MORAL ELEMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1939, Page 3

MORAL ELEMENT

THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE. To explain a particular type of man on the basis of glandular developments is like attributing the nature of a tree to its knots, says Canon A. P. Shutford, writing in the “Montreal Family Herald." It is the life-force in the tree that builds the trunk, branches, leaves and fruit. You can distinguish the oak from the pine by studying the structure, but it is not the structure that decrees the type of tree. Similarly it was the individual type of man that declared the character of the glands. How did we come to recognise that a certain type of face is associated with peculiar thyroid glands, or that a particular kind of brain was connected with different pituitary glands? It was the man. who was first studied —the glands were the effect and not the cause. In our day, the psychologist is apt to claim too much by the action of the glands. Man is something more than a bundle of complexes and reactions. The sum of the matter is this: Behind all the inferior and secondary causes there is the Great First Cause. Call him God or elan vital or what you will. The name matters little, so long as we recognise that there is something beyond matter, a creative energy that works upon the substance of life as the potter works upon the clay. It gives greater dignity to life, and surely exalts every profession that has to do with the care of human beings. Modern doctors cannot do better than follow the lead of their ancient and modern fathers, recognising the moral,element in their work.