SUPERMEN!

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19827, 29 April 1927, Page 5

SUPERMEN!

IDEALS OF CIVILISATION AN INTERESTING THEORY Under this title Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S., has contributed to the Evening News, of London, two long articles. Hero is a brief extract from one of them. Sir Arthur Keith says:— ‘ ‘ Tho right name for tho Tower of Babel is civilisation; every attempt to build it has ended in the confusion of builders. Can we, by taking thought, avoid former errors? I think wo may. “There are some who think that man has reached the highest point to which evolution can carry him, and that ho has now become a fixer! and Htabio typo. No one who has studied tho history of living things can accept sueh a view; nothing nun live and ho stable; change may bo exceedingly slow, but It is inevitable. We cannot believe that man can ouoapn from thia universal law; he must change, for bettor or for worxo, We have only to look ftt what is happening on the continents of the world to-day to seo that changoH aro proceeding apaeo; some I'ftflC* fl.ro dying out, others are taking thalr place, ‘•Ono would Jlko to think that 'every day and in every way’ wo become bettor and hotter. Our ideals bowihii higher; wo could net live happily unlosß wo worn oonvinoM (hat this Is true, Our opportunities of living life to the full continue to improve. But if wo bring a clear and 000 l judgment to boar on wlmt wo know concerning man in past times wo cannot claim to bo, in a physical ponso, better or higher human beings that tho mon who found' od civilisation 6,000 years ngo, “And yet, when wo go back to still earlier times and poo man omorgo from a form little higher than an apo and reach his present ostato, the hope wells up within us that In some way wo may yet circumvent tho limitations of Mvlilafttion and riso to the status of Buper=humanity.”