“A THOUSAND POUNDS CHASING HALF A CROWN”

Evening Star, Issue 19942, 11 August 1928, Page 2

“A THOUSAND POUNDS CHASING HALF A CROWN”

Wb recently came on a suggestive incident in a Home paper. ' A huntsman met a lunatic returning from a constitutional to the asylum. Said the lunatic; “Good morning, sir 1 Nice day fox hunting.” “A very good day for hunting, my man.” “How much is your horse worth, sir?” ; “Anything from £SO to £100.” “ And the other horses?” “More or less. Some £200.” “How much is a hound worth?” “From £2 to £10.” “ And the fox?” “About half a crown.” “Do you mean to say that you have got about £I,OOO out chasing 2s 6d?” “Well, what about that?” The lunatic (scratching his head and eyeing the hunter quizzically); “It seems to me you’d better come on home with me.” There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that “ one has never so much need of his wit as when he has to do with a fool.” And this colloquy between the fox hunter and the lunatic is extremely suggestive. * * * » A thousand pounds chasing- half a crown! Is not that what we see almost everywhere about us in life? Keeping still to the subject of horses, think of the tens of thousands who plank down their hundreds ot thousands on the chance of whether the nose of this or that horse on a racecourse shall get in past the winning post Gin ahead of the other. And the time and thought and energy and emotion that are given to the gambling craze—i.o., to the 'effort to get something for- nothing, and in the effort, whether winning or losing, fraying away tho fibres of character and demoralising tho community. Or, again, closely allied to this are the drinking habits of tho community. In the three years since last election, we are told, some £24,000,000 will have floated down the river of drink, leaving behind it scarcely anything but wrecked homes and broken hearts. In tho money and time and passion given to gambling and drink we have surely a striking illustration of a thousand pounds chasing half a crown. • * • * Or wo may find the illustration of the principle in a less gross and subtler form, as thus: There is a widespread notion that happiness and life consist in the possession of things. So men give themselves to the pursuit of money. Sometimes tho money is an end in itself; sometimes it is a means to other ends—to the acquirement of better houses, more elaborate furnishings, swifter motor cars, and whatnot. In both cases the fallacy is tho same. The fallacy is that wealth consists in what we have not in what we arc, that happiness somehow lies in bigger incomes and finer houses, more elaborate entertaining, more luxurious methods of travel, etc. So it comes about that men give themselves to tho pursuit of money for those and similar ends. They neglect their homes and children. They have no time for the social amenities that sweeten and enrich life. They slave away late and early in their office, and work week days and holidays. Sunday times as well as Mondays. They leave their wives to find conipansionshi,w with others, and their children’s moral and religious training to their mothers. This is the greatest peril of the world to-day its obsession with the idea that the joys of life consist in things and not in being; that it is something concrete outside us, for which we must sell our souls, and not in the culture and development of the soul itself. We are being scared to death by the possible horrors of the next war. But what caused the last one? The progress of_ civilisation had created a machine which was too big for our moral power to direct, and it took control and smashed us up. Had wo not lost sight bf the real purpose of national prosperity, which is to serve humanity? “The idols of material success had usurped tho throne. The growth of wealth and .inventive skill had choked out religion, and humanity without faith is like mon shut in a mine. They become asphyxiated with tho products of their own uninspired breath.” It is all duo to men’s submission to tho tyranny of things. It is an illustration on a wide and tragic scale of a thousand pounds chasing half a crown.

And so we might go on tracing the remifications of this principle in many other directions. Perhaps we may realise it all more clearly if we consider for a little the invitation of the lunatic. “Amici” says that the test of a gentleman is how he treats a fool. Cut what constitutes a man or woman a fool? We sometimes speak as if it were because they had lost their reason. That is not so at all. Out in Seacliff to-day the unhappy inmates have not lost their reason. Rather they have lost everything except their reason. Their mind is busy at work—as busy or busier than that of those outside the institution. Why, then, are they there? An illustration will make it clear. In that strong and sombre book, ‘ The Wages of Sin ’ (they are never other than sombre), the writer has a picture like this: U is a cloudless evening sky—■ primrose fading upwards into thin crystalline green, and that again into blue. Round about are gay-coloured flowers and a row of tall hollyhocks bordering a perspective of narrow garden path. On ti.f right a cottage wall showing tho rusty red of the brickwork underneath. “ And, his back resting against it, sitting on a wooden bench, directly facing the spectator—his knees a little apart, his head poked forward, his loose-lipped mouth slobbering helplessly over tho coarse unbleached cloth tied round his neck—a full-grown man, whoso dull eyes are majestic in their pent-up, incommunicable sorrow* tenderly nursing an old brokcn-limbcd Dutch doll.” e * * • There wo have the picture of the fool. Ho is not one who has lost feeling or reason, but ho is one who has lost the sense of proportion. • Here is this creature sitting in the sunshine pouring out his affections on an old battered doll, while around .him Nature is spreading out its glories, and the heavens above him looking down with their majestic charm. Beauty and wonder arc in all the things; around and above him, but In* hikes no notice of them. They are not in it compared with the old Dutch doll that ho is hugging to his heart. The fool is thus tho person who has lost the sense of proportion, who takes little for great and great for little, who expends his time and energy and love on comparatively small and trifling things while the great and valuable and beautiful call to him in vain. And is not this

what wo see around us almost everywhere wo; turn? \Vo behold men and women rushing through life, spending their thought and emotions and pas-' bions on comparatively trivial and ‘ insignificant things, while Nature, art, literature, and religion woo them in vain. A writer tells in one of his books of a visit he paid to. a great printing establishment. He watched the great cylinders revolving, the wheels buzzing, the levers clicking. He was attracted by a boy perched on a platform of the huge machine lightly disengage a sheet of paper. It was drawn in; a moment after a thing like a gridiron flew up, made a sort of how, and deposited a printed sheet in a box, the sides of which kept moving to put the papers into one solid pad. He casually asked the master printer if the boy knew what book he was printing. - The latter laughed and replied: “No; and the less bo is interested the better. His business is just to feed the machine, and it becomes entirely mechanical.” The incident has many suggestions, but the one for our purpose is that the boy is typical of * vast mass of people who deal with the outsides of things and are content to do so. The’groat book of Nature, of art, of life, of the world spreads itself out before them. But it docs not interest them. They are satisfied to ,pend tiieir time in trivialities and inanities, and never ask the why or wherefore of life. From a higher standpoint they respond to our definition of the imbecile as a being whoHias lost the sonso of the proportion of things.

It is, perhaps, in the sphere of re ligion that we find the most tragic illustration of our subject. Our dupremest Teacher told His hearers cn one occasion a story ol people who once received an invitation to the highest honours and the most enduring joys. They all politely turned it down, giving various reasons or excuses. But the most surprising thing was the inducement that led them to do this. The story as we read it sounds most unlikely till we look around us and see it going into fulfilment on every hand. If on the assumption of religion there is a future world with tremendous possibilities of infinite gain or loss, we yet see men and women professing to believe this living quite indifferent to it all, absorbed, just as tin Master said, with houses and horses and farms and families and hogs and dogs—things not wrong in themselves, but' utterly ridiculous when measured against the offer of supreme and eternal realities. Evidently the men and women who mistake the proportion of things are not all confined in mental hospitals. The numbers of those who spend a thousand pounds chasing half a crown tempt us to say with Puck in 4 Midsummer Night’s Dream ’: “Lord, w'hat fools these mortals be!”