MIXED MUSINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15748, 24 October 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

MIXED MUSINGS.

BY J. GILES. There is no passion in the mind of man so weak. but it. mates and masters the fear of death.— The truth of the wise Chancellor's utterance is being hourly attested and confirmed on the battlefields of Europe, where the King of Terrors, as he has been vainly called, is systematically treated with sublime aud contemptuous indifference. The bayonet charge will not stay for him, and the humorous jest will have expression, though he rolls through'the trenches in ! a*hell of storm and fire-cloud from a score of batteries. And yet within his own limits this monarch is irresistible; infallibly he sucks away the breath, and the form in which all the valiant and triumphant life was enshrined is nothing but a piece of scrapped machinery. We cannot withhold our admiration for this grand spirit, which so gaily defies death and risks life as readily as if only a sixpenny wager •were concerned; nor can we help speculating on the hidden source inhuman nature whence all this heroism i springs. But these reflections soon lead us to further perplexity, for the splendid daring of comradeship in tho battle line, in the stealthy submarine, in tno shattered passages of the mine, calls up to the imagination the contradictory phenomenon of panic, when fire seizes the crowded theatre and the contagion of the throngs acts all in the direction of abject terror and craven selfislmess. This is the kind of scene that seems to show human nature at its lowest level, lower even than the devilish malignity of deliberate wickedness ; for in the latter the mind has not relinquished its control over the bodily mechanism ; but in the panic the human being is like a frightened horse, which is reputed to be a much more dangerous animal than a jungle tiger. Now we cannot suppose it to be a different type of humanity that thus shows itself as capable of cheerful self-sacrifice in one case, and of only cowardly care for its carcase in the other. The men who thrust women aside, and trranplo on children—the women who scream and faint are not, of different flesh and blood from the heroes of the trench and the mine— the nurses who ! calmly go about their work of saving when | a fire has broken out in the hospital; and | even in the height of the panic, if the j true leader happen to" be present, then the commanding voice and unshaken de- : meanour may by magic influence at once \ bring order out of chaos and raise a disorderly mob to an attitude of trustful ; obedience. But the trouble is that the man of light and leading is not always there, and wo have not yet arrived at that perfection of education which should insist .that every child should be taught, among its most precious lessons, the maxim | of the Roman poet: "Remember to pre- j serve an even mind in difficulties." But ! the scout movement for boys and girlsI gives us assurance that this also will come in due time. What then is the " passion"' that in so many terrifying circumstances thus "mates and masters the fear of death?" Is it nothing but a matter of nervous organisation, such as we are apt to think of insdets in analogous cases'; In insects there appears the same difference as in men between the presence and the absence of drill and discipline. A mob of wood- | lice scatters helter-skelter in all direc- | tions when you remove the board under | which they were hidden. This illustrates j panic; but the behaviour of bees and ante ! in similar circumstances is quite different. These communities, when excited by a i sudden disturbance, act in an organised and methodical way ; there is no panic; they obey a recognised leadership, and in carrying out the appointed object they seem to be quite indifferent to the number of lives that may be sacrificed. -Is it a sufficient explanation of these phenomena to say that bees and ants are built so And shall we be content to say that men and women also are so built, and that further speculation is useless? But the consideration of insect doings irresistibly suggest* that they are under the direction of some ihnseen power which has been appropriately called a " group soul," and which has subdued the bees and ants to the condition of a. highly-organised cooperative community, but has only been evolved to a lower degree in the case of wood-lice.. Are men and women also actuated by a group-soul? I do not see why not, provided we take care recognise the difference of level between the powers and agencies that are manifested in the insect and the higher human faculties. As the group-soul makes a unity of the bee or ant community, so the human spirit in its highest working makes a unity of humanity. But only in its highest working, for in its lower and personal promptings it divides and separates instead of uniting. Has not this truth been made absolutely plain by recent events? We see one day nations and communities seething with the malignity of party faction, and those who should be friends and brothers ready to draw the sword against each other ; and To '. the next day all is changed. A high ideal has been suddenly put before men, and all that is Highest in them has sprung to embrace it. A great power of evil has to be overthrown, the oppressor has to be resisted, the weak defended, the nations relieved from intolerable anxiety ; and this ideal has drawn men together and made them feel the unity of brotherhood. How can we doubt, when the lower elements are suppressed, of the divine heights to which this spiritual evolution will raise a unified humanity i

Bill these speculations ran hardly be supposed to be present to the mind of Thomas Atkins when he feels the glow'arising from conscious brotherhood in arm? with aJI his comrades. For Thomas as not a philosopher, unless lie is so on the principle 1 have seen laid down by some writer—that he only can be a true philosopher who docs not- profess to be a philosopher at all. The. best acts of heroism are performed instinctively, and without any weighing of arguments on opposite sides, for any balancing of reasons in such cases can only cause mistrust of the instantaneous decision of a higher tribunal. What then is that higher tribunal'.' Much has been said and written since M. Bergson began to agitate the mind of the thinking world about reason, instinct, and intuition, and much difficulty is found in determining the difference between instinct and intuition. 1 am content to place intuition above the reasoning faculty and instinct below it. Yet these two have a strong likeness, only they are on different levels, and. perhaps, we shall not be far out if we call instinct the intuition of the lower personality which may run altogether in contradiction to enlightened reason—and intuition the instinct of the spirit, which can never be thus contradictory. On this assumption we may safely say that it is the higher intuition", the instinct of the spirit, that, unanalysed, prompts all acts of true, heroism, and the one condition of them is thai, there be no thought- of heroism in the actor. I think this has seldom been better illustrated than in Bernard Shaw's hero, "The Devil's Disciple." who had no other explanation to give of his quixotic substitution of himself for another man who was destined for execution, than that it was impossible | for him to do otherwise. He had no particular binding tie to the other man, "but knowing that the correction of the mistake would lead to the execution of the i other man, he could nut bring himself to I make, the correction— were better to be ; hanged.