THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19313, 20 July 1934, Page 4

THE HUMAN ELEMENT

“ Too many of our politicians, of our economists and reformers, fail to realise the elementary difference between the manipulation of impersonal objects and the development of living organisms,” said Canon Raven in a recent lecture.- “ They see' their task as one of organisation'and tend to regard its human material as if men and women were the pieces of an elaborate jigsaw puzzle—pieces which must be shuffled and regimented and fitted together —pieces each with its own appropriate shape and colouring—pieces which, when once they /ire arranged in tho'proper positions, will reveal a picture.

“It is, of course, a fascinating pursuit so to combine and recombine human societies. The sociologist who starts upon it may resist the usual temptation to force his pieces into tho position that he allocates to them and to cut them down until they fit in. Ho may strive to put them honestly into their places.

“Even so, the analogy is mistaken; and the method consequently inadequate; for human beings are not bits of dead stuff, curiously and irrevocably angled and patterned, and to regiment them even for their own good is to deny to them their fundamental characteristic. “ They are alive and capable of almost unlimited growth and change. The statesman who is worthy of the name will recognise that to create a healthy society is much more like the training of a child than the solution of a puzzle.”