The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1906 PROGRESS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 15, 12 April 1906, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET

THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1906 PROGRESS

To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace. Leo. xm, to the n.z. tablet

fTIMCaIOUS correspondent is distressed lest t some one mighi; read into our editorial ' .columns of last week contempt for, or oppo- • ■ sition to, material progress and the •develop- " ment of physical science. He may possess rf his soul in peace. Our position was made '•', abundantly clear. Our gain from the advancement .of ■ natural science and its application to the material arts of life has been immense. But that was not the point at issue between lis and the DreaeEer of St. Mark's. Auckland. It was the

question as to what constitutes .'the real happinessessential greatness of a "nation. Tihe results achieved in the realms ■of physical . research and invention have X been indeed stupendous. But man was created for, still higher things. The law of his progress is moral, not • merely material. The locomotive and the electric light' and the Parsons turbine and , the Ivel motor have their legitimate place and use. But tfcey are not the beall and the end-all of men and nations. They 'are good things in. the material and mechanical order— an order that is below, not above, man. They have an • important iKearing on production, transit, and communication. But (as Brownson observes) ' they da not elevate man, and are no progress in religion, sanctity^ morality, truth, justice, the law of nations, which form the basis of civilisation, and without which cMljfea-, tion would be a polished barbarism. To worship steam- ' is, after all, not much in advance of the worship of his fetish, Mumbo-Junijbio, by the African negro.' * The worship of the Mumbo- Jumbo— that is, of the lower realities of life— too often tends to make men forget or neglect the higher. ' A man's life,' says the Scripture, ' doth not. consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth.' And we know of One Who said : ' Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice ' ; and : 'If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast, give it to the poor, and come and follow Me.' 'To have what we want, 1 says a profane author, 'is riches ; to be able to do withooit is power.' But how many a Christian pulpit has been, degraded by proclaiming Christ, the Friend and Father of the poor,, to be a mere filler of national moneybags ! 'It is,' says Lilly, ' a condition of civiUs-a-tion that the people of a country should be able, ' with moderate toil,, to procure what is necessary for comely living.' Even in this resped, Professor ,ThoroM Rogers is a witness (in his monumental work, 'History of Agriculture and Prices ') that the condition of the British laborer was very much better in 1401-1540 than it is at the present day, despite three and a half centuries of ':,progress ' and invention. Our gain from these is, indeed, vast. But it is easy to attach too much importance to it in estimating what constitutes the highest (that is, moral) progressi, of which physical science is not the instrument. Here are two extracts flijom Henry George (' Progress and rjcjverty, pp. 7, 5) which sufficiently indicate that, great though the benefits of our material progress are, they are by ', no means unqualified :—: — ' Just as a commiunUy realises the conditions i which all civilised communities are striving for, and • ■advances ii enc n the scale of material progress — just as,' ■ closer settlement, and more intimate connection with ■the rest of the world, and greater utilisation of lajtjor-' saving machinery, make possible greater economies in production and exchange ; and Avealth, in consequence, increases not merely iin the aggregate, but in proportion to the population — so doe,s poverty take a darker aspect. Some get an infinitely better and easier living, but others find ib hard to get a living at all. The " tramp " comes with the locomotive; and almshouses and prisons are as surely the marks of " material progress " as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses, and magnificent churches.' ' Where the conditions to which material progress everywhere tends are most fully realised— that is to say, where popuTation is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of produciion and exchange most .highly developed— we find the deepest poverty, . the sharpest , struggle for existence, and the mast enforced idleness.' Catholic Belgium forms a bright' exception /to Henry ,' George's last-quoted general rule'; for it is atwthe sarneV time the most prosperous country in Europe _and...t-he i most densely populated in the world. The cpur.se 1 of > i mechanical progress in Great Britain saw. 'the Worker? reduced to a depth- of physical; and moral degradation-? , such, as .has never, perhaps, been witnessed in any* other . country, whether Christian' br' pagan/ 'In these' vital ' respects Spain has attained, and still r"etai&is7 the v KigKei/ progress and civilisation. - *