=(5) Materialistic Concepts in Society=

Education, medical and hospital treatment, industrial insurance, sickness and age benefits, and other things are all provided by the State, when the need arises, without direct charge upon the individual.  The virtues of thrift and self-denial have been disappearing.  Incentive does not have the place in our economy which it used to have.  The tendency has been to turn to the State for the supply of all material needs.  By encouraging parents to rely upon the State their sense of responsibility for the upbringing of their children has been diminished.  The adolescent of today has been born into a world where things temporal, such as money values and costs, are discussed much more than spiritual things.  The weekly “child’s allowance” is regarded by some children as their own perquisite from the benevolent Government.

The dangers inherent in this materialistic view is that many young people who could profit from further education do not feel a sufficient inducement to continue study.  They leave school too soon, and the broadening influences which could come from further education in the daytime, or the evenings, is lost to them.  In the result, these young people, having too much interest in material things, and not enough in the things of the mind and the spirit, become a potential source of trouble in the community.

One suggestion made to the Committee was that saving and thrift should be encouraged, or that this might be enforced through the Children’s Court in cases where it is found that offenders have fallen into criminal immorality through having more money than suffices to pay the reasonable necessaries of life.  While the powers of the Children’s Court might be extended or used for this purpose in extreme cases where adolescents are brought before the Court, the best help can come from wise action by parents to prevent their powers of direction and control being undermined through young persons having too much freedom and too many of the material things which are not necessary for their well-being.

XV.  The Law and Morality

=(1) History of the Law Regarding Morality=

At no time in the history of the British Commonwealth have Parliaments or the law-courts endeavoured to impose a system or code of morality on the people.  Men are not required by the governing powers to observe the moral law, any more than they are required to attend Divine worship.  But Parliament, in the shaping of legislation, and the Judges in the administration of justice, have frequently had regard to that indefinable sense of right and wrong which becomes implanted in the human breast.  Furthermore, the law, while not coercing any one into following a particular course of moral conduct, has, nevertheless, always been careful to restrain people from acting in such a way as may cause offence to those who do observe the principles of religion or of morality.