WEALTH AND LIFE

Wanganui Chronicle, 26 June 1948, Page 4

WEALTH AND LIFE

u ' j'HERE is no wealth but life,” declared John Ruskin. As a saying it was arresting, but what does it mean? What is meant by wealth? It means things of worth? Life is a boon and as such is worthwhile. Fut is all life a noon? Is the invalid in constant pain and bedridden to be regarded as a person in receipt of a priceless boon? Such a condition is endurad because there is the hope entertained that a cure may, in the future, be effected, when life would become sweet once again. Life, then, to be a boon, must be able to flourish under certain favourable conditions. But what is Life? There are said to be dead or inanimate things and animate things. Animate things are not passive: they contain a system which operates to tustain the entity at a level beyond that which would be sustained by the component parts existing by themselves. A man’s body is said to comprise for the most part water; there is lime and also carbon and some other minerals in a man’s human frame. The chemist can provide the enquirer with the exact contents, chemically speaking of the human frame. But that does not give any indication whatsoever as to the kind of man is the individual. That will depend upon the system which is the living organism. When that power to sustain the organism is inadequate the man is said to die. Then his body disintegrates. It is true that without that vitality man must inevitably disintegrate. But it is equally true that without the body the Life force cannot manifest itself. Seeing that it is possible to argue both ways quite validly, namely, that life without substance is not to be discerned and substance without life is also without personality, what comes of the averment that “there is no wealth but Life”?

It may 7 be said that the test of value is to be found in whether any given thing promotes or sustains or saves life. When it does that it adds to the main purpose of the scheme of creation. The term Life, however, is not an exact one. It does not mean purely the reproduction of any particular species. It. would include that: but it would not exclude life being made fuller, the species being made much more capable of enjoyment. It would hardly be possible to exclude the means which are employed to enrich a human life or even that of an animal from the term life. If it be said that the promotion of life in all its phases is the chief end of the scheme of existence then all that goes to support that, promotion can be accounted of value and therefore be regarded as wealth. Wealth and Life are interrelated and the one does not deny the existence of the other.