RANIXJM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33037, 3 October 1972, Page 21

RANIXJM REMINDER

APHORISMS ANONYMOUS

When Churchill wanted advice on economic matters he demanded independent reports from 12 leading economists. He complained, it is said, that he always received 13 opinions — two of them from Keynes. Of course, you will say, experts are always the same—head in the clouds, sitting on the fence, a foot in both camps as they bend over backwards in their ivory towers balancing on the razor of fact and conjecture. But if the expert is not always right, we men of common clay don't have too much to crow about either. For the fund of natural wisdom bequeathed to us by our forbears, indeed our whole cultural heritage, abounds in anomaly, discrepancy and plain contradiction. Consider these incon-

sistencies plucked at random from the wisdom of the ancients. Too many cooks spoil the broth, but many hands make light work. Marriage is the best state for a man, but a young man married is a young man marred. It is a man’s business to keep unmarried, but a woman’s business to get married. A rolling stone gathers no moss (tell that to the Rolling Stones), travel broadens the mind, yet minds decay while wealth accumulates. And, it might be added, mony a mickle makes a muckle, whatever that might mean. That’s not all. On matters pertaining to love the rude rustics of the past were even more at sea. Love and marriage rarely combine, sayeth one, yet, quoth another, love and marriage go together. A weak man marries for love, a good

husband makes a good wife and he that has a wife has a master. Love, they said, laughs at locksmiths, yet locks no cupboards. It is blind, it is free, it is the fruit of idleness. It may make the world go round, but it lasts only as long as money endures. And what about man. They said, variously, that he is a noble, political, religious or tool-making animal, the master of all things, a fool and Nature’s great mistake. Burns has the effrontery to call him a man for a* that Profound, eh?

But we have discovered where we were going wrong in our domestic economics. We tried to live up to the saying that money begets money and couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t. We know now. Money bums a hole in the pocket.