NEW BOATS: OLD ROCKS

Evening Star, Issue 17922, 18 March 1922, Page 2

NEW BOATS: OLD ROCKS

We borrow the heading of this article from an address by a noted English writer. Ho telte us that “ New Boats; Old Rocks ” is a proverb current among the fishermen of Iho far Northern Hebrides. It is a suggestive, if rather.a sinister, saying. A proverb is defined ‘‘.as the wit of many and the wisdom of one.” There is certainly much wisdom wrapped np in this one. The writer we have referred to pictures the new boats being built in the Clyde, then coming proudly sailing up into the island harbors. • All eyes arc upon them. Keen criticisms are passed on their shape, hull, helm, cut of sail, pitch of mast, etc., and then Fater they go out to sea, to the fishing grounds, on sorno sabbatic calm of a summer’s day. “ And every' rock and shoal is hidden beneath the swing of wind and wave,” » ■» * * Now boats! It is a picture of life. The sea of life is a common phrase. And men are busy everywhere making new boats to sail upon it. Take the political world. Politicians and statesmen arc busy everywhere building new boats on which to float the State.” The noise of their hammers and axes resound in every newspaper, and spread over all the world. So is it also in other spheres. The economists and social reformers are all engaged in the same business. The bid boats built by Adam Smith - and Co. nave become leaky and dangerous. None .save a few old-fashioned unprogressivo fishermen core to entrust themselves to them nowadays. The most up-to-date and best advertised boats come from the Socialists’, the Communists’, and tho Anarchists’ boat-budding yards. There is much noise in these yards. Now ideas are constantly being promulgated, and fresh designs in boats are ever forthcoming. And the boats they build look well and attract the attention of the crowds. * * » * Then we have tho new Iwats in the educational and scientific sphere. Hero again what variety of designs arc manifest. The wrecks of the old ones are scattered all about {.ho shores of the sea of life. Theory after theory has been tried and worked for a while, then dropped into tho rag bag of oblivion. And still new ones are emerging. Once the ideal educational boat was to get knowledge into tho mind; now it is to get the mind to work for itself. Not long ago' it was supposed that tho masses should not bo too highly educated, for it would make them discontented. Now we believe that the lowest should fare

equally in the field of knowledge with the highest. Our forefathers supposed that tho function of woman in the State was to bo a breeder of children. So she is still reckoned among some Orientals as not liaving a .soul, since souls are not necessary to parturition. When Frandoiso do Saintango undertook to found a school to educate women in Dijon she was hooted in tho streets, and her father called in four doctors to determine if educating women was not the work, of the devil! What multitudes of new educational boats aro being launched to-day—and scientific ones also. A few years ago. science supposed it had hunted down the atoms to some eighty or thereabouts. Theca were the irreducible minimum—particles of matter that could not bo split up into anything smaller. And out of these tho universe was built up. But now it is discovering that this was all wrong; that these supposedly ultimates of things are themselves capable of being broken np into smaller dimensions—that, in fact, so far from being a simple element, they are as complex as suns and planets, revolving with an inconceivable swiftness 'and possessing incredible energy. The last is so great that, for instance, the force locked up in a coin the size of a farthing, if you could liberate it, would drag a luggage train four and a-half times round tho globe. And scientists promise us at least a material millennium when we have found out tho way to utilise the hidden energy of the 1 atom. There are no more new and fascinating boats than those that science is building for ns.

* a » «• And then, in the domain of theology and religion the boat-building goes merrily forward. A curious episode in Hebrew history' tells ns how the mysterious Ark was captured by tho Philistines. But it was a disturbing clement. It somehow brought disaster' wherever they housed it. It made things so uncomfortable to its possessore that they sent it back to tho nation from which they had captured it. It lay for twenty years in an obscure town, and then King David bethought him that this was unworthy of it and of tho people to allow this sacred symbol of the Divine Presence to remain in such a location; so he determined to bring it home to Zion. And wo read “ that for this purpose they set tho Ark of God upon a new cait.” It is a change of metaphor from tho boat. But it comes to the same thing. We have all sorts of new carts being constructed for tho Ark of GodI—all 1 —all sorts of new boats built and building in the sphere of religion—Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Stars of tho East, Vedantism, and what not. One has only to read the Sunday advertisements in the newspapers to discover the scores of now boats that are being launched from the yards of religion and theology. It waa not nearly bo bad —or so good, if you like—in Stevenson’s day. But when lie was a law student be was glancing over the Sunday advertisements of the ‘Scotsman,’ and a certain new religious denomination arrested his attention. ‘‘l thought,” h© said, “it must have been first or second cousin to the Mugglctenians.” So he jolted down some verses in his note book, and gave them to a friend for whom he had been waiting. They have not been published among his other poems. But they are true Stevensonian all the same. Two or three of them

will be in order bore; There’s a creed for everyone now, Observation seems to toll; You can road tho Bible backward If it don’t road forward well , . . Why, it's matter like a salad; Bob likes sugar, Peter don’t, Sam insists on putting eggs in, Polly quite as surely won’t. You can fit your creed like raiment, Add Redemption, cancel Hell, Rase the buttons when they gall you, Till the whole affair site well. Clearly I’ll go write tho Bible To find everything I need. Here, boy! bring rhe paste and scissors, For I’m going to make a creed. Just so. Many are busy putting tho Ark of God on a new cart—building new boats lor religion as well as for politics, economics. science, and education. ■Jr -X - *3r &• New boats 1 Good luck to’ them all. But there is another part of this proverb that every boat-builder will do well to heed : “Old rocks,” That is really' the important thing. A few years ago there set out from Liverpool the finest thing in boat-building that the world had ever

seen." Tho Titanic was regarded as invincible, And yet this majestic creation of skill and science wont to pieces on a very old-fashioned terror of tho northern eeas—an iceberg. And thee© ancient perils—these old rocks that wreck our finest boats —are all well known, They have been surveyed and charted ages ago. And history has strewn them again and again with wreckage a® a warning to heedless mariners on the sen of life. Tike our now boats of education that w© aro busily engaged in constructing and launching in theso days. They will be wrecked again if wo havo not learnt, that tb© end of education is not broad and butter, hut character. Dr Horton tells us that when ho was a boy at tho groat school of Shrewsbury its head master was Dr Butlor, famous in all tbs universities. When it was pointed cut to him that boys were drinking and drifting into all kinds of bad habits, ho said! “I am not hero to teach tiro hoys morals, but classics.” That seems an extraordinary statement. But it may well bo doubted if oven yet wo havo learned to put tho right emphasis on morals in education. There is not perhaps too much attention given to mental equipment, but too little to ethical. What Huxley wrote years ago is us needful as ever to pay hood to to-day. Your gutter children may be converted by mere intellectual knowledge into tho cubtkst of all tho beasts of tho field, but vve know what has become of the original of that description, and there is no need to increase tho number of thoso who imitate successfully without being aided by the rates. Tho rcoent war that threw Germany to the scrap heap is an illustration of what comes of more scientific education without the right character to mould and operate it. Or take again our new political boats. Here also wo are in perpetual peril of drifting on very familiar and oldfashioned rocks. Tho unknown writer who has boon busy with a duster among the mirrors of Downing' Street says of ono of our groat men—probably tho Premier : “ Ho surrendered some years ago tho rigid Puritanism ox early years.” Of another i “Ho is no Sir Galahad: weekending and London society havo deteriorated his fibre.” Of another i“ Ho has gradually lost in tho world of makeshift his original enthusiasm for righteousness.” And he concludes : “ Tho political fortunes of this great and. beautiful country are committed for many years ... to bands that aro not clean enough for the sacreducss of the English cause.” And tho writer from whom wo havo borrowed our proverb comments upon all this : “ Yes, we may perish for lack of character.” * * » #

Character—that is tho first and last word which the proverb suggests and enforces. Safety of our boats depends upon the men who are in them. Our most dangerous rocks are not those outside, they are those within us. We may have tho latest construction warranted To laugh at all disaster, _ And with wave and whirlwind wrestle, but it will be all in vain if tho sailors are incompetent. “From all men,” says Carlyle in his grim, sardonic way, “ except thyself and the devil, thou art free, and thou protest of liberty, thou incarnate blockhead!” Exactly. It is the self, the ego, the personality,! the character, that will secure the safety of our boats. Given that we shall avoid the rocks. Without that our finest boats will bo like the ship in the ‘ Arabian Nights ’ tale. Sailing near tho Magnetic Island, it drew' out the clamping irons, and she fell asunder in calm weather and 1 in a summer sea. Nathaniel Hawthorne has a quaint yet profound parable in bis ‘ Mosses Prom, an Old Manse. 1 Ho tells how people in a certain country, weary y/ith their tomfooleries, like the Florentine citizens in Savonarola’s day, resolved to end them. They brought together their titles, drink, arms, evil books, etc., and made a bonfire of them, A company of thieves, drunkards, and wicked fellows stood by bewailing their fate; their occupation was gone. Tho devil came to comfort them, told them not to bo disturbed, because he saids “These wiseacres, while they have cast so much into tho lire, they have kept the one thing which is tho perpetual cause of all troubles —the human heart.” The “father of lies” for once told the truth. The human heart—that is the ancient, mysterious, fateful rock on which boat after boat of the newest pattern and strongest structure has gone ,to pieces in the past. “ There is no substitute,” says Sir Cotter Morrison, “ for a good heart and no euro for a bad one.’’ The former statement is profoundly true. If the latter is, then the history of Christianity is the biggest delusion the world has ever known.