TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 21579, 17 December 1931, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

‘‘Must civilizations or nations inevitably decay? I see nothing in biological science to indicate such a conclusion,’’ said Mr Fraser Roberts, of Edinburgh University, at the Modern Churchmen’s Conference. “Individuals grow old and die, but a group of individuals is continually being born anew. It will lie increasingly in man’s own choice to see that, the new generation •'is superior to the old—at the worst, not inferior. Nations and civilizations may perish, but not as the result of any transcendental biological law .... In the

sphere of government we hear advocated a government of business men, a government of proletarians, even, God forbid, a government of scientists. Few seem to regard as desirable a government of statesmen. Future generations may acqu're the knowledge that will enable them to select individuals for the task and to fit them by training for that end. Government for the people remains a generally accepted ideal, but government by the people docs not command the enthusiasm of yesterday. One feels that future generations will find a solution that is essentially biological in the scientific selection and training of individuals for that duty.”

“It is strange to see the contradictory way in which modern industrialism works. On the one hand it has developed individualism in Western society, while on the other it is destroying this very individualism by turning men into machines,’’ says Mr Vusuedo B. Melta, writing in the Indian Review. “It has also destroyed the artists’ and artisans' pleasure in their work by making them flunk more of the marketable quality of their work than of its artistic quality. It has destroyed men's sense of leisure and love of knowledge for its own sake. Tho beauty of silence anti the capacity for meditation —on which depends the spiritual development of man — are becoming unknown in the West. It has made them lose their happiness . . .

Industrialism has made modern Western peoples time-slaves. Tho watch and the clock have become the gods of the European and American nations. And this time-slavery has made them restless and neurotic—thus making them incapable of proper moral and spiritual development. The deification of the intellect has made Western peoples confound knowledge with wisdom and instruction with education. The Western ideal of progress has done the Western man good in one way: it has made him cptimistic. The Westerner never despairs. He is constantly hoping that better things will come and does all he can to make those better things come. Perhaps he is a child in hoping in this manner. But children are not bad from eyery point of view.”

“Tho worship of saints or philosophers and of football-players cannot possibly go together,’’ says Mr Melta. “Western peoples —like other peoples in the world—have found permanent beauty in nature; they look rapturously at the sun, moon, stare and flowers. Why then can they not create permanent ideals of beauty in art? Indian women discovered thousands of years ago that the sari was a beautiful garment and so they adopted it and have stuck to it ever since. The Far Eastern ideals of painting and the Indian ideals of architecture have after all not varied very much during the last thousand years or more: because the Far Eastern peoples and Indians felt that the beauty of painting and architecture which they had created was so satisfying to-them that it deserved to be eternalized. But Western peoples cannot remain satisfied with their artistic creations for any length of time. The Greeks created one ideal of sculptural beauty in which all the faculties cf man were evenly balanced. But the modern Europeans have created another ideal of sculpture in which tho body or the intellect predominates. Then, again, what English people liked in literature in the days of Elizabeth or George IH or of Victoria is not liked by their descendants of to-day. What is the reason why Western peoples cannot remain faithful to one ideal of beauty in art? Is it because they do not know their own minds; or it is because they are changeable?”