The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1929 THE ASCENT OF MAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 744, 17 August 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1929 THE ASCENT OF MAN

A LITTLE while ago in this pleasant community there was a flutter of temper over informative debates on Evolution and “the descent of man” from grinning apes or from creatures other than the angels on whose side the shrewd Disraeli stood. It did not do, as it never does, any harm to stir the surface of the pond of complacency, so long as too much mud is not stirred up. But since there is no definitely known beginning to Evolution, it is hardly necessary for any one of the disputants to become vexed at the difficulty of seeing the end of it. In England recently scientists and leisured philosophers discussed the ascent of man, and although they, too, could not visualise finality to the long climb to the summit of Civilisation they at least succeeded in convincing themselves that there are not many who realise the facts of man’s gradual evolution. It was admitted by one lecturer, however, that an English essayist, in a contribution on “Civilisation” to the New Encyclopedia Britanniea, had outlined the story of mankind’s progress in the most vivid and arresting form. To follow this outline of a slow and tortuous journey “uphill all the way,” it is necessary to picture the five hundred thousand years of man’s developing culture as compressed into a single lifetime. If this scale be taken, mankind needed 49 years to learn enough to desert his primitive hunting habits and to settle down in villages. “Half through the fiftieth year a few of the villagers discovered and began to practise the art of writing.” Reflection on that slow movement demonstrates at once and very clearly that impatient modern people need not rage at laggard politicians and their myopic vision. They are simply slow evolutionists, and perhaps their laboured progress is better than the frantic pace of quick revolutionists. But let us look again in imagination at the picture of man’s gradual ascent. Taking the same scale of measurement and time, the achievements of the Greeks were compressed into March of this year. “Christianity has prevailed since the middle of April; the printing process was invented a fortnight ago; we have been using steam for less than a week*, motor-cars for a day, wireless for a few hours.” Everything considered, perhaps the politicians do their work not so badly after all. So much for the scientists who deal only with facts or what they honestly believe to be provable truth, though occasionally they also are revealed by their successors to have been, not liars, which, is too ngly a word, but sincere speculators. There is a pawky story, for example, about the little world of the mighty atom. “What,” inquired a young woman, talking to an English fisherman, “did you think of last night’s wireless lecture on the atom?” “Never heard such a pack of lies in my life!” There you have the explanation of the slowness of man’s evolution and politics. What do the philosophers think about it all? Not unlike most ordinary folk whose philosophy is simple and more inclined toward comfort than toward complex problems, even the farthest advanced philosophers cannot tell whither mankind is going on this strange progress. Neither can they explain the methods of advance nor whether the evolution of civilisation is inevitable or is subject to conscious adjustment by mankind. They agree, however, on the necessity of promoting knowledge as a real and living thing, as something worth working for, worth fighting for. It is right and well at the same time to note that the deepest and the highest thinkers recognise the danger in making progress a false god. Magic cannot achieve progress or hasten the growth of civilisation. The best and surest aids so far discovered by mankind are “honest toil, eager searching, failure as well as success, courage and skill, and reverence.”

Meanwhile, the evolution that possibly appeals to most of the people hereabout is the fact that the season is emerging rapidly from winter into spring. Already, a few radiant days have battered pessimism and helped people mercifully to forget political rubbish. Soon, quite soon now, the old earth will be made new again, and filled with wonders that have not yet been subjected to primage duty and supertax, or to a raid by an impecunious Government into the treasure-house of Spring. There will be flowers opening at the flush of dawn and closing in the fading glow of the westering sun ; also bush and meadow, and the undismayed song of birds. And later, always later, the people, philosophic and frivolous alike, will at last praise politicians for the advent of Summer Time. This would be the best of visible worlds if (as an English professor has saM so wisely), “we were not all very stupid and unseeing still—some of us perhaps more stupid than others.” If the evolution of culture has been slow in the past half-million years, there is no great reason for despondency. Man may improve his character and outlook in the fifty million years which scientists say lie before him. Politicians, therefore, need not take umbrage at candid criticism. It is but a part of evolution.