THE WILL TO LIVE.

Hokitika Guardian, 15 October 1928, Page 8

THE WILL TO LIVE.

From time to time we hear that the world’s supply of coal, or of oil, or of some other commodity essential to our modern, existence, is within measurable distance of exhaustion. Then arises some “pale closet student” of chemistry to comfort us with the assurance that he has discovered a way of treating coal or oil which wilf increase the longevity of the known supply one hundredfold, says an exchange. One of the latest “dreamers”—they arc all called dreamers in the first instance- proposes to dissolve the elements of water to obtain fuel. It may be suggested that, in a period of phenomenal drought, we should be unable to set the furnace going because there was no water, but our latter-day civilisation " grows ‘accustomed to these paradoxes.

Ages past, when the mind of man was begining to grope its way dimly to the heights where we now imagine it to be established, there was probably some sagacious old cave-dweller who perceived the increase of the tribe and its relations to the visible supply of nuts and roots and bandcoots, end other edible fauna and flora. With profound, sorrowful wisdom, he foresaw the extinction of his kind. History tells us a different story. Man has developed an extradordinary adaptability, which has raised him above the - life-wasting processes of fecund nature. The enormous production of life destined only to be immeflirlcly te Hr eyed docs not hold its ■proportion in the case ok-humanity, which for the most part has now decided to avoid relief of congestion by famine and disease. Jt has not yet shod the thinning device of war, but that, too, will pass.

When mankind comes to the end of its resourcefulness in substitution 01 in eking out what it has declared essential for its existence and comfort, then its hour will have struck.