WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 189, 12 May 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By T.D.H.)

Everybody seems to be taking a bir in laying out Wellington except i official town planner.

The one clear tiling about the Wit< Supply Board’s powers is that flic have nothing to do with water suppl

Archbishop Julius complains that e gincering spoils art. —Still it alva; manages to make three pounds gro in the bill where there was but one i the estimates.

There is nothing to show that tl soul survives after the brain ceases function, a cable message reports S Arthur Keith as stating in a lecture ; Manchester University. There is r thing to show either whether space e tends out indefinitely or whether y< come to the end of it somewhere, ai nothing to show what there is at tl end of space, if space has an end. The is nothing to show whether time h been running on all the time, or wt ther it had a starting point son: where back in the past, and in' t latter event there is nothi to show what there w before the curtain was rung up a: time began. Similarly, if you sta breaking a bit of rock into small bits, and those bits into smaller b: still, there is nothing to show whetb you can carry on the process iudef itely, or whether at last you w come to a bit that by no manner means will break into still small bits.

If one thinks hard enough, it is d ficult also to find evidence as to wb is the state of an object that h ceased to be stationary, but has r started moving. One can imagine billiard ball stationary easily enoug and one can imagine it moving, b when one fines it down in the mind, is impossible to picture the transit! stage. As the philosophers point oi the whole natural universe consjs of time, space, matter, and motic and what we don’t know about the would fill a book. Now that Sir A thur Keith is deploring the lack evidence as to the survival of tl soul after death, it would be st' more interesting to hear whether ] can give us a scientific demonstrate that he exists at all—let alone wheth< his soul will exist after his body dead.

Sir Arthur Keith is president' < the British Association for tlie xc vancement of Science, and is a v<r. sternly old-fashioned Darwiniarmuch more of a Darwinian, ma; people, hold, than the great ChanDarwin himself. He knows a gr| deal about skulls, jawbones, and st like, and has an immense knowlec of facts at his fingers’ ends, but to the why and wherefore of thii at large and where we are all off he knows no more than any reader this column —or even than its write

Science, of course, is a very va able branch of learning so long as c does not ask too much' of it. It extremely valuable in making potati grow, in laying the drains correct and other useful jobs about the pla but whether the soul survives aft death is just a little bit off its be Even Sir Arthur Keith himself not keep on living on scientific groum but because he wants to—just t same as you or I. And why he wai to, he probably can’t give any m< scientific reason than the rest of can. -

Now that Sir Arthur Keith tells that there is nothing to show that t soul exists after death, perhaps he c tell us just where we carry that arti< when alive. Apropos of this point' is interesting to recall some obseri tions by Mr. Don Marquis:— “A little girl about six years ol( he wrote, “asked me recently: Jr where is the soul inside the body? “All over, I suppose, I said, thou. I don’t know anything about it. “I thought it came down to ju about here, she said, placing her hai on her midriff.

“Why? I asked. “Well, she said, it feels like it car down just about that far. “When I reflected upon it,” add Mr. Marquis, “I saw she had got ho of something true for herself. Err tions —and her emotions were ve evidently what she meant by her so —do come down about that far in t human animal. The heart, the iunj the throat, the stomach, the bowel are affected by anger, fright, joy, pai When the important nervous circui get a kick we may feel sensation ar where from the top of the head dov to about the place where she put b hand, but seldom very far south f that point. Her fresh observation id sincere expression were worth mo, in an educative way, than maz quarto volumes of elaborate theising.”

Pondering this point, Mr. MarqH produced the following theory:—“Sisation and emotion are the primty and surest agents in education. Tly visualise the imagination, and are, n turn, stimulated by it. Let the logiil intellect follow sensation and emotn and imagination, and wait upon thn, and ponder the pictures and fates they present to it, rather than attept too brashly to guide 'and direct”

If we cannot know the ultimatesecrets of life, we can anyhow get ahg with the feeling inside us that ai a lot surer than much of vat logical thinking hands out. AnyMy, it is only a matter of time beforeSlr Arthur Keith and the rest of us nd out for sure whether the soul surres the body.

HERE IS THE SPOT. Blue with violets, fresh with latter, And softly shaded and swdly scented, Hidden away from roof and rafte Here is the spot our love frequat-

ed . -• • Here is the spot where we met nd parted. Kissed, turned casual. VTAat coies after?

Nothing can now remain, I think, Of the secret meetings, the hiden wonder, Onlv the wild rose still is pink. And the old oak, riven apart vth thunder, Moves in the self-same way its limb, And gathers its moss in crack ad chink.

And here, in summer, when buds ta turned, Deep and fragrant, and when varnished Fruit of the thorn apple tree Its burned. Red. blood-red, like a dream lag banished, ' Pitiful, wistful, two ghosts come seking, Love that faded and joy that vantn-

w-OOTOthjr Coy in “Collefie HuaeW?