THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1933. THE WIDER MIND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21906, 18 March 1933, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 1933. THE WIDER MIND.

Human society began in some simple form of family association, patriarchal or tribal, and gradually rose through long millennia of struggle to the diversified nationhood Avhich the world at present presents. In every period of society, as in each pejiod of the individual life, there is a forward look. One man or a small group of men feels that society is not only what it is, it is also what it may become. It is not static, but is an organism with poAvers of groAvth and constant adaptation. In the past of Western Europe there have been several visions of the Avider society, and emanating from these have been the respective ways of life of their devotees. The first European to profess openly a disdain for the claims of his native city-state upon him Avas apparently a cynic philosopher, Avho, seeing and appreciating the beauty and grandeur of Nature, determined that a life lived simply in accordance with her dictates Avas a higher life than that under the sAvay of the jarring political factions of his OAvn native city. He announced himself, therefore, as a cosmopolitan, a world-citizen. The second and more human attempt to enlarge the circle of vision was that of the Stoics. Beholding the immense structure and harmony of the cosmos, the universe, and filled Avith awe at the majesty |

of its Creator, they claimed to transcend the narrow limits of the native land and enter into the citizenship of the world. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius elevated his thoughts beyond even the vast empire over which he held sway and exclaimed to his wider empire, “ Thou dear city of God.” For the Stoic the world was then under divine governance, every man taking his due place, and every one imbued with a stern moral sense of duty and of superiority to the vicissitudes of the mundane life. The third and by far the most influential of world-views was that of Christianity, with its fundamental doctrine of the fatherhood of God and, its corollary, the brotherhood of man.

But side by side with the influence of Christianity has gone on another group of influences—the influences of commerce, travel, and science both pure and applied. All these have had, and will continue to have, results that were and will be unpredictable. When James Watt invented the steam-engine, none dreamed that it would bridge the five oceans, or call into being, as by a wizard’s wand, the vast industrial cities of the world,, and that these cities would necessitate compulsory popular education, cause the growth of trade unions, and accelerate fiftyfold the age-long, slow-moving progress of democracy. The Great War was both a cause and an effect, a culmination and an inauguration. Old barriers have been broken down, bigger windows have been erected in the various national houses, newer concepts of the intervolved organic unity of civilisation have been apprehended. Men stand to-day half-blinded as it were by the light of the new possibilities before them, as though they had marched out of the dim twilight of their respective caves on to a common open field lighted by a common sun. On this common field they must live. War debts, tariffs, exchange, race prejudices, xenophobia —these are the refuse clinging about them as they burst through the thickets into the open sunlight. Once again men need an emperorphilosopher to cry amongst them not alone “ Thou dear city of God,” but also “ Thou dear city of man.” The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. True. But the earth is man’s home, a vast home with many apartments. The days of struggle are not yet over, however; the eyes are still dulled by the cave darkness. An emotional shaking of hands and wishing good luck is not going to dissipate the clouds. To all who think about man in toto on this planet there is a definite call to cast race-prejudice from the mind, to think fairly about other peoples, to urge education authorities to see to it that the minds of children are not warped against foreigners or outsiders by a one-sided presentation of history and literature. The technical means of a world-view are coming into common possession in the form of radio, television, the phonokinetic image. So much technical wealth has come to us, so much extension of, territory, a so much vaster knowledge of the nature of the physical universe, that it is hard to realise that only 1500 years ago the ancestors of the English Avere ruthless marauders Avho worshipped deities of violence and wrought deeds of violence on women and children. Man is not what he was. He is entering into his possession. But long effort and study are necessary. It is needful to put forth strenuous intellectual effort to grasp the claims of the new wide world confronting mankind. The wider mind has tp be struggled for; it does not come for the asking.