WHAT IS CIVILISATION?

Shannon News, 11 September 1925, Page 4

WHAT IS CIVILISATION?

And What Is Progress? W.E.A. LECTURE.

Following is* the report of a W.E.A. * lecture given at 'Palanerston by Mr A. E. Mander. It will be read with interest,by local students. •Mr. Mander devoted the first part of liis lecture to a review of the broadest outlines of the story of the historic civilisation of Europe and the Middle Eastern world, ' from 'about 6000 years ago, at the dawn of history, until the present time. He described briefly the first historic civilisation of Egypt, Crete and what is now Mesopotamia. This was in existence before 4000 B.C. In its eastern half, this civilisation was swamped (between 3000 and 2000 8.C.) by waves of Semitic folk -overflowing from Arabia. But by B.C. 2000, by the time of Hammurabi, a second (Semitic) civilisation had evolved in these parts finding its purest form in Assyria; expressing itself in sea-trade through the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon; but reaching its highest development at, Babylon. Meanwhile the earlier civilisation continued to exist alongside it —in Crete and the Aegean and in Egypt. The first historic civilisation lasted in Crete and G-reece until about B.C. 1200, when it was overwhelmed by the fair Aryan people coming southward off their northern plains. Then there was a “Dark Age” there until the newcomers had settled down, had mingled their blood with that of the darker folk of the earlier civilisation, I and had begun to evolve a civilisation of their own. But during this period, the first historic civilisation continued to survive in Egypt; and the second (Semitic) civilisation still flourished in Phoenicia, in, Assyria and in Babylon. Thus the Greeks were able to pick up some of the knowledge of the two earlier civilisations, through their contact with Egypt (for the first) Phoenicia and Babylon (for the second). The lecturer then described the development and decay of Greco-Roman civilisation which, for a thousand years (roughly B.C. 600 to A.D. 400) spread all over the Mediterranean world. • Upon the crumbling of this civilisation and the Roman Empire there followed another thousand years of darkness and-chaos, the long dark Middle Ages. But .by about 1500 the next civilisation, our own, began at. least to merge in western Europe. Mr Mander gave an outline of the development of modern civilisation during the four hundred years it has now existed, showing particularly how some vestiges of the thought of Athens and Alexandria were carried over into the modern world.

Customary Belief. The lecturer then went on to deal with what he regarded as a very important fact, helping ug to under-' stand, in this respect, the course of history. Consider first what happened to ancient Egypt. f , Her brief but brilliant periods of the ‘flowering’ of civilisation occured when she received a severe ‘sha-king dp:’ But in Egypt these shakings-up occured so very rarely, because she was practically isolated by surrounding desert and sea. The result was that in Egypt everything became settled, stagnant. Religion, laws, social customs, art, morals,:the economic system everything settled down into a dull, unvarying routine. Everything petrified. As somebodyhas put it, “they must paint as their ancestors painted, physic as they physicked, pray as they prayed, think as they thought. Uutil rudely touched from outside, it was the perfect image of a living society.” That, said the lecturer, is the certain natural fate of every society that succeeds in fully adapting itself to its environment and is not disturbed

either by a. change in that environment or by forces from outside. The last state of any such organism or society is one of settled routine. In a human society, that means the complete domination of Orthodoxy, Custom and Tradition. When that state is reached, men cease to think they simply believe what they are

taught to believe, what their forefathers believed. They lose all initiative in thought and action. They live entirely in the customary belief and the customary ways of life. So, generation after generation, they die as they were born. Their mental life is dominated entirely by the Past.

The Advantage of the Greeks. Now see what happened when the Aryans came down into Greece. They were people of a northern race, barbarians; and their beliefs and customs related to the old life they had left, the old life on the plains. Most: of. these beliefs clearly could not serve in the new ponditions of life. As they gradually evolved a new civilisation, the Greeks had, therefore, to (evolve a new set of beliefs. They were forced to think things out, to work things oiit, afresh. Something they learned from the Phoenicians — shipbuilding, navigation, and the. art of writing. Some ideas they picked up from Egypt, and some from Babylon.

But—see the difference! In Egypt itself, for example, the people had to accept these beliefs, to accept them blindly, without question, because they were part of the old established tradition. But the Greeks did not. They took them over, not as ‘settled beliefs,’ but simply as ‘ideas’ —the raw materials of thought. The key-facts that explain that wonderful flowering of Greek thought in Athens and elsewhere, arc these; — They were a new people in that environment, and they had been obliged to discard most of the beliefs that related to th e old life they had left. They wpre then able to pick up ‘ideas’ from two other, older civilisations—that of ancient Egypt, and that of Phoenicia and Babylon. But they took these, not as fixed, settled beliefs, but only as suggestive ideas which they must think out for themselves. Intellectual Life-—and Death.

The Greeks had no priests. They had no fixed, splidified traditional thought—nobody of customary, ready made belief. They had no one on earth to tell them WHAT to THINK! Lucky people! Lucky people, obtaining ideas from earlier civilisations, but free from the imposition of ready made beliefs. Lucky people forced by circumstances to think things out for themselves! So, for three cen-; turies, wc find in Athens and the lonian cities—and later for a little while in Alexandria—such an oiilburst. of question and thinking as is almost without parallel in history. And then? Then tile Greeks in their turn went the way of all flesh. They died. Not physically, for another five centuries! But intellectually they had died by 100 B.C.

By that time they had finished thinking out things for themselves. By that time they had; reached a state in which they too looked to the Past for their beliefs. In Greek life the point, was reached at last —all too soon —at which—instead of thinking things out for themselves men only asked what -Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Epicurus, Zeno and the rest bad thought, two or three, four or five centuries before. Mr Mander then dealt with the rebirth of the questioning spirit in western Europe fifteen centuries later, and with the development of thought since then. To-day, he said, we can still watch the two tendencies struggling for,mastery. There is the “ndcncy to find things out. to think things out for ourselves. So long as that, tendency is dominant, the soul of civilisation lives. On the other hand, there is the tendency to impose, to accopl, ‘ready-made beliefs’ 'from' the Past. And when that tendency again becomes dominant-that means death. Basis of Civilisation

Civilisation can exist only on two conditions. First there must be a production of surplus wealth, over and above what the producers need to maintain themselves. This surplus may be the result of slave-labour, of superior natural resources, of efficient economic organisation, or of the use of harnessed power and machinery. But, in one or another of these ways, the actual producers of material things must produce a surplus, above what they themselves consume —or else, it seems, civilisation is impossible.

Does civilisation require teachers? Does it require judges, doctors, policemen? Does it require statesmen, scientists, artists? All thes e must be 'kept’ Somebody somehow must produce the material things they need. So it is a condition of civilisation, that, the producers (labour, power and machinery) shall also support a non-producing section of the people.

The second condition is that these non-producers shall be of some use. They are not freed from material production merely for idleness and pleasure-seeking. If they are not engaged in the production of material tilings, then they must be engaged in some other kind of service to civilisation. Otherwise there is no reason why they should be freed from the work of material production, Power —Slaves Nor does this apply only to those who are not engaged in productive work at all. In New Zealand (not counting motor-cars) we have working for us a quarter of a million horse-power, generated by coal and steam, by Benzine and by falling water. That jg. equivalent to the work of a million or two million slaves. This harnessed power is enough to keep not only the non-producers, but also to keep actual producers of material wealth for 2 or 3 hours every 7 day when they would otherwise have to be working. The eight-hour day in industry is made possible by the work of this quarter of a million horsepower. So even the productive work* ers have been liberated from production to some extent; and they too

must justify the use they lliake of the leisure they thus gain. Less time spent at productive work and more leisure—that is not a 'good thing” in itself. Whether or not leisure is a good thing depends, obviously, upon the use that is made of it. Less time spent at productive work, and more at the ltinema, at the races, in bed, or in gossiping—that does not mean an advance in civilisaton. What is Civilisation Now, (said Mr. Mander) —what do I mean by real civilisation? I mean a condition in which men live together as an orderly organised community. I mean a state in which their lives arc subject, not to the caprice of an autocrat; nor yet to settled custom, so “settled” that it cannot be changed; but subject to Law which though not capricious can be changed—either by the people. or ■ their rulers. I mean a state in which the citizens do not. settle their disputes by fighting, but by reference to the law or by arbitration. But, besides all that, I mean a state in which there is some striving after what Plato classified as Truth, Beauty and Goodness. Perhaps, as this is the last of a hundred lectures 1 have given here, you will permit me to end this course with a declaration of my own personal faith I believe that these things— Truth, Beauty and Goodness —are indeed the tilings by which the value of any individual life, and also of any particular civilisation, may be judged. Putting it in 'another way, I believe that the value of every ‘human life and every civilisation should be measured by the extent to ivhieh it shows: —(1) A striving after knowledge .together with intellectual independence; (2) A sense of N Beauty; and (3) in the sphere of personal character, Couragej - Honesty, a sense of Duty, and Consideration for others. What is Progress To me, an “improvement in'civilisation” means an improvement in these human values The mere increase of material wealth and a higher standard of living are, at the best, only means to this end. If they do not lead to a rise in these values, then an increase in material wealth and a higher standard of living do not mean an improvement in civilisation. The - shortening of the hours of labour, again, means an advance in civilisation only if the larger leisure results in an advance here. More material wealth, a higher standard of living, an easier life, a safer life, more pleasures in life: these things in themselves do not (to my mind) mean ‘progress’. But intellectual independence, a striving after knowledge; a sense of beauty; courage; honesty; a sense of duty: consideration for others—these are the things by which I judge tho individual —myself, those whom I meet, the characters that appear in history. And by these tilings, and these alone, I judge the value of every people and every civilisation. To me, these are the tests, the only test*, of progress in civilisation and the advancement of mankind;