Show SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT by F A WALKER THE NATURE OF MAN experts of all sorts are paying more attention to the na ture of man than they did in the last two centuries they realize that everything which affects his mind Is important for that reason alone this applies to everything from psychoanalysis to political economy or from the question of the emotions to the question of wealth so we find the celebrated graham wallas complaining about the stu of politics who analyze political institutions and avoid the analysis of man it Is to the credit of benjamin kidd that in his social evolution a book which made a stir in the early nineties he pointed out that it was as necessary to apply to religion politics history ethics and econom acs ics as to the study of life john henry newman saw tats as far bak ns tle sixties he said that no period of church history no mat ter how obscure could le neglected because it was a link without which what came after would have been am possible there the future cardinal was us ing the language of science in regard to religion A man would be foolish who should say because he took no interest in paintings or sculpture that art was unimportant la the same way a man with ho ear for music might call music re gulat pd noise and dismiss it as useless but looked at from the proper point of view the paintings and the music are important not because of hose alio are not affected by them but because of those who are the fact that there Is nothing in painting or music has nothing to do with the case in the nineteenth the greatest scientific century that the world has ever seen many persons took a most unscientific view of religion they decided that science was bound to supplant religion ahat chev failed to see was that time would come when churchmen would say 1 believe in god and 1 Jb elleve in evolution the fact that there are all sorts of religions Is n detail the question for the scientific man Is why has the religious impulse been so strong in the world that it has varied BS everything else hag varied Is true but that Is another question it would be absurd to describe the evolution of america in the right ecith century and leave out white field or angland in the nineteenth and leave out he oxford movement mans religion has to do with the higher part of ills nature until lately science has been busy with the low er part of his being mr add was right when he said ahe time haa come tt would appear for a bette understanding for alie social sciences to strengthen themselves by sending their roots deep into the soil underneath from they spring and for the blob ogest to over the frontier and carry the methods of his science bold ly into human society where he has but to deal the phenomena of life where he encounters life at lasi under its highest and most complex aspect one important thing about all this Is that mans attitude to the universe Is jy mcclure syndicate |