At War with Ourselves.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 852, 28 August 1933, Page 6

At War with Ourselves.

Dear Sir,—Your leader on the above topic in Saturday's “ Star ”is very timely. It 13 only one more illustration of the wisdom of that old Greek motto. “ Know thyself.” It is true that such self-knowledge is not perhaps very flattering, but after all the truth must tell in the long run. The wise man will make that run as short as possible. It is obvious that we do what we want to do. If we fight, it is because we want to. In technical language. w r e possess a “ combative instinct,” an urge to remove by any means any enemy out of our path. We need only to examine our dreams" to find what an interesting collection of such impulses compose our ego. But the essential point to note is that we could not be otherwise, considering our origin. We are the descendant of the ape, the tiger, and the worm. As we have as vet no sucri thing as a scientific education, that is, such a method of bringing up children that they are. in spite of their evolutionary heredity, perfectly unified internally, the adults of to-day have all internal wars going on within them of which these same adults are only more or less conscious. Beyond a doubt there is a very close connection between this internal war within men and the external war between nations. Consider the ethical man who is always finding that “ when he would do good, evil is present with him ' How he would like to kill the “ bad ” within him! (This, however, would mean suicide, as the bad is a part of him as a growing being. Growth entails badness; a growing man will always be a sinner! A man w'ho has a keen consciousness of sin should rejoice, therefore, that he has practical proof that he *s not spiritually dead, a mental corpse'. A war offers him the chance of killing somebody whom he can identify with all the bad in himself. The Germans in the late war were demote from the pit. The English, in killing Germans, were killing the “ bad ” side of themselves. With what moral exaltation they did it, too! How nullify this cause of war? First, by recognising its essential truth. So long as we refuse to see how bad we really are, we cannot see how really #J:ood we are. too. In any case, we cannot, I think, attain the good we .seek. Secondly, we should revolutionise our educational ideas in the light of vital evolution and aim at fostering the growth of self-knowing, unified human beings.—l am. etc., N. M. BELL.