Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1924. AN OPTIMIST AT EIGHTY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 77, 27 September 1924, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1924. AN OPTIMIST AT EIGHTY

■ Sir. Robert Stout took a broad subject for his address to the Rotary ;Club, and handled it in a broad, suggestive, and helpful way. "The Outlook for Civilisation" may be made to look very black by anybody who takes a narrow view. If he confines himself to the history of the "la.sfc ten years—to the four years that had still- to come of the greatest of wars and the six years that have followfed it of a peace in some respects still more desper-ate-j-it would be easy to draw, and indeed almost, impossible to resist, a pessimistic conclusion. But a Bound conclusion demands a broader basis. In her " Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson," Mrs. Piozzi records one whichl well illustrates the principle:

When Mr. Bickerstaff's flight confirmed the report of his guilt, \and my husband said, in answer to Jbhnson's astonishment, ithat he had long been a. suspected man: VBy those who look close to the ground, dirt will be seen," "Sir1' (was the,lofty reply), "I hope I see things from a greater distance."

The value of the principle is not impaired by what may have been its misapplication in this case, and it applies equally well to our estimates of a nation or -a period as to our personal judgments. ' We shall see little but dirt if we look too close to the ground. In our public judgments especially, we must take, in Burkes phrase, " a very enlarged view of things" if we want to get the true perspective which is necessary to enable us to see things as they are.

It was upon " a very enlarged view of things" that Sir Robert Stout's address to the Rotary Club was based. He had little to say of the last ten '■ years, • during which special causes for which international statesmanship is now endeavouring to deyise antidotes at Geneva intervened to block progress and baffle calculation. Sir Robert Stout cast his eye further back to .the achievements of ithe race during the last two centuijies, not without an occasional glance at the long-extinct civilisations of Egypt and Babylonia and Crete. Aud the perspective of such a survey enabled him, if we should not rather say compelled him, to find ample ground for rejoicing in the progress that the world has made, and for hope that, despite the temporary check that it has received, there are still greater triumphs to come, and that "the best-"—and' by far the best—" is yet to be." In education, in the. care for the public health, in all that makes for the comfort and convenience of life, iia the opening of the door of opportunity for all, and in the development of that spirit of kindliness which he well declared, to be " the best test of civilisation " —a kindliness which, as he pointed out, extends -to the animal kingdom —Sir Robert Stout sees the evidences of an immense advance. And so in spite of our present troubles, and in spite of the burden of.years which turns most men towards pessimism, Sir Robert Stout avows himself an optimist.. What is an optimist ? According to the definition which he himself gave, the optimists are " the people who think that good is always coming, and the pessimists who think that there is nothing , but danger and trouble ahead." Asa man's attitude towards the present is also a crucial element, we might amend the'definition by saying that the optimist believes that the world is good and is getting better, while the pessimist believes that it is bad and getting worse. When some public utterance of John Morley's brought upon him the charge of pessimism, his answer was that if to refuse to 'say' that it is a'fine day when it is. raining cats and dogs was to be a pessimist he must plead guilty. " Yet Morley, whose outlook upon life wits alWftys more ■PS»U£B #».&U tbat oj Sjr Bpbjjrj

Stout's, and was more darkly overahadowed'by the war, recorded towards the end of his long life verymuch the same conclusion. His " Recollections " contains a- passage which presents a close parallel to Sir Robert Stout's address:

It may be true, he writes, that the telephone and the miracle of Marconi are not the last words of civilisation, nor are mechanical inventions of its essence. Let us look beyond. The outcast and the poor are better tended. The prisoner knows more of mercy,'and lias better chances of a new start. Duelling has been transformed from folly to" crime lhe end of the greatest of civil wars— always the bitterest of wars—was followed by the widest of amnesties. Slavery ms gone, or is going.. The creatures below, man may have souls or not—a question that brings us into dangerous dispute with churches and philosophies -either -way ; the spirit of compassion, justice, understanding is more steadily .extending to those dmhb friends and oppressed servitors of ours, who have such strange resemblances to'us in form, faculty and feeling. These good things i^n^ 1"6 f *«°logical faith has not impeded and the votaries of human perfectibility .are not. likely to let us

For one thing that we have hastily said we perhaps owe Sir Robert Stout an .apology. We referred to the burden of his years,, but the tone of , his address to the' Rotary Club and the ease and alacrity with which he continues to discharge his judicial duties show that there is no such thing. Sir Robert will be eighty years old to-morrow, but his years have not become a burden to him,- and at heart he is still younger than many a man who by the calendar is fifty years his junior. What is the secret of this wonderful vitality? It is in large measure the.- outcome of his unflagging industry and interest in life. '' What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh underthe sun?" asks the Preacher, and after his fashion he afterwards supplies the corrective for his own pessimism when he, tells us that "there is nothing better for a man ''-we omit, a few words that do not fit Sir Robert Stout-" than that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour." Sir Robert's untiring industry is one of the secrets of his youth at the age of eighty. "We may always find time to. grow old," says Berkleyj but this seems to be' the one thing for which Sir Robert's! insatiable activity has left him no time. And so, though it is impossible to dissent from Bismark's saying that "the first eighty years of a man's life are usuallythe happiest," one is inclined to think that our Chief Justice's is an exceptional case, and/ all his fellow-citizens can heartily concur in wishing and hoping for him many happy returns of to-morrow. ■ N .