NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12211, 5 March 1903, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

■'■■■'■-. *Hfl FRENCH LANGUAGE. _ _ ' The times change and we change wit* . them. A ; hundred years ago the .London Times ■: thus expressed itself regarding sl« Preach language: —" The- political; ill-con-sequences of the spread of the Ff«n#*^ guage throughout. Europe are od^tteM^ and we do not conceive that its W.«gJ upon the morals and'.. character > of P»«* countries will be disputed.;' We have_ na hesitation to add, that a nation '^^0 adopts the language: of a superior,, is pre* pared to admit its yoke. There is no better or quicker road to dominion : i^t^^^m imposing the necessity or compassing mode" of making a language;;genM|^« this word are comprised the idea*, , acter, and love of the people whose «w» you prefer to jour. own. We Jggjgg it ; alleged as unwise m the *#**%£££.. of China .: to intercept all commttfitg between it? subjects and *«W*V£, cept as a first step and beginning of J£ chief, all apprehensions from the wf. sentation ; of . a : French comedy are £gffi£|£fl lous. It sis : as the ; mail Iw*'JtJZ& ; spot and eruption, that we-«*>jgj^ to s contend'. against anything ; "MSM tible*a«itheipic-nickery;and^mck.nM^^ the peri- affectation and subaltern TTg:... of rehearsing to I an .audience ,?*"*,,:„ understand in a language one B |t' uounce! Does any. one advantage I to; the community; of Great Britain-^§§l

■."tie practice of teaching French indiscriminately ' to every girl whose parents can. send her to a boarding-school? Does any | advantage result, from its being taught to | shopkeepers' sons, at a day school, for fear foreigners should hot pawn or- buy ■■'' for ■ want of understanding, them? Are not the great part of the female sex, and of • the uninformed part of ours, exposed, by this practice, tc the moral and" political r corruptions of another country? "is riot the business of French emissaries facilitated by the half-understanding of lowarid' ignorant Englishmen? Ought a girl to be able to read amy book that her father cannot? Ought she to converse in a gibberish which her mother cannot detect? Ought the mass of a virtuous and happy people to be educated to form ideas different from the manners, habits, and institutions of their own country? ..Ought ifc to be in the power of an enemy to poison their minds, corrupt their principles, and seduce them from their allegiance and religion?"

' THE UNSEEN WORLD. Mr. Harold - Begbie contributes his second article on master workers to the Pall Mall for January, amd this time he sketches the life and doings of Sir William Orookes. In his presidential address to the British Association, with reference to his connection with the Psychical Research Society, Sir William Crookes said:—"To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from . fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but to go. straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may leadj even should it at frmes resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. I have nothing to retract!" These are brave words, and Mr. Begbie * endeavoured to ascertain from the man who spoke them whether he had succeeded in coming nearer the mystery, whether he was able to handle and examine it Says Mr. Begbie:— frankly as he uttered his faith to the British Association he told me that he had come to a brick Wall. Still, he has nothing to retract; still, he believes that it is in the power of science to gain new and brighter glimpses of a profounder scheme of Cosmic Law; but, for himself, he has come to a brick wall. There is no bridge between the spiritual and the material world," he said; "and I don't see how there can be." Mr. Begbie gives, among others, the following as the most important results of his conversations with Sir William Crookes: —"I asked him if he could see amy hope that science will one day unlock the mystery, and show us Wonders of the spiritual world. He refused to prophesy. His work is now entirely in physical science, and to speculate in the realms of metaphysics offers him no temptation. ' But,' he said, if you had come to me 100 years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of foretelling the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don't understand it..- Think of that little stretched disc of iron at the end of a Wife repeating in your ear not only sounds, but wordsnot only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another! Is not that something of a miracle?'" With regard to the progress of ' science in relation to the supersensual. boundaries of physical existence Mr. Begbie says: —" His attitude is this: It is impossible to tell whether science may not some day stumble upon the soul. Men of science believe more than they can express—spiritually as well as physically." And again:—"The main fact that I gather from conversation with the professor is this: that to expect spiritual revelations from physical science is to look for the impossible. If a bridge is to be thrown from the one world to the other, if a nexus is to link the material plane with the psychical plane, it . must come from the other side. Physics and psychics ; are two parallel lines; the one is a thistle .from which man shall ever gather. the grapes of the other. But he seems to hope—not enthusiastically, oi with any attempt ■at prophecy— the researches 6f the Psychical Society will eventually lead to some definite knowledge of the spiritual kingdom. His hope is founded upon telepathy. At the beginning of all occult phenomena we come upon the radiations of Thought. To plunge into spiritualism until we have grasped something of the laws governing the transmission — without the agency of the organs of sense of thought. and images from one mind to another is to set about constructing the most difficult problem in Euclid without a knowledge of either axiom, or postulate. We must prove telepathy before we can proceed, and prove it in the same convincing fashion as we prove the vibrations in solid bodies, in the air, and in ether. When once this is mastered, man will have touched the hem of the garment without seam woven from the top throughout."

OUR CABLE NEWS. The jubilee of the Pope's enthronement) in the Pontifical chair was celebrated in Rome with great eclat. His Holiness was in good health, but looked pale, and his voice was hoarse. Professor Bryce is accused of sedition by Mr. Wanklyn, the member for Bradiord, who asserts that in an article published in 1899 in a foreign journal the professor, who is member for South Aberdeen, incited the Dutch at the Cape to rebel. In the House of Commons Mr. Austen Chamberlain, referring to the resolutions passed at the Colonial Conference, said that any contribution from the colonies to Imperial defence must be free and spontaneous. ) The question of preferential trade / within the Empire was A ha said, receiving the Imperial Government's most ; - careful attention. Mi. Wise, Attorney-General of New South Wales, in the course of a speech in London said that socialistic legislation in Australia need excite :no alarm. Ho defended the financial stability of the Commonwealth and declared that repudiation was unthinkable. Great excitement has been caused in Caracas bv the report that the Germans, previous to restoring the Venezuelan warship Restaurador,' placed a dynamite bomb amongst the coal It is stated that an anti-foreign movement is on foot in China the prune agitator being ex-General Tungfuhsiang, who ,a being joined by a large number of disbanded Imperial troops. ■