CAN MAN MAKE HIS OWN ENVIRONMENT?

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2674, 31 August 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

CAN MAN MAKE HIS OWN ENVIRONMENT?

With men, reason ie before everything ; reason, which includes duty. Even the physical conditions under which all human beings grow up are, to a large extent, the product aud fruit of reason, That is not the case with the wild animals. They find themselves in a certain environment, and there they must remain and adapt their ways to their circumstances. But with man it is quite otherwise. In every stage of civilisation lip can, in a great measure, make his own environment, both physical and intellectual. He is so to speak, master of his own power which he possesses—a stricking advantage over all other animals. Of course it may be argued that, as a matter of fact, man does not make, his own environment, but grows up amid the surroundings in which he has been born, and h modified by them, and modifies them in turn, exactly as other animals do. True! But the position here affirmed is, not that man always does modify and more or less completely make his own environment, but that, being possessed of free will, he has the intelligence and the physical power which fit him to do so. He can do it as an individual if he will, he can do it in co-opera-tion with his fellows if he and they choose to combine. That he does not do it, except in a poor and unworthy degree, is his fault much more than it ia his misfortune. It is one of the most obvious of sociological facts that the adult world that now is creates and maintains conditions of a physical, intellectual, and moral kind which are often dangerous and sometimes destructive to the coming generation. Every smoky town, every full river, every poisonous drain, every pestilential fever house, every drunkard, every thief, every fallen woman, every insincere and impure hearted man, every idler, every frivolous person, every fool, conspires with every other creature of the same class to create an environment in which the young of the human species must physically and intellectually breathe and liv-e. This is the baldest possible statement of a scientific sociological fact. A pure atmosphere and a congenial soil are the primary and indispensable conditions of all healthy life of every kind. How can our boys and girls be either physically or intellectually sound and wholesome in the environment in which they are placed by our action aud the action of our forefathers ? What a vast amount of self-preserving antiseptic substance must be inherent in human bodies and minds when so many of them can preserve themselves from physical and intellectual death aud putridity under such unfavourable circumstances aa these ? Talk of human nature being exhausted and worn out ! It is only just beginning to live ! What we need in these days is the marriage of a true and intelligent science with a reasonable and universal religion; in other words, a combination of the highest knowledge with the deepest recognition of duty. Then we shall have an atmosphere and a soil—,l complete environment—in which perfect physical, intellectual, and moral health will be not only possible but inevitable. That is the end towards which all men who have insight and conscience should aim.