THE DETACHED VIEW

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 71, 16 December 1937, Page 4

THE DETACHED VIEW

. . Let the mind's eye survey the 2000 millions of human Deings who now occupy the earth, heirs of all that has gone before, progenitors of all that is to come after. View them in their homes, their villages, towns and States; with their beliefs and disbeliefs, their devotions to creeds and causes, nationalities and races. See their conflicts between classes and between nations, their warships and fighting planes, their waiting armies. "Then, as the globe turns, see how the dawn brings out of darkness, all down the curve of the earth, the domes and spires, towers and minarets of thousands of cathedrals, churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. They are significant. They are the signs of man's perennial striving to transcend his planet, to reach out toward the Spirit that pervades this space, understands these constellations and distant galaxies, and these vibrations quivering everywhere. " Only for a moment can the soul endure the cold and silence of that isolation. It will hurry back to familiar things, to the comfort of the nature that we know and the warmth of human society. But perhaps, if we have once felt that detachment, the problems that surround us — personal, social, international, religious; problems which all seera so momentous and so complex — may afterward appear in a different light, and simpler." — Viscount Samuel.