TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19893, 23 May 1936, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

History’s Wavering Line “History admittedly presents us with a wavering line and not with a rational curve, still less with it straight upward path. “'hat is the Cause of that wavering? Not, I suggest, that the waverings as such are part of the divine plun; but rather that the possibility of wavering was an element in the. design. The setbacks and disnsters, the entnstrophie»~ whieh intervene and bring: high pl'oniise to nothing, the more deadly slmv rleeny of our vigorous eivilisntinns, are partly due to that irrational element in human life whieh we. may deserilio as ‘t’hanee.’ lint they are also due in pnrt to the failure of persons and stn'ieties to respond to their vnention. “ Providence seems to work in the sphere, of history by persuasion and not by eonipulsion. (‘ontinunllv opportunities are offered which if taken might he the heginnin: ut‘ some great ndvnni‘c “man-15 fl supiul order worthy of man. The eoursc of liistorv is studded with oeensions when the future depended on whether :iit'ew individuals had the insight to see whnt might be done and the pom-age to do it, and with other occasions when the few who perceived the signs of the times could not make their vision effective in social action. To the failure of response to vacation must lie nttrihuted many of the waverings and vieissitudes of the course of history. But, nevertheless, history lnis some meaning. It. discloses a direction. There is something; significant. going tin—the progressiie creation of mau.”—Dcan Maittheii's,