NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14566, 31 December 1910, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS.

. BY. TOHTTXGA.

The making of good resolutions at tbo New year, whether with tearful eyes and bended knees or with uplifted hand and the curseful prayer dear to the unconverted Saxon and other . barbarians, is obviously eithev the observance of a pleasant custom or the mark of a weak mind. Probably it is ii little of both, for wo cannot go back far enough to reach the origin of the idea that Fate turned over a new leaf with the swing- | ing back of the sun, thus giving men a j chance to write a different story in their doomsbook ; and all are weak-minded—ex-cepting us. The modem difficulty with the good New j Year resolution and the source of its almost invariable collapse is that the modern man is troubled about so many things that he rarely finds time' to feel intensely about any. That bearded, truculent, unwashed, drinking, gluttonous ancestor of ours, who sprang from a dozen successful raids upon the coveted islands of the North Sea, and whose blood was mixed in his veins without much wooing of women or benefit of clergy, was not given to worrying over his shortcomings or to repenting of the things that pleased him. He gloried in being drunk; he boasted of his gorgings; he heard with amusement the screaming of girls, and was proudest of the son who fainted without a whimper under punishment. When he hated, &e sought the death of his enemy and tho downfall of all whom his enemy loved ; when, he loved, he held his life as a bauble to be toyed with for the pleasing of a friend or at the whim of a sweetheart. His pride was in his word, his desire was to be spoken well of by gluttonous drinkers wlk> knew how the weak went to the wall, and so despised the coward and the liar, j who is blood-brother to the coward. Ho j was stubborn, hard, unspeakably coarse. j inconceivably ignorant, but when he swore ' of free will to do a tiling he meant it, and i cams to the wearing by the slow but cer- ! tain process of a mind that decided slowly | and never swerved. ] Michael Davitt, who himself won the ! hearts of all who knew him, used to say, ! when discussing in later years the characiter.of Parnell, that talk it over as they i might those who saw most of the great i Irish leader found it impossible to agree as i to the secret of his wonderful domination i over the Irish party and people. Davitt accounted for it himself by postulating that Parnell was not only " English " in descent and in religion, but that he was typically ''English" in temperament and character. i " Parnell was never an Irishman,"' Davitt ! expounded : " he was English through and i through, English of the Pale. He -wasn't | brilliant in any way ; he. hadn't even talent jas we Irish understand talent; he was just ! ' English of the Pale,' incarnate. We had | scores of men who could speak better, write I better, think better, organise better, do J even-thing better—but Charles Stewart Par- } nell had one quality we Irish lack, he couia [ make up his mind. It is our weakness I that although we are true to the ideal m j the distance, our imagination seems too j quick and too easily excited to allow us to : be really determined about the immediate i future. We think we are certain, and ! then we. feel just as certain that another j course is the only one. We make up our minds in an instant and are convinced of tho opposite just as quickly, and so our plans come to grief. Parnell was longer in making .up his mind once than, an Irishman would be in making it up a hundred time;?. Something would be- under discussion in the P-n'ty, and every time you met Parnell or braid of Parnell he would be looking at it in a different way, and usually in a dull ponderous way, the English way. Weeks, months, would pas* while Parneil vacillated and those who didn't, know hira would imagine him the- most shiftingminded of men. Bat he wasn't. ' That was only Parneil making up his mind. And when he made it up! Well, I never liked Parnell," said Michael Davitt, "but this I'll say for him, that when he once made up J his mind!, neither God nor man nor the I devil could change it. And go we felt 1 >vith him that when once a decision as to policy was reached as long as Parnell was at the head of things it held good. A man could go to America or to Australia or to prison with the absolute confidence that things would not be right-about-faced | a.ad his work wasted. That I consider the - real secret of Parnell's authority." I And here you get a shrewd Celtic per- | ception of the master-quality in the " Eng--1 lish," by which, of course, the Celt mears all the non-Celtic British. The "English' are- slow, dull, unimaginative, but they can make up their minds as.to methods because they are slow and dull. Which takes us back to that long dead ancestor of ours, who, when the New Year's sun woke him to another drunken orgy, occasionally found the spirit within him stir to the proclaiming of resolution. Perhaps to burn the Johnsons out of their lair and leave none of the brood to see the year out. Perhaps to build another kitchen for the next Yuletide feasting! Perhaps to carry off and i wed in primitive fashion the dark-eyed daughter of Morgan Ap Morgan! And perhaps—lor who knows where teetotalism began?to vow that only water should pass his lips for twelve fong months since drunken he had struck down the whitehaired mother who had borne him! But of this you may be sure that when the old-time man vowed a vow and mad© a resolution, ho kept it. He did not do it often ; lie did not do it thoughtlessly; he did not do it because it was the. fashion; he only did it when his slow-moving mind had turned ponderously on its axis and set in a new direction. We have changed oil j that. We think more quicklyand more lightly : we are dissatisfied with so much of our ways of living that we are afflicted with a veritable itch, for change; we hardly know one day after another just what we do want; we say we will do or not do—and really only say so to pass the time. For still, as in the old time lasting change of mind only comes by slow and patient brooding, light promises and light resolutions being only made to be broken. That the vast majority of New Year resolutions are broken means little if it is understood that tney have no more real weight than any other vain and obsolete survival of once livia.; custom; but i t means a very great deal if they are the best that modem mankind can accomplish _in the way of personal reconstruction. As a matter of fact our genuine personal reconstructions are going on all the time. It is not possible to desire strongly to be or to do or to accomplish without being coni stantly influenced and steadily moulded by ! that —whether the desire is good or i evil or wholly indifferent. The man who waits until New Year to "swear off" a, bad habit, or to "swear on" a* good habit, or to commence some course in life which is neither good nor bad in itself is generally only amusing himself. His heart is not in it. His yearning is not to that end. He is merely paving his ro;id with good intentions for which he himself has no affection, and which he will forget at the earliest opportunity. Which does not mean that good resolutions, at New Year or at any other time, have, no value; but only that those who worship truly will worship on the hillside its earnestly as at Jerusalem, and that those who seek with all their hearts to be other than they have been, will begin the moment the spirit moves them and continue as loi}g^f^iteßpitrit;iSw;tl«ir&, ~