The Southland Times SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1942. The Meaning of History

Southland Times, Issue 24829, 22 August 1942, Page 4

The Southland Times SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1942. The Meaning of History

THE MIND of man is so constituted that it cannot grapple with conceptions of spatial or temporal magnitude until they have been compressed into mathematical symbols or formulas; and even then they are the province of a learned minority. Therefore the reactions of average readers to statements made by Dr F. J. Turner in a stimulating address to the Southland branch of the Royal Society on Thursday night are not likely to be sharply positive. It is interesting to know, on good scientific authority, that the earth will probably remain habitable for mankind for another 1,000,000,000 years. But the span of individual life, measured against such an immensity of time, is too small to be suggested, even by a metaphor. Who, then, can be alarmed by the lecturer’s declaration that “the human race would long since have vanished and been replaced by something much different before the end of that period”? If 1,000,000,000 years is not long enough for the processes of human evolution, the race deserves an ignominious extinction. But Dr Turner did not imply that the full period would be available. He said, indeed, that the human race would “long since” have vanished; and although a few million years would not be missed from such an ample allowance of time there are tendencies in human behaviour which might calamitously shorten it. Man is a specialist in adaptation. He has come to terms with his natural environment, tapping the resources of earth with an amazing ingenuity. With painstaking efforts he has tracked down the causes of diseases which formerly made life “hasty, short and brutish.” And although new diseases have taken the place of some that are gone, it is certainly true that infants now have a chance of survival quite unknown to their forefathers, and that they may reasonably expect to live longer, and on the whole more comfortably. Yet in one department of life, the most important of all, the progress has been painfully small. “Man had taught himself to think logically in science and medicine,” said the lecturer, “but not so in politics and sociology, t That might be the cause of failure and the extinction of the species.” It is sadly true that, under present conditions, an individual can be given good health and wide social interests; but he cannot be protected from the shattering interruptions of war. Twice within 25 years the generations of young men have been swept into a tremendous experience. Violence may be excluded, or rigidly controlled, in the individual States; but it remains the instrument of political ambitions, and can inundate the.world like a tidal wave. There are things happening today, in Poland and Czechoslovakia, more terrible than anything that has been known since the dark ages.

The Wider Background It is easy to wonder, while barbarism creeps back like a foul exhalation from the past,' if there is not some incurable disease of the mind which makes mankind unfit for survival. Yet such a pessimism receives no sanction from history. The present convulsion is part of the long struggle for the unification of the world. In other centuries the battle was for Europe. The discovery of the new ; world and the progress of physical science have made it inevitable that the wars of this era should affect every habitable portion of the earth. Space is shrinking while man asserts his mastery of communications. The world will be smaller after the present war—so much smaller that future wars will be increasingly suicidal. It is easy to complain that man has failed to master himself. But progress has always been uneven. There are large countries where literacy is a new thing. The conscience of the democratic peoples has had its growth through suffering and a slow education; but it does not function today in a world which is universally Christian in belief and outlook. Even in Christian countries it cannot be said that spiritual enlightenment is general, or that it has reached the higher levels of behaviour. There is a curious belief in the efficacy of planning. Man has taught himself to think logically in science. All that he needs to do now, therefore, is to apply the same methods to the problems of sociology and politics. But man is not merely a thinking creature. His inner life is emotional. He feels much more than he thinks, and feeling can be blind, capricious and explosive. The study of these mental energies is one of the youngest of the sciences. Even when it has reached a state of development comparable with that of the physical sciences it cannot save man from his own weaknesses. There is no meaning in history until it can be seen as the story of a great adventure, a quest for salvation that will not end in the setting up of an earthly paradise. The poet, John Keats, once described the world as “the vale of soul-making.” Viewed in this light, man’s work on earth is to express, through his own life, a divine purpose that takes no account of time. The background is not the ages which may or may not be available for human experiment, but the silent reaches of eternity. When this idea is made the mainspring of action, individual and collective, there is nothing oppressive in the panorama of years. In all ages, and in all states of society, man has his opportunity to be true to himself and to his faith. Armed with this belief, he has nothing to fear from the fastmoving currents of time.