The Time to Think.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 28 October 1919, Page 3

The Time to Think.

The time is appioauhing when the people of Nw Zealand will be required to adjust their tli in king-cups firmly to their cnininms. 'they have been endowed with intellio-etiee, that they may apply it, not for their own aggrandisement, but for the benefit of present ' and future generations. If they permit other people to do their thinking, they su'rernck'r the gneatest privilege that has been bestowed 'upon them by the 'Democracy. A contemporary puts - the position in a nutsliall wlien it says: It is the citizen's first 'business to think about his .country's business. By not thinking out 'questions thoroughly for ourselves, we put ourselves and our country at the mercy of the man who only pretends to Jiave thought, them out. Such a, man may be an arrant hiwnbuo- or an honest ignoramus who knows just enough to trunk he knows enough, 'but, does not iknaw enough to know tliat he does not luioiv 'enough. If only lie speaks with the damatism of cocksure infallibility, we swallow it. . 'Even if we suspect some flaw in his .argument, we cannot tell what it is, without enough 'knowledge of our own to test his plausible opinion by; and so, uneasily, we sit quiet ~and let him go on. 'Vexed when he spoke yet still they heard him speak, ' It will be all the better for New Zealand if during the next few weeks everv New Zealander makes it his or her ,'busine6 to do a lot of li/ircl tfiinkuirr aad sane reasoning."