154 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



measure they are specialised. The people of England have 

 slowly changed their habits and their ways of living because 

 the economic conditions of the country have so altered that 

 what was a necessity at one period of the country's history 

 has now been replaced by some other compelling needs. A 

 hundred influences external to the people of every civilised 

 country are now operating and compelling lines of action and 

 modifications of thought different from what was possible and 

 even necessary. England, for example, do what she will, is 

 being so influenced by external conditions that she is com- 

 pelled to specialise her industries, so that a worker is merely a 

 finisher of some portion or part of a manufactured article. 

 The growth of the industrial arts and the intercourse between 

 nations are bringing about this new aspect of specialisation. 

 The workshops of the world proceed from the general to the 

 special, and the highest differentiations in the industrial 

 world constitute to-day the greatest specialisation of scien- 

 tific training. 



A brief consideration of the conditions existing in countries 

 like England and France will show that where there are 

 aggregations of people there are of necessity great differentia- 

 tions in their industrial pursuits, and specialisation exists as a 

 consequence of the differentiations. A new country like our 

 own, in its social and industrial needs, does not call for the 

 complex conditions in the production of wealth such as are 

 called for in the countries named. In a new country wealth 

 is made up mainly of what are known as " raw products" — 

 the direct gifts of the earth. 



The industrial warfare in a complex system of society is 

 only possible where there is- an assured supply of food pro- 

 ducts from lands where population is small ; and the closer 

 the connection between the two the greater can become the 

 specialisation in production and knowledge. In New Zealand 

 the staple productions are wool, wheat, meat, butter, and 

 cheese. Manufactures form but an insignificant portion of the 

 actual products of the country. The occupancy of the land 

 for sustenance and for production of raw products was the 

 first thought of the early settlers, and it has been so always. 

 The new and the old, whether lands or peoples, act and react 

 upon each other by means of intercourse Isolation acts 

 upon a people as powerfully as intercourse, but in a different 

 way. Intercourse tends to modify the direct effects of 

 environment ; but, no matter how free the intercourse, the 

 thoughts and aspirations of a people will always be directly 

 modified by their immediate surroundings. Thus the aims 

 and aspirations of the English people differ from those of the 

 people on the European Continent just as they differ from 

 those of the colonies. It cannot be otherwise. The mind in 



