THE PROGRESS OF LIFE

Taranaki Daily News, 28 January 1933, Page 5

THE PROGRESS OF LIFE

GREAT VALUE OF EDUCATION BENEFITS FROM THE DEPRESSION. NEW CHANNELS' OF THOUGHT. Cheering thoughts on the beneficial effect which must ultimately follow a period of industrial and financial depression are contained ( in the address of the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, delivered to the annual meeting of; the University Senate at Wellington. One of , the results of a depression, he said, was that it drove the imagination and enterprise into new channels and spheres. “Depression, like winter and cloud, is essential for the progress of life,” Professor Brown said. “When we get plunged into the gloom of some great depression we are apt to count it as only evil and productive of evil* We forget that if we had no ' season but summer we should never be able to raise the crops that are so essential to our life. “CloUd is as necessary to our continuance on this planet as sunshine, not merely because of the rain and snow it pours down on the earth, but because change is one of the bases of health,' even change for what we think the worse. We are bom and bred on a planet of changing seasons and conditions and the cessation of such change would mean disease and death.:

“The devastation of storm is not wholly evil. Even storm, wrecking though it often seems, is needed for the health of the world, ‘ especially for the vigour' of the life upon it, and most, of all for the renewal of the energy, intellectual as well as physical, of its most advanced form of life, that of man. Not even its devastation is without its wholesome effects; it. rouses the dormant love of order and completeness in the human breast and this is on the way to artistry and the love of beauty. INTO NEW CHANNELS. “Warfare 'not seldom precedes an outburst of art, literature or discovery and is one cause of it. Some of the greatest outbursts of art and literature have followed an age of tempestuous war with its wild ravage and resultant devastation. One has only to. look into the history of ancient Greece and of modem. England, to find examples of this; the a u of Pericles and those of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne would alone be sufficient to confirm it. And where art and literature are not especially prominent, the imagination of a people and age stirred by it stretches out into voyages' .of discovery. It is one of the results of such depressions that they drive the imagination and enterprise- into new channels and spheres. “The originative faculties of the new youth will lie dormant, unless they- know the precedents and conditions. So it is with recurrent periods of economic or financial depression; they are generally followed and relieved by outbursts of invention and discovery, among at least, highly civilised nations. The originative. faculties are stirred, to action by the necessities of the time; there is added to the age-old problem of the means of making a living the new and inexorable problems of the impasse. But these will never find a solution unless education has prepared the way by making the growing minds familiar with the methods and efforts of the past Originative ages are brief and shallow unless their roots go deep into those that have preceded them. “The young inquiring minds must know the conditions that obstruct advances before they can suggest a way out of the economic defile. They must be trained to know the data of the situation before they are stirred to investigation; they must learn the full terms of the problems before they can make attempts at their solution. “Education with its definite subsidies is the first to be pruned in a depression. In other words, education, especially advanced education, should be the last element in civilised communities to be submitted to the axe of economy, in the process of meeting the want and suffering that such a depression brings in its train. It is oiten the first to suffer, as it has subsidies that apply to definite purposes and may seem to be mere luxuries. GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY REDUCED. “The most tempting of all subsidies for a New Zealand Government that finds difficulty in balancing its Budget has been the annual sum that has been granted to the University of New Zealand from its foundation. It has been the chief means of supplying the scholarships that draw out the talents of the community and enable them to tackle the problems encountered by civilised communities and find solutions for them. “Yet this has been the basis of the fund for scholarships to draw out the talent of the country which will save it from such depressions. The two essentials for a community to find its way out of such defiles in their march to prosperity and success are first of all, the broadcasting and deepening of the intelligence of the mass so as to enable them to learn the lesson of thrift and foresight; and second, highly developed leaders who can see far into the darkness of the future and lead their fellows to the best goal they are capable of. TRAINING OF LEADERS. “Of the two the more important for advance in research is the latter, the selection and training of the intellectual leaders; and a large proportion of this exceptional material will be left undeveloped xml ess there are scholarships to select it and carry it through its course. “It is the true function of a university to select the researchers and intellectual leaders who will save the country from these recurrent dilemmas'.- The university as much as other institutions must learn thrift from such hard times. It must lay past all it can save from fees and endowments and grants or by economy to meet their recurrence. That they will recur we may be certain. And that we must contrive to elicit and train the talents of the new generations, if our country is not to succumb to their devastating effects, is axiomatic. What is a university for if it is not to harvest the exceptional abilities of the nation and make the best of them?”