWER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18446, 6 January 1922, Page 6

THE POTENTIAL OF HUMAN POWER.

INEXTINGUISHABLE IMPULSE TO LIVE. Mr James M. Beck, the Solicitorgeneral of the United States, writing on “The Revolt against Authority” in the Fortnightly Review, says: “The great indictment of the present age of mechanical power is that it has largely destroyed the spirit of work. The great enigma which it-propounds to us, and which, like the riddle of the Sphinx, we will solve or be destroyed, is this: A Great Question. — "Has the increase in the potential of human power, through thermo-dynamics, been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the potential of human character? “To this life and death question a great French philosopher, Le Bon, writing in 1910, replied that the one unmistakable system of human life was ,‘the increasing deterioration in human character,’ and a great physicist has described the symptoms as ‘ the progressive enfeeblement of tho human will.’ “Take from man the opportunity of work and the sense of pride in achievement and you havd taken from him the very life- of his existence. Robert Burns could sing as he drove his ploughshare through' the fields of Ay*. To-day millions, who simply watch an automatic infallible machine, which requires neither strength nor skill, dp not sing at their work, but many curse the fate which has chained them like Ixion to a soulless machine. Submerging the Individual.— ‘The evil is even greater. “The specialisation of onr modern mechanical civilisation has caused a submergence of the individual into the group or class. Man is fast ceasing to be the unit of human society; self-governing groups are becoming the new 'units. This is true of all classes of men, the employer as well as the employee. .The true justification for the' anti-monopoly statutes, including the Sherman anti-trust law, lies not so much in the realm of economics as in that of morals. With the submergence of the individual, whether he be capitalist or wage-earner, into a group, there has followed the dissipation of moral responsibility. A mass morality has been substituted for individual morality, and, unfortunately, group morality generally intensifies the vices more than the virtues of mam ■ “Possiby the greatest result of the mechanical age is this spirit of organisation. Its merits are manifold and do not require statement; but they have bonded as to its demerits. ‘“We are now beginning to see—r slowly, but surely—that a faculty of organisation which, as such, submerged the spirit of individualism is 'not an unmixed good. Paradox of Progress.— “What was true of Germany, however, was true, although in lesser degree, of all civilised nations. In all of them the individual had been submerged in group formations, and the effect upon the character of man has not been beneficial. ‘"This may explain the paraox of socalled ‘ progress.’ It may be likened to a great wheel, which, from the increasing domination of mechanical forces, , developed an ever-accelerating speed, until by centrifugal action is went off its / bearings in 1914 into an unprecedented catastrophe. As man slowly pulls himself out of that gigantic wreck and recovers consciousness, he; begins to realise that speed is - not necessarily progress. “Of all this, the nineteenth century, in its exultant pride in its conquest of the invisible forces, was almost blind. It not only accepted progress as an unmistakable fact—mistaking, however, acceleration and facilitation for progress,—but in its mad pride believed in an immutable law of progress which, working with the blind forces of machinery, would propel men forward. ’ -■ Men Who Saw.— “A few men, however; standing on the mountain ranges of human observation, saw the future more clearly than did the mass. Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin, Samuel Butler, and Max Nordau. in the nineteenth century, and, in our time, Ferrero, all pointed out the inevitable dangers of the excessive mechanism of human society. Their prophecies were unhappily as little heeded as those of Cassandra. "One can see the tragedy of the time, as a few saw it, in comparing the first ‘ Locksley Hall ’ of Alfred Tennyson, written in 1827, with its abiding in the ‘ increasing purpose of the ages ’ and its roseate prophecies of the golden age when the ‘ war-drum would throb no longer and the battle flags be furled in tho Parliament of Man and the Federation of tho World,’ and the later ‘ Locksley Hall,’ written 60 years later, when the great spiritual poet of our time gave utterance to the dark pessimism which flooded his soul: Gone tho cry of “Forward, Forward,” lost within a growing gloom; ' Lost, or only heard, in silence f rom the silence of a tomb. Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space, Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage, into commonest commonplace! Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good, And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud. The Love of Work.— “This article may seem unduly pessimistic. I fear that this is the case with most men who have crossed their fiftieth year and find themselves, like Dante, in a ‘ dhrk and sombre wood.’ I may be subject to the additional reproach that I suggest no remedy. There are many palliatives for the evils which I have discussed. To rekindle in men the love of work for work’s sake and the spirit of discipline, which the lost sense of human solidarity once inspired, would do much to solve the problem, for work is the greatest moral force in the world. But I must frankly add that I have neither the time nor the qualifications to discuss tho solution of this grave problem. “If we of this generation can only recognise that the evil exists, then the situation is not past remedy ■ for man has never yet found himself in a blind alley of negation. Ho is still ‘ captain of his soul and the master of his fate,’ and to me the most encouraging sign of- tho times As tho persistent evidence of contemporary literature that thoughtful men now recognise that much of our boasted progress was as unreal as .a rainbow. While the temper of the times seems for the moment pessimistic, it merely marks the recognition by man of an abyss whose existence he barely suspected, but over which his indomitable courage will yet carry him. "I have faith in the living spark of the, Divine which is in the human soul, and which our complex mechanical. civilisation has not yet extinguished,” concludes Mr Beck.