SPIRITUAL VITALITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1942, Page 4

SPIRITUAL VITALITY

MUST BE SAFEGUARDED AIM OF UNIVERSITIES. STATEMENT OF DR. HANAN. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Much of the address the chancellor of the University of New Zealand. Dr. Hanan, M.L.C., gave to the senate yesterday he devoted to emphasising that the aim of universities, with their ideals and principles of rational liberty of thought and spiritual vitality, should be vigilantly safeguarded against interference in all services apart from those directly connected with a grave national emergency, such as might arise from the necessity for an effective war organisation. “There can be no evolution upward and onward save with freedom,” said Dr. Hanan. "You can no more bind the mind and human personality and expect them to develop, than you can bind the arm and have it develop. Another truth which cannot but be strongly stated is that the minds of men and women are not mere machines intended to be wound up and set going according to a diagram. In men and women there are centres of mind and spirit which, when brought under the motive power of proper culture, refinement and good character, produce a spiritual type that enables individual minds 'to wrestle with error and ignorance, to see what is true, and to proclaim it and. no matter at what risk, to bear witness to the truth they have found. It is the antithesis to dictatorial restraint. - It is this spirit of freedom that provides that essential structure of character and good citizenship upon which a humane civilisation and human progress depend.” •