The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1911. WHAT MAN HAS DONE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 149, 20 December 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1911. WHAT MAN HAS DONE.

The story of what man has done in the course of his life on earth is so extraordinary that we fail to grasp its greatness. And this leads one to ask sometimes whether man is less than the deeds lie does and lias done. We know that potentially he is not less, but he doea not always live up to his own stature. It.is therefore a bracing tonic to consider what man has done, for it is a certain help to further deeds. And if there is one book which, by its imaginative insight helps one to do that it is the new "Popular Science," wliich Mr. Arthur Mee has edited, and is now publishing. It is not always given to the man of .science and the man of deeds to be able to explain to others what he has discovered and what he has done. This is where the journalist comes in—the man of vision—whose gift of appreciating what others have seen and done is in its way as great a gift as the original work. Mr. Mee is such a journalist. Here is the key to Mr. Mee's plan, which surely gives in the briefest possible words the greatest story ever told. First, millions of worlds begin; then the earth comes from a (.'loud of lire; then life takes possession and fills the earth with food; then life founds the animal kingdom, and man appears. Man builds up strength of body and mind; man finds power; man uses power to make things and do things; man distributes the things lie makes; man organises society, and creates the future. Put- in Mr. Mee's own picturesque way and words, these twelve sections tell "the story of Man and the World. It tells the history of the earth and the life of man. It goes back, as clearly as the mind of man can, to ihe days when the iron with which we build our ships poured down on the

a thousand years ago, power won- from Nature, snatched from wind and river and sun. He is harnessing natural forces to do the work his own hand, cannot do. Here is- told the story of power from the beginning, with all the marvellous means by which man, when he finds a thing impossible, makes a ■ machine to do it. He sends his messages through air; he hitches his engines to the rivers; he floods the dark world with light drawn from beyond the ether." The section on how "Man Uses Power" tells us that — "The world's workshop is the world itself, and the workers are the human race. , What are they doing? Here we meet the great industrial armies of the world. We see them moving in masses to forward the comfort and unity and prosperity of I mankind. We see the life of our fac-1 tories and fields and mines. We have passing before- us a panorama of the workshops of this busy world, a world alive with energy, creating, constructing, discovering, inventing, down-throwing, up-building, advancing for ever from conquest to conquest, from achievement to achievement, until the whole man-made world is changed and made anew." In the section oro "Man Buys and Sells" we are told that—"All the world buys and all the world sells-. Here we come into the world's market-place, where America is selling cotton, and India is gelling jute, and China is selling tea, and Persia is selling rugs, and Germany is selling dyes, and Japan is selling porcelain, and England, is selling machines to all the world. The commerce of Great Britain is the wonder of the world, yet there is not enough money in England to pay for one month's purchases." In the section on "Man- Organises Society" we are told that —"From chaos to a sort of order, from a sort of order to the beginning of law, mankind emerged while the soul of man was still lost in a darkness that no light could penetrate, in a depth of ignorance and bewilderment that no intelligence could l fathom. And step by step, through generations without number, the groups and tribes and races of mankind became the founders of the nations of the world to-day. This is the story of the building up of civilisation from barbarism. To you who read it, •it is the story of your family, of the accumulated wisdom and untiring energy of a thousand years of men which lie behind the happy home, the quiet street, the prosperous city, the united nation. It is the story of how millions of men, each with his own interest, his own ambition, his own selfishness, live together at peace with all for the good of all. It is a long, long look through the ages of Time." In, the section called "Man Creates the Future," we are told that—"ln the people called Eug-:nists, in the faith they hold, lies the hope of the world for the children of our children. Every man is part of the world; it is for ■every man to see that his part of the world is as good as it can be. That is the foundation- of the. youngest and greatest of all the sciences—Eugenics, ■ the science of ennobling human life. We live not only to study the Past, not only to share in the Present, but to help to make the Future, too. We must give our children a noble ancestry to emulate, a noble vision) to advocate, a noble offspring to anticipate. For these things we do hand down to unborn ages. Here we read of the betterment of human life, and of the way that leads from the land of our fathers to the land of our children, through the Gates of Dawn."