THE BOW IN THE CLOUD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13390, 19 January 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE BOW IN THE CLOUD.

BY TOHUNGA.

In these scientific days, when every schoolboy knows that his far-distant sire was an intelligent ape, and that the wisdom of the ancients is a mere fancy and a delusion, we ought not to have any inward craving for support in the belief that all's well with the world. Vet, as a matter of fact, we have. Whether it is .an indication that we ale still tinged with savagery, or that we have not yet quite smothered our souls in the cloak of boailed learning, there ate very lew who do not feel ill the presence of the great natural forces the imperative necessity to believe in Something which is above the rain and beyond the drought. hi any case, the man is not far removed from the unintelligent ape who caimot appreciate the Beauty and the strength of the greatest of metaphors—that which sees in the rainbow the sign ami symbol of a compact which declared that the rain should not tall forever, ami that the waters should not prevail against mankind. The scientist will tell us that the appearance of the. rainbow is inevitable and automatic, granted the existence of the natural Jaws as they are in the universe. Which is q'uite so, of course, just as are the rising of the sun and the coining of the seasons, the springing of the grass and the loving of man and maid. It is all inevitable and automatic—granted the conditions. But. somehow, the conditions themselves are not less wonderful and mysterious beta use they produce unalterably certain results. The rainbow is none the less painted upon the cloud, is none the less a written signature, pregnant with meaning, because it is painted by a brush of sunbeams and written with a. pen of which light itself is the ink. However I lie bow comes, it tolls to the scientific mind that Order and not Chaos is the rule of things, that the rain-clouds are but passing incidents and quite incapable of drowning the Earth from the vivifying light of the sun. And this, in spite of our modern wisdom, our fathers learned from the great- tradition. In other words, but with the same truth, and with the same purpose, they explained why it was that "Cod set His bow in the cloud.'"

In New Zealand, the land of constant change and inconstant weather, we do not usually become affected by the pressure of overwhelming impressions. There are no times when the whole country lies month alter month under a winding-sheet of ice and snow; no times when, month after month, year after year, the gray-blue sk.v mocks with pitiless smile a droughtstricken earth beneath: no times when the rain falls ceaselessly for weeks and the valleys are deluged beneath a hundred feet of foaming water. Yet even to New Zealand come bints of what happens in lees favoured climes, and this last week we had one of them.

We all thought it bad enough, of course. We all begun to wonder if it would never leave otf raining even while we sheltered snugly at home. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the wind shifted to the west and to the south, and when there was first flung upon the curtain of rain the bowed sign of hope and security. And if it was then pleasing and cheering to us, can we not imagine what it must have been in less civilised times and in less benign climates, can we not bethink us how the heart of man must have leaped within him as, wet and shivering and despondent, he caught a glimpse of the long-lost blue and saw suddenly visioned before him the mostbeautiful thing in the world? For surely the rainbow is the most beautiful of things. If anybody knows of anything more beautiful now is the time to mention it.

Imagine that primitive man, just beginning to think of tilings, unable to reason with his imperfect brain— our wise men dothat everything is a natural phenomenon, arid that thereby we have explained them! For long weeks he has crouched in his cave, nursing with ceaseless patience the struggling fire that costs him such vast labour to produce, and that can hardly feed upon the soaked wood he offers it. We think nothing of fire, by the way. but he thought something of it. Re could notexplain it, did not know how simple it was—but lie had it. Fire made man possible. It kept him warm. It made him master of the beasts. In time it gave him metals and all that comes from the art of Tiibal-Caiu. So was it wonderful that lie should gradually build round it one of the greatest of the myths, and picture to himself an ancestral hero, who climbed to the skies and stole it from the very altar of the gods? Over this divine fire crouched the cave-dweller, in the tropical regions where man had his first home, listening to the swish, swish, of the rains, to the lolling of the thunder, watching the Hashing of the far-driven bolts of heaven. Hungry and chilled and cramped, he waited for the breaking of the rains, waited through long days anil longer nights, looking as he. crept bewhiles to the entrance for the shining of the magical bow in the cloud. We like to think, as civilisation advances and advances, that keener emotions and deeper feelings come to us. But do they? Have we any proof whatever that they do? Is if not the fact that we take our keener emotions for granted and then twist. things in and out in order to prove it? Why, the very dog will die of grief on the grave of a loved master, the dove will pine away if you rob it of its mate. And in the* eave-dwe'V' were there not emotions, feelings, passions, so deep and m. profound that civilisation lives and persists l>v the strength of the mere shadow of them? Think of the cave-woman whose mate set out in the rain because she had neither food for herself nor milk for the hungry baby at her breast. They would have killed the babv and eaten it. Bay the foolish. Some would, of course, and those tome died out a-ul left none after them, hut humanity grew from men who fought find worked 'rrrd died to win food for their women and their children, and from women who kept babies alive with their own blood and shielded the helpless little ones < .; only with their bodies but wjth their very lives. So you may fairly imagine a cave-woman, hushing her wailing baby, waiting through the long hours for the footfall of the man who had gone out into the rains in the desperate quest lor food. Surely, then, Venus sprain: full-grown from lie fathomless sea of that cavewoman's troubles.

That man with the low forehead and thrusting jaw was all that stood between he: ,ind death. With him she felt safe and secure. Without him she dared nut think of what might be in store for her. For, then, were no charitable aid boards and no insurance companies, no friendly lodges, and 110 salvation armies. There was only the forest and the cave—and the man to lind food in the one and to hold the other against allcomers. And (Ms man of her's had gone out to find food for her, gone into the pitiless rains that had driven all game to cover, and into the gloom thai, was awfully shattered by the lightnings of the gods. We know that the flog dies of •'rief. Art' we so dull that we cannot conceive that this cave-mother of ours had intensities of affection for the man she loved which to us aie usually inconceivable, and that she waited for his coming with her soul on the rack.

And with tin l cave-man 100. More than anything of which he knew lie loved his mate— she had never lived and humanity had never roinc. More than he feared the gods and their lightnings, more Mian he shrank from the demons of the dark, more than he dreaded the beasts of the forest, more than his life and more than hi* soul he loved her. And to this emotional man and woman, after their long-drawn agony of the rains and Hoods, came the rifted sky and the* bow in the cloud. And they said to one another that, it was .> sign to them from the Maker—and anybody who thinks them foolish therefor is 'for ever safe from the joys and sorrows that sympathy brings to men.