DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 12

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

READING AND NATURE (Copyright, 1927. J WAN'S egotism leads him to believe that he can accomplish anything and manage anything by his mind. Occasionally this egotism receives a severe shock. The mind that informs the universe is vastly more sure and cunning than the human mind and things are performed in the ordinary course of nature that would entirely baffle human ingenuity. Could any man outside the pages of such fiction as Frankenstein’s construct a human body? Could any man make a piece of machinery that would think? Could any man duplicate the process of the circulation of the blood to the heart and veins, or parallel the operation of the nervous system? Recently a man was dying of paralysis and a number of his friends volunteered to do their best to keep him alive by inducing artificial respiration through regular pressure upon his chest. They worked hours to do what nature does easily. Nature regulates the constant out go and in go of the breath and the circulation of the blood, and the other bodily functions. Man thinks he has accomplished a great deal when he has made a locomotive, an airship or an ocean liner, but which one of these marvels is so wonderful as the phenomenon of life exhibited in any cat or dog? Nature greens all the world in spring and leads the tree from the acorn to the sturdy oak. Her paths and processes are mysterious. Nobody has ever made a living thing from something that was not already alive. Life, together with light, electricity, heat and gravitation are, in their essences, still impenetrably mysterious. Not all the king's horses and all the king's men can unscramble an egg. The best we can do with our poor faculties is to learn the ways of nature and conform ourselves as much as possible to them. We can use the forces that hum in the air and about us, but we cannot make one of them. Think how easy it is for you to walk the crowded street and go from your house to your office merely by using your eyes to see where you are going. And what infiinte pains, estimations and reasonings the blind man must use in order to accomplish the same purpose without eyes. We c > quickly learn to use our eyes and ears and develop a remarkable amount of physical ability, but we cannot make an eye nor an ear. Man has made some marvellous machines and accomplished some wonderful results, but these things are amazing only in a proportionate degree. No picture that has ever been painted can rival the perfect dawn or the glorious sunset. No machinery that has ever been constructed is within a million miles of the vast cosmos of which we are a part. No automaton of man s creation is quite so remarkable as the human body and mind. He is certainly a poor-spirited man and a slow-thinking man who does not ixi'ilf ni ?w I n „ the univer se a mind that is vastly superior to his own and an Ability that tar transcends what his own can ever do.