POPULAR FALLACIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 January 1920, Page 10

POPULAR FALLACIES.

THAT WE CANNOT CHANGE HUMAN NATURE. There are certain fundamental elements in human nature which cannot be changed. Man is a vertebrate animal and in the clai;s of mammalia- He has the bones and blood, (lie eyes and ears and brains, the H»|K'tit«s and the passions, of the animal nature. Nothing can change iltai nature. No fastings, scourging, or prayings can rid hiin of his animal nature. An animal he was made and an animal he must remain till death dissolves his body and sets him free. And he is more than an animal; he has reason, conscience, reverence, imagination, ideals and affections. Germans of these powers may be discerned in other animals, but they remain but germs. Man's reason deduces from observed phenomena general laws; his conscience enforces them upon himself ana others; his imagination makes him an artist; his ideals and hie reverence make him a worshipper; he organises states, builds churches; creates language ' and 'literature. These powers cannot be denied to him nor destroyed by him. No materialistic pholisophy can persuade him that he does not possess them.

No vices, can entirely extinguish them. Though much spent Be the life and the hearing Uiat front, you, the same God did choose To receive what a man may waste, dese- " crate, never quite lose. - But this is not the meaning of the Popular Fallacy. Its meaning is well interpreted by Felix Holt, the Radical, in Geo. Eliot's novel so entitled, and by Felix Holt the reply is furmsned:— "They tell me I can't alter the world—that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, 'and if I don't lie and filch somebody else will. Well, then, somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversation, Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it."

We' cannot destroy the elemental powers of human nature and substitute ethers in their place. But we can develop these powers or we can dwarf them; we can dir.ect them to noble or to ignoble uses; we can make our spiritual powers the master or the servants of our bodies; we can make our reverence contribute to degrading superstitions or to • inspirational worship; we can make our imagination inspire to a higher lire or incite to sensuality; we can make out conscience a cruel despot to others or a wise guide for ourselves. The New Zealand Primer of olden times told the child that Moses was the meekest man of history; but when he saw an Egyptian maltreating an Israelite and with one blow felled him to the earth and left him dead, he was not the meekest of men. His passion, developed by discipline, made him patient, for patience is passion tamed. Augustine the roue wis a vcrv different man from Augustine the great theologian; Luther the mock climbing Pilate's Staircase on his knees to win pardon was ' a very different man from Luther the Protestant nailing upon the doors of the Wittenberg church his defiance to the Pope; Wesley the High Churchman was a very different man from the Wesley who leaped over all ecclesiastical fences and discarded all teclesiastical rules and rituals in his enthusiastic resolve to carry the glad tidings to the common people; Gough, the drunken bookbinder was a very different man from Gough the pioneer apostle of temperance.

Nor are the change in character exceptional. They are the very fabric of history. "Huge white bodies,'cool-hlood-ed, with fierce blue eyes, reddish fhxen hair; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese, heated by strong drinks, of a cold temperament, slow to love, home-stayers, prone to brutal drunkenness, these are the features which Tainc attributes to the early and some remnants of them remain to tlrs present day, but they are not the diatiiKt've features of the Anglo-Saxon .11 tip twentieth century. America to"ay rniiv retain in a different foe:it sunt 9 of the vices an ancient Rome, but the American civilisation of to-day is radically different from the Roman civilisation Df the first century. The negroes of to-day, land owners, farmers, mechanics, 'merchants, hankers, lawyers, physicians, teachers, are very different from the negro slaves of 75 years ago. Careful scientific measurements have demonstrated that the heads of infant children born of foreign parents in this country are appreciably different from the heads of infant children born of the same pn rents in the Old World Tli-> notion that human nature cannot be eliMiged is based upon a false philosophy- It assumes that man is a marble statue which can be mutilated but not taade over. But he is not a marble statue; he is potter's clay, and life is still at work moulding him. Man is pet made; he is in the making. As has been well r,aid, "creation is not a product but a process." The first chapter of Genesis we must read in the present tense: God is creatine; the heaven and the earth, He is dividing the day from the'night, He is calling up the water: from the seas and making them ; n f„ clouds, He is speaking to the r-ar'.h if brings fort-Ji grass and hcrb-v'nl-!;,,,,-seed, and trees yielding fruit. T j,', :4 forming man out of the du*t ■ t)> „ earth and breathing into him i!n ' of life, and man is becoming ;i !i\inir soul.

There, is. in the Sistine Chapel at Rome a great mutual painting by Michael An,ge'o, representing the Last Judgment. I Men and women are emerging from their graves in various postures, and some who are entirely freed are helping others to escape from their graves. It 'is a true picture of life. Man is emerging from the animal. Life, is a process of resurrection. Some of us are trying to help our neighbors, up; some of'us are trying to push them hack into the grave. What the finished man will be, no one can guess. We can be sure only of this, that he will be beyond our most extravagant hopes. Who could anticipate ft Browning or a Gladstone in the babe in the cradle? Who could anticipate an American Republic extending from the Gulf to the Lakes, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast in the infant colonies whose only equipment was love of liberty and a courage that dared fight, for it? Who could have sneoeed from the siv members of the drinking club forming in Chase's Tavern in Baltimore the first total abstinence socictv in this country, that in less tlian a centurv the j whole country wohld become a total abstinence society? Says TTenry Ward 1 Beeeher: "Men walk from the fleshly up I to the spiritual." He does Vit reneat I the declaration of Jesus, that the kingdom of God is like a seed cast into the earth and "the earth bring? forth fruit ' of herself." The spiritual forces are in man himself, and everv one who is Irving to make this world a better world has God's time and unrecognised spiritual forces in man himself working with liini.--Lvman Abbott, in the Xew "or!: "Cutiwk,"