HOW LITTLE WE KNOW.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7349, 2 December 1907, Page 1

HOW LITTLE WE KNOW.

We got so used -Eo. thinking ot the little things about us, of the trifling, trashy interests that occupy us, that we often forget how little they really amount to. -? „ It is good for our minds and good for our humility to realise occasionally how little wo are, how little we know. We do not know what force is, or what matter is. We have learned that matter and force cannot be destroyed. We have not the remotest idea how they were created, or if they were created. We think constantly an our dull little way that we are pleased to call thought. We repeat the saying of a great "philosopher," "I think, therefore I am." And we do not know in the Jeast, what "thinking" is, ■or what existence is. Millions of minds have thought that they saw great wisdom, and depth in the saying, "I think, therefore I A baby turning to his first meal on this earth might say with just as much and as solemn meaning "I drink, therefore I am." "We have discovered the law or gravitation —that"is to say, how it acts, directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance. But wo do not know what gravity is. Wo know that the planets, once thrown, must keep going around in their orbits, tailing and falling, never getting out of place. Put..we don?t know; how they were thrown. We doiffc know really why they do not fall to the sun's surface and burn up instead of always falling around the sun. In the same way we know about electricity, how at acts. We see it strike down oui' friends, or trees, or buildings. We see it -strike our dwellings, move cars, but we don't know what electricity is. We are conscious, we make plans, we move trees about on the earth's surface—while the earth is carrying us along millions of miles in its travel and while the sun is carrying the earth other millions of miles in the sun's spiral orbit. We haven't the slightest idea of what consciousness is. By constant struggle and effort and kicking, the individual human ba))2-' eventually gets on its hands and kneoa to crawl, and then on its feet to stand straight and look at the sky. In the same way— many years, probably many centuries, from now —the human race by its struggling and striving and its ceaseless efforts will also stop crawling and creeping, and get on its feet and stand straight and be what it oiight to be. We that live shall never see that time. We shall not see the end of dull ignorance, the end of selfishness, and brutality, and mere seeking for money and disregard for others. But we can have the satisfaction of realising our own littleness, realising that we are in the babyhood of the race, knowing that there is somethinglbetter for humanity in the future, just as there is something better for the feeble, helpless child. Let us take comfort in the thought that there is a real manhood for this race ahead of it. And let us help along the improvement first of all by doing everything that we can for the feobl© children as they come helplessly seeking for care and knowledge. Let us do for them as much as. was done for us, or more,, remembering that when we shall have gone and given up the struggle they will still be here working to make of the baby Humanity a grown up, dignified race, worthy of this earth, able to read the great unopened volumes of the eternal li- , brary.