THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 December 1925, Page 2

THOUGHTS FOR THE TIMES.

Thu Son ai. C x it. ‘‘lt has become possible lo he-little the part of the individual in the daily life of the world. Thus wo are often enough told that the individual is nothing without society. In a sense, that may he true; the more complicated any society, our own for example. liccoiue* the more necessary is it tor individuals to co-operate with one another. Besides, in an old and densely populated country human sympathies are greatly stimulated, if only by be mere fact of contiguity. But though human association is an indispensable condition of the highest civilisation. we ought not to imagine that the individual initiative is of less account to-day than it was in more primitive times. The fact i- that society is dependent upon individual impulse or enterprise for all change, ahether it mav prove to lie beneficent or other, and those who talk so loudly about the power of the State to do this or that, as if the State itself was not the c-reatnre of individual will, are deceiving themselves about the true nature of human affairs.” —Sir Ernest Benn.