WORKERS' EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 265, 3 August 1920, Page 6

WORKERS' EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION

LECTURE BY MR, ELSDON BERT.

On Sutiirday evening a lecture, entitled "Comparative Anthropology: Its Scope and Advantages," was given by Mr. Elsdnn Best, under the auspices of the Workers' Educational Association, in St. John's Schoolroom. The paper illustrated the benefits accruing from a comparative study of the concepts, usages and institutions of barbaric and civilised communities, with illustrations taken from Maori ethnography. After a general outline of the scope and importance of the science of anthropology and the progress it had made during the last SO years. Mr. Best dealt with the customs pertaining to birth, baptism, marriage, aud death among thn h°, ris ' *}P4 specially with the growth of the religious ideas amongst them and their nature myths. These he linked up with some of the present day beliefs and religious ceremonials of the most cultured races. Said the lecturer: "A study of comparative religion unquestionably tends to break down arbitrary beliefs and uncharitable views bv dispelling ignoranco of other faiths and of the origin of our own. We do not readily recognise how one form of religion is built upon another; how all such systems borrow from former faiths. A study of the origin and development of religions—savage,' barbaric and advanced—shows us how religious beliefs are intermingled, how similar concepts have been evolved by ninny peoples and how human mentality has developed on parallel lines the world over. When we recognise the fact that many of our beliefs have come down \o us from barbaric races, that many peoples have sought truth and God through ages of ignorance and suffering, that all men of all culturo stages have conceived, or endeavour to conceive, a form of spiritual life beyond the gates of death —then truly there comes to us the_knowledge that all mankind meet here-on common ground. We then know that all faiths are akin, all creeds are re' lated to each other, but that they illustrate different stages of development." It was announced at the end of the lecturo that Mr. Best has consented fo conduct a W.E.A. class for the study of Maori lore and history.