HIS HOUSE IN ORDER

Evening Star, Issue 19025, 21 August 1925, Page 10

HIS HOUSE IN ORDER

JOBS BULL'S DOMESTIC TROUBLES A SEASON OF IHTSOSPECTION Sir Frederick Norman, D.L., dealing with the subject of ‘ The Philosophy of Life,’ in the ‘ London Quarterly Review,’ has many big things to say. He gives, indeed, a clarion call;— “ We need ring out that all must steel themselves for a long period of hard work and self-sacrifice,” Sir Frederick states. ‘ No easy hopes nor lies shall bring ns to our goal, But iron sacrifice of body, mind, and soul.’ “ We need ring out that the money now squandered on doles in the case of men be turned into productive channels, and in the case of women to training them to become the mothers and not the mannequins of the future. We need ring out the compensation of simple living. “ We need ring out the gr.edt fundamental that a man’s life consists not in the things ho hath, but in the service ho can render. The differences between a competency and superfluous wealth are shadows, not substantia! things, and not always to be desired. An etnical love-feast, with candid experiences of seared consciences and demoralised lives attendant on war wealth, would dispel many illusions. “ Oji the extent that the spirit of service can be infused into all creeds and classes depends the rate at which we shall emerge from the morass in which we flounder.

“ If it be true that the greatest study of mankind is man, then the science which orders his doings must be supremo. It is the level to which party hacks lower their standards .that gives occasion to the reviler. Wo cannot, however, allow philosophies to vaporise in platitudes; action demands allegiance to one of the three parties of the State, a serious personal responsibility, Wo take as our guide that liberalised thought which, since the days when Socrates discovered the soul of man, has down the ages instructed civilisation.

1 When to take occasion by the hand, And make the bounds of freedom wider yet,’

“ Every true man must listen intently for the beating wings of that spirit when she hovers over his party. She will warn the Conservative against alliance with ignoble vested interests. She will save the Liberal from being exploited by the trustmonger, be ho man or master. She will deliver Labor from being inveigled into chasing will-o’-the-wisps. " “ I am not so anxious to have my conclusions endorsed as to rouse the sense of that responsibility cast on ns by our enfranchisement. The damnation of our time has been lethargy and indifference. All 1 ask is that we test all things, and bold fast that which is true. “ The danger of the moment is that many of the masses lack the mentality to grasp the situation; they live from day to dav, and need instruction. The fear of the moment is that sound men may be driven to despair, and, as they reflect on ‘ times that are out or joint,’ ‘ Be tempted to sit in the seat of the seorner, And say with sad Solomon all things are vain.’ “The corrective is to take long views of life, and make full allowance for human frailty. Professor Keith, in his latest findings on evolution, estimates that the world is a thousand million years old, and that it has taken the great Designer of the Universe all that time to bring human beings up to their present imperfect state. “ There has been a perpetual round of ‘ forty years sojourning in the wilderness ’ to atone for a few months folly—a short spreo and a long headache, The professor postulates that millions of years will yet bo required to complete our perfection, and be wonders if the task is worth the effort. The great Designer evidently thinks that it is more; and each true man, therefore, in his little span, must make his contribution to tho mighty whole. “Whenever I am unduly depressed with the folly of my fellows I find consolation in the simple lines of an old Chartist poet, addressed to his chum, John Brown, who was disposed to cynicism: ‘ But even when I hate, if I seek my garden gate, And survey tho world around me, and above, John Brown, The hatred flies my mind, and I sigh for humankind, And excuse tho faults of those I cannot love, John Brown.’

“The wholesale debacle of mental, moral, and spiritual forces which had followed in the trail of tho hellish war has tested to tho breaking-point the courage of even big men; and only he who

1 Can watch the things ho gave his life to broken, And stoop, and build ’em up again with worn-out tools,’ can stand tho strain." Happy the man who qualifies for that group. “Ho measures time by eternity, and remembers that in the material world, with its matchless modern discoveries of wireless telegraphy and the like, even to-day we have ample facilities, wisely administered, _ for building Utopia; but the host is yet to he, if sanity reasserts itself.

1 Science is a child as yet, and hor strength and power shall grow, And her triumphs in the future shall diminish pain and woe, Shall extend the hounds of freedom with an ever-widening ken, And of woods and wilderness make tho homes of happy men.’

“Ho remembers that in the moral world, as men come to realise its limitation’s, responsibilities, and disappointments, the glamor of wealth will bo brushed aside by tho glory of worth. . . “He reflects that in the spiritual world tho eternal verities will shed themselves of their hoary incrustations of superstition and hypocrisy that enshroud realities, and in their pristine glory luro all men to their standards. “Tie knows that with the clarifying and combining of these mighty forces will dawn an era of progress on a vastly accelerated scale. “ A man with such a vision before him will forget his disappointments; he will labor on, spend and be spent, and die happy in the consciousness that ho has played well his humble part in the great drama of life: ‘A heritage, it seems to me, ' A king might wish to hold in fee.’ ”