PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13488, 19 May 1917, Page 7

PUBLIC OPINION

As expressed by correspondents, wiioso letters are welcome, but for whose views we have no responsibility. NATURAL OR ARTIFICIAL JUSTICE. (To the Editor.) Sir, —Two letters have appeared in your paper on the above subject. To my mind the writers deal with the result, and not the cause. What burnt Bruno at the stake? —Because he taught tlm plurality of worlds. What caused Galileo, the first man to claim that the worlds revolved, to deny himself and to be 1 imprisoned for life? What caused millions of people to be put to death for impossible crimes? What causes millions of people to suffer for the mistakes of others?— Ignorance and selfishness. Who is responsible for the ignorance and selfishness of the world? Every man and woman in the world to-day is what heredity and environment have made them, except a few marvellous individuals who claim that their magnificent brain is the centre of the world's intelligence; even if their mother had been a coloured woman, an idiot, or if they had been reared by savages, such trifles would not have effected their present grandeur. If the bulk of the people are what heredity and environment have made them—and I challenge any person to prove otherwise —the quickest way to give justice to all mankind is to improve their heredity and environment. Such a grand and noble work should only he entrusted to -the grandest minds the world has yet produced. To ask statesmen to undergo a scientific mental and physical test for

such work would appear to them more practical than profitable, but they are not slow in subjecting their employers to such a test when thought necessary. I think no intelligent person would object to an expert phrenologist and doctor examining all school children and selecting our future doctors of sociology; and then give them a special education so as to develop a superior constitution and well-developed brain. In the meantime an annual conference of judges, with suggestions to our statesmen, should accomplish some good. The correspondent "Jurist" gives account of how scores of witnesses gave a different account of the same occurrence. There is nothing remarkable about that to a person who understands phrenology—in fact it could not be otherwise. Suppose we take a street fight and ask 20 witnesses to give an account of it; the man with large perceptive faculties will note every detail, even to the colour of the Agisters' hair, eyes and clothes, but if he has a bad memory take his evidence as soon as possible; the man with large reflective faculties will not note details, because he will be occupied with what caused the trouble, and what will be the result; the man with large intuitive faculties will be able to give a fairly good account of the occurrence, even if his view was often obstructed, for he can easily manufacture missing links —they make good romance writers; a man with the religious part of the brain large and the moral part weak, if one of the combatants was of his faith he would protect him at the other fellow's expense; a man with the moral part of the brain the largest and a right education would tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, no matter who was concerned; witnesses with the selfish part of the brain the largest and moral small (which is the brain of a savage) will give faked evidence for profit or revenge. Who but a novice would start a poultry farm with every breed under the sun, and then punish them because they were not White Leghorns, and call it Justice? —I am, etc., E. W. BEER.

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