Education’s End.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19034, 1 April 1930, Page 8

Education’s End.

Dear Sir, —As an excellent example of how the- wireless may be used for the stirring up of people to think (which I understand to be the main work of education) I should like to bring before “Star” readers the latest ideas of H. G. Wells as put on the air by the British Broadcasting Company recently and reported in “The Listener” (organ of the British Broadcasting Company) of October 30 last. These ideas will not only be found to be most stimulating in themselves, I hope, but will explain my reference to modern ideas of “individuality” in recent letters to your paper on punishment and crime. In his “Open Conspiracy” Wells had found that “morality was baseless and law unjustifiable” without religion, and that th® essence of religion consisted in the subordination of the individual and of the existing community “to something, a divinity, a divine order, a standard of righteousness, more important than either.” In this broadcast Wells looks into the matter of the “individual” and finds that “individuality is a biological device which has served its end in evolution and will decline,” because “a consciousness of something greater than ourselves, the immortal soul of the race, is taking control of our lives.” Individuals are mortal (there is. no individual immortality), but man is immortal. This man is what the Stoics called the Logos, Paul, the New Adam, and moderns, the superman. Individuals and communities must give themselves “to the utmost . . . to the whole.” In order that each may do this, social changes are necessary in order that opportunity may be universal. The great enemies at present are nationalism and war, which represent “an immense waste of energy ... a cant of blind obedience” . . . placing “our lives at the mercy of trained blockheads.” _ We must end “this empire and that, empire and set up the one empire of man.” How the individual may be raised out of his egotism to serve wider ends may be seen in the scientific world where Wells finds “just that disinterested devotion to great ends that I hope will spread out at last through the entire range of human activity. 1 find just that co-operation of men of every race and colour to increase man’s knowledge . . . our political, our economic, our social lives have still to become illuminated and directed by the scientific spirit.” Now that we have a general idea oi Wells’s ideas, a final few words may be spent on the subject of “individuality, which to my mind, is the most interesting part of the whole. Wells points out we are bodily and mentally “our ancestors, or from another point of view, the greater part of us is already dead. "We are not ourselves only; we are also part of human experience and thought.” Physically, our bodj r is like a great city. Down the highways of the blood stream travel the corpuscles, each of which is a separate individual. The innumerable cells of our body are other individuals. W e are distinct from all these. Nay, we are distinct from even a part of out own minds. Wells has a feeling that he “is just a part of a great process of thought ; he has a “sense of being thought We think, but we are at the same time thought. I W e are reminded of Eddington’s idea that possibly “men are but brain cells in the mind of God”) . , “This world and its future is not i or feeble . . . (and) selfish folk . . . not for the multitude . . . (but) for the best The best of to day will be the cornman place of to-morrow.”—l am etc _ . M . 13 JL L. .