SHALL WE BECOME SUPERMEN?

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 25, 21 April 1927, Page 10

SHALL WE BECOME SUPERMEN?

IDEALS OF CIVILISATION Under this title Sir Arthur Keith, F.R.S., has contributed to the “ Evening News,” of London, two long articles. Here is a brief extract from one of them. Sir Arthur Keith says: “ The right name for the Tower of Babel is civilisation; every attempt to build it has ended in the confilion of the builders. Can we, by taking thought, avoid former errors? I think we may.

“ There are some who think that man has reached the highest point to which evolution can carry him, and that he has now become a fixed and stable type. No one who has studied the history of living things can accept such a view; nothing can live and be stable; change may be exceedingly slow, but it is inevitable. We cannot believe that man can escape from this universal law; he must change, for better or for worse. We have only to look at what is happening on the continents of the world to-day to see that changes are proceeding apace; some races are dying out, others are taking their place.

“ One would like to think that ‘ every day and in every way ’ we become better and better. Our ideals become higher; we could not live happily unless we were convinced that this is true. Our opportunities of living life to the full continue to improve. But if we bring a clear and cool judgment to bear on what we know concerning man in past times we cannot claim to be, in a physical sense, better or higher human beings than the men who founded civilisation 6,000 years ago. “ 4 nd . yet > when we go back to still earlier times and see man emerge from a form little higher than an ape and reach his present estate, the hope wells up within us that in some way we may yet circumvent the limitations of civilisation and rise to the status of Super-humanity.”