DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 221, 7 December 1927, Page 5

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

LOOKING BACKWARD (Copyright , 1927.) tt SETON-KARR, a noted traveller, told the Anthropological Section at the British Association for the Advancement of Science the other day that the savage state of existence was the most ideal. We have often had the same feeling. We have looked over the fence and envied the pigs in their sty. There are many of us who look back at the Middle Ages and wish that we might enjoy the simple life as they used to. Many people object to sending missionaries to foreign lands, such as China and Africa, because the natives are much better off in their original state. But it won’t do. Civilisation has its diseases and advancement its drawbacks,, but on the whole we are better off than w r e used to be. Summing it all up, the advantages are in favour of a civilised community. We may have nervous prostration and hardening of the arteries, but at least we don’t live in the days of human slavery, days when duelling was in vogue and “civilisation was upon a dung heap,” as was the case in the Middle Ages. Men are no longer tortured for their religious beliefs, and it is no longer the custom for the host to get drunk and outdo his guests in the business of rolling under the table. On the whole, we prefer to be civilised, although there is no doubt that civilisation has its drawbacks. The trouble is that retrogression may be all right for animals, but will not do for people with minds. It is the mind that is for ever groping forward and the mind that is continually progressing. A Southern slave, a black man, having escaped from the South, came to a judge in Cincinnati and wanted help in getting to Canada. “Why,” said the Judge, “did you not have a kind master and were you not treated well, with plenty to eat and a good place to sleep? What did you want to run away for?” “I don’t know, Judge,” replied the coloured man. just can’t exactly say—but the place is open down there if you want it.”