TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 2, Issue 72, 5 February 1859, Page 3

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

"Dare lucem etdare servem.*' No. 11. — Shadows.

. Do we really exist ? Is there such a thing as matter ? Is there an islet off Capo Kidnapper and a shingly beach at Ahuriri ? Is there snow on the Euahine Range and mud in Carlyle Street ? Is all we see and taste and feel real ? Are we to , shut our eyes and believe all we hear ? or open them, and be guided by our reason and our sen.ses ? There hare been men — very wise men — who have both believed in and attempted to prove the pion-existence of matter : there have been also ; others who have argued for the eternity of matter. - One of the grand doctrines of the Hindoos is, that all we see is bralim, or illusion ; and we have no need to go out of Ahuriri to find those who (when "a little elevated*) have more than once believed a post td be a man. Some religionists make a virtue of disbelieving their own senses: and many | in all ages have confused the unreal with the real, the shadow with the substance ; hence lias arisen the.numerous (and apparently well-attested) stories of spectres ghosts goblins and fairies ; hence too is derived a large proportion of the humbug and sham that is in the world. It is to be hoped, that the highly civilized part (at least) of the human race is. getting better, through the rapidly advancing light of Science and • the proper use of Season , but, after all, when the many obstacles and the carelessness and wilfuiness of man are duly considered, it must be confessed very slowly. Persons who will not use their reason — who will not discriminate between the shadow and the substance — arc like those foolish skaters on the Serpentine, who, in spite of the "Daxgoer." boards of the Koyai Humane Society, go carelessly on until tliDy find the ice breaking around, and cold death embracing them. Then, again, there is another class, who may welL-be termed, one-idea men (some of whom hare from time to time "bored" us in the "o]en column" of the' Heral d; ) such see little or no difference in the glorious star 3 over their heads — or in Arrow-root and Potatoe stareh — or in sunlight and moonshine; and, of course, to them an essay on shadows must be 'as clear as mud,' and therefore entitled to a most superlative snift". To be sure, persons are not to be ilouted for their want of intellect, but for their non-using it. And I verily believe that very much more is to be set down to carelessness and laziness on their part, : than to niggardliness on the part of Dame Nature.

I,.nsjself, am but a plain man of common observation ; simple enough, however, to believe my sonso-s.- It is my opinion, that the real things are those "very things I sec and feel and know by my senses. Now that a thing should realty ,ba' perceived by my senses and at the same time not exist, is to me tvplain contradiction. And when I so speak I do not mean by my senses in particular but by those of all others who choose to use their reason mid to examine into tilings. All Knowledge is of service ; and a vevy useful knowledge is. to bo derived from a proper study "of .iltadoios: I allude not to that artistic distribution of shade in |iaintings and mezzotints known as ohiaro-ob-scuro ;-novio that more severely rigid delineation of. shadow so necessary ■ to ' tras perspective : neither do I moan Ihcae celebrated aerial slitidows of world- wide fame, long known as .the Spectre of

Brockcn— the Fata Morgana in the strailt of Messina — the "M Lhrage of the African deserts — and the Castles in the clouds of the Polar circle-. — ■But to tho Shadows which are to be met wi;h in our every- Jay walk through life. As a general rule, it may be said, (hat, the more difficult (oget ft the substance or mass which throws the shadow the more available the shadow itself should bo. The height of an inaccessible mountain, or of a steeple, may be known by its shadow ; so also may tho longitude of any place by the immersion of one of Jupiter's satellites in the shadow of that planet.

I shall not stop -to consider whether the ro.nl pith of my subject is move of a physical or of a metaphysical nature, — of the mere animal, cr of the more highly refined intellectual soul. For ti e present I hare enough ufc hand in the sad aberrations around mo, The principle is pretty nearly the same — whether seen in the Fantail- fly-catcher hopping from twig to twig and displaying his open tail, or in the swelling Turkey strutting in the sunbeams ; — whether in the highly refined belle, with her balloon-like skirt of crinoline her rouge and ostrich foalhcrs, or in her smirking savage Hottentot, sister, ■with her cowrie and brass bracelets and the reeking entrails of a nowly slaughtered bullock, wound round her person; — whether in the 4-yca'r old urchin just breeched, or i:i the dO-year old one who clmcklingly fancies himself A\ incites higher from his having just obtained the addition to his name of ESQ., ,t. p., or a.s.s. — (ho principle, I say, is pretty much the same in every case ; each creature fancying himself to be really bigger and of vastly more importance than he really is, so that all such greatness, being quite accidental unsubstantial and unreal, belongs only to dream-land and justly comes under the denomination of Shadows.

Just bring a man well into the xevy focus of public opinion (an:l there is nothing in all the world to be compared to that) — let his accidents (whether Esq., J.P., L. C, Sh-ff., or ASS, it matters not,) be puffed aside ; his public antecedents retroeedenta and precedents be fairly viewed — and lo ! it is as if you had a mite or an animalcule under the microscope ; he is turned inside out, he is altogether denuded of his cloak of shadows, and he cither improves or not, as the ease.fndyJbe,.. under the piercing scrutiny of the Public eye. ' . - ' •

But how few i*ea!3y improve ! or, rather, how very few come up to what they were supposed to bo ! and why is thi3 ? Because men will insist on looking at the shadow instead of the substance — at the coat instead of the man. Just strip that woialcl-be gentleman of his gold chain, and ring 1 , and purse, and his swagger soon subsides, and it is soon patent to all that he never could have been a gentleman. — Just take from a man the spending of the Public Money, and the power and influence he had thereby is gone ; Ist him lose all hopes of a good fosd at the public expense, or of the post on which'he has set liis heart, and his patriotism rapidly evaporates. — Just let a man who has been carrying smartly on and apparently well to do in theworld, but ail on the credit of other 3, let such an one be stripped of his shadow and he will prove a man of straw. — Just try a great chatterer on any; subject which , demands deep insight and a well connected now of thought, and 'tis like digging for water on Barrack Hill. But I might go on thus with common every-day examples until I had easily filled a whole sheet.

I have heard mention of a great number of persons as candidates fox* the honor of Provincial Councillors. Be it so ; the arena of tha Council Uoom will surely prove them — surely strip some of them of their plumes stilts and bustlers. Ifc may be at the outset some will think themselves to be fully as large as their own early-morning shadows ; but there (or I a>n much deceived,) they will be as i f they were on the equator at noon. I do not see why we huve not a Board of Examiners appointed to try all political aspirants. This might be done b- fjre or after Election. In the present day, in addition to those of the highest professions, examinations are constantly being made of candidates for very many offices — even down to that of a country village Schoolmaster ; — and is the body of th« State of less consequence ? Perhaps a generation to ';ora2 will see the need of this. —

— Tltid some Board of this kind been established at Wellington (at tha beginning of Responsible Government,) what an immense benefit it would have proved ! What a means of prosperity to the place and Province ! What a saving of time and money and reputation! What a preserver of every good and kind and manly feeling ! What a touchstone and detector of shams and shadows ! 'For, believing as I do, that man is as naturally a Creature of Order as he is of Society, and that being a Creature of Order he is also one of Law (i. c. of Law natural and suitable) ; it follows, that while all good laws are promptly and entirelysubmitted to, all bad ones are as naturally opposed, and are sure some time or other to be repealed-. "Now those bad or unsuitable laws— (e. g. at home, the Game Laws, the Church. Rates, and all" thdso affecting liberty of conscience ; hero, the so-called 'Algerine' Act, the impossible Thistle, the unique Car, and th? unfair Fsneing Acts,) —now all those laws are owing to selfishness, .or to narrow-nmid-cdness, or to incapacity on the part of the lawmakers. Our own Provincial had and unsuitable law? have cost us (in shear making) some hundreds of pounds ; .and 'tis not too much to sn^jjS' that they never would have disgraced our nameand Statute book, had we had real men* and not shams and shudows in the Wellington Provincial Counci 1 . —

Th^n again there aye Shadows of another cla^s — which, po.-s bly,«s:>mo of our would-be Councillors will find fy experience disagreeably close 1o their heels ; — Six tdows, black blue brown "and givv, bror.d long nnd tightly fitting, umbras and penumbras, a host ! The c are of the kind the dog saw m crossing llu stream on a plank with'a piece of meat in his mouth. Imagine a man leaving the healthy every-dny bustle of his Sheep or his Farm or his Store, to put on a suit ■pf'lilaek" and sit quietly and ord-ry arid without his en (<y pipe for G or S hours rluily, giving dose and undivided iittention to dry statist'ool matters ; — such an ono, if a s7iadow t will ere. long be trying" Hollow-ay's-Pjlls, to be ahortly fallovred by a wish- for. a wb,ttling knife and stick (.ifter tli? Amcv'ican fashion,) (For continual ion see S ipplemeutj.