SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3829, 4 November 1936, Page 6

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

THE VALUE OF THE INDIVIDUAL. “Looking around in civilised Europe we see that the survival of the fittest is the survival of those fitted to live a predatory and unscrupulous life. Nor can we trust the psychologist to ‘condition’ us into virtue; he will probably ‘condition’ us into vfice. The first element of traditional Christian teaching about man that we can safely take over is that the individual is of supreme value. This involves the question, to whom is he of value? and the answer is, to God. Apart from the existence of God, the individual can have no intrinsic value. There is some thing absolute and not merely relative about man’s ideas of right. In short, they are not only his ideas, but God’s ideas. If there be no God, no ultimate standard of reference, all moral values are relative merely. The search for- God needs to be taken more seriously. Perhaps we need a modern Third Order of St. Francis. But this desired quality of consciousness awareness of eternity or of God, must be accompanied by an enhanced awareness of man.”—-The Rev. J. C. Hardwicke, at the Oxford Conference of Modern Churchmen.