Citizens Say

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 662, 14 May 1929, Page 8

Citizens Say

HAVE WE CHANGED? Sir, I see your leader-writer is still tryins to believe that “human nature doesn’t change” (vide Sun, May 1). Not so very long ago in England one small county was in continual warfare against Ihe others. There were once a half-dozen rival kings in our United Kingdom. The tinpot City States of Greece fought other equally tinpot citips. Later still, in our own England, there was bloody warfare between brothers and fathers whose religion happened to be different. Nowadays millions of people in one varied and world-scattered nation live peaceably, and the idea of civil warfare on these questions is absurd, so human nature has changed somewhere.

Or again, a hundred years ago, the average male and female did practically nothing but breed —18 children to a family was common; but less than a dozen lived. The woman had, of course, no interests other than children, but she now has an average of less than three children* Is feminine nature the same? Is the attitude of the breadwinner the same? It appears to me they have altered. Or again, as recently as the eighteenth century, practically all the forefathers of all the people in Auckland were agricultural workers, and had never, wanted to be anything else. If human nature was the same, their descendants would rush to the land, and abhor cities. ANTI-BUNK. EVOLUTION Sir, — I endorse “A.E.C.’s” view of the antiEvolution demonstration. Or. Pettit an<J his fellow anti-Evolutionists are theologians. Therefore they cannot support Evolution. To deny the truth of Evolution today is to challenge the foundation of the world’s entire structure of knowledge. Evolution alone explains the facts we know about the world and its infinite diversity of animal and plant life. Evolution is taught in all the great non-sectarian universities and the world’s intellectual advance is everywhere moving toward the evolutionary interpretation of the facts of existence. We want more science, more trust in science, more trust particularly in Evolution, because the study of Evolution is proceeding today faster than it ever proceeded before. The teaching of Evolution in the schools is a sane move. Beside the teaching of Evolution we need thorough moral training in our schools, and for this purpose there is at hand altogether better illustrative material than is contained in the Bible. The Englishman, F. J. Gould, a man who all his life has been ardently interested in the moral education of children, has sifted the literature of the world for stories and facts

(To the Editor.)

illustrating the beauty -of every possible phase of moral conduct. In a series of volumes called “The Children’s Book of Moral Lessons,” Mr. Gould has arranged his stories under such chapter heads as Truthfulness, Kindness, Generosity, Courage, Cleanliness, Self-Reliance, Love, Ambition, Perseverance. The great deeds of the world are here brought before the child’s mind and by appreciating their beauty he comes to see why he should make his life a splendid one. Most English schools have adopted this teaching. A similar system of moral training is in vogue in the schools of France; also in Japan. ARTHUR J. WEAVERS.

ANTI-EVOLUTIONISTS AND • “SCIENCE” Sir, — It is amazing that those who set themselves up as opponents of Evolution do not first make a thorough study of its bearings upon the whole gamut of natural sciences. They would thereby be saved from falling into egregious blunders. The very name, “ape-man-ism,” adopted as a slogan by these good people not only limits the application of the argument to the biological antecedents of man, but either indicates an ignorance of modern theories of descent or was merely designed to pander to the popular prejudice, which imagines that evolutionists teach the direct descent of man from existing species of apes or monkeys. Biologists do not dogmatise on this problem, but the consensus of opinion is that existing anthropoids and man had some, common ancestor. Then we have Dr. Pettit asserting, for example, that the gill slits appearing in the human embryo develop into jaws and ears, An elementary mistake. The gill slits do not develop into jaws but simply close up. Similarly, the Rev. Mr. Murray, with a statement that Evolution is of “heathen” origin, having been formulated by the early Greeks. The suggestions thrown out, as might have been expected from the absence of biological material, were extremely vague. If Mr. Murray deletes from the Bible everything of “heathen” origin he will have little enough left. Finally there comes Mr. Reuben Dowle to Lr. Pettit’s support. His charges of narrowness and bitterness will be humorously appreciated by readers who attended the anti-evolu-tion meeting. He says that pterodactyls were a “distinct species.” The fact is that they comprised a whole extinct order of reptiles of the Mesozoic period, with several families and sub-orders in both the Old World and America, covering species varying in size from that of a crow to huge creatures with an 18ft wing span. The criticism of my use of the word “type” is hair-splitting. The pterodactyls, wd*h some pronounced affinities to the

crocodilian order, combined some remarkable bird characteristics and are a type of that combination. When we find in strata of advancing age fossils of modern birds, birds with some reptilian characters, then birds with teeth and still more reptilian in organisation, and finally true reptiles with bird characters, it is not unreasonable to assume that one evolved from the other, and every standard text-book on palaeontology for the last 20 years takes the fact for granted. Those who talk of the impossibility of such development should remeber their own. Adult man develops In a short space of years from a single protoplasmic cell and in so doing briefly recapitulates the history of Evolution from amoeba to man.