MAN THE INCORRIGIBLE OPTIMIST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

MAN THE INCORRIGIBLE OPTIMIST

By J. JOHNSTONE

OAID Jones, "Man is incurable." k 1 knew he had been sowing his slag, so was prepared to make allowances, having had experience. "Over half a lifetime," he said, "I have been sowing that fell mixture of lime, phosphate, iron and villainy ; every year, while actually sowing it, I have vowed that never again should my skin be soiled, my eyes inflamed, my lungs poisoned and my temper frayed to ruins by any such folly. Yet the recollection of suffering, loss or failure fades easily and rapidly from the human mind, or, at least weakens in our consciousness. So invincible is the disposition to see in the future nothing but gain and success, that every year, when the time comes for arrangements to be made for the season's top-dress-ing, 1 proceed exactly as before. Blindness to Danger "Allured by thoughts of reviving my clover, convinced that I must have quality as well as quantity in my pasture, and more or less bamboozled by a plausible agent, I again order my slag and look forward cheerfully to flowing pastures and rich returns. "How much of history, how much that happens all around us, can bo explained by this strange twist in the human mind! H. G. Wells has told us that men arc always liable to go to war because, no matter how plainly all realise that vast numbers must bo

Hope That Springs Eternal

maimed, poisoned and butchered, each has an incorrigible tendency to believe that he, at least, will come through scatheless. George Kliot, with her usual subtle discernment, points out how experienee blunts in all of us the sense of the presence of danger and of the imminence of death, even when the danger is constantly increasing and death becoming every day more imminent.

" 'A man will tell you,' she says in ' Silas Marner,' ' that he has worked in a mine for forty years unhurt by an accident, as a reason why he should apprehend 110 danger, though the roof is beginning to sink; and it is often observable that, the older a man gets, the more difficult it is to him to retain a believing conception of his own death.'

"Thus repeated escapes wear away our sense of danger, and we learn to take risks hopefully. How appalling would our dangers seem if our enemies were all new to us! How naturally we might expect the lightning to dart at any moment from its cloud and strike us to death, or the earthquake to open the earth at our feet and hurl us to regions infernal! Comfort From Custom "These arc the great tragedies, happening rarely in life as we know it: but any building or any tree we passed might, at any moment, fall 011 us and crush us to pulp; any vehicle in which we travelled might, at any moment, dash against an obstacle and hurl us to eternity; and almost any animal we met might kill us in a moment with the utmost ease. Constantly we should seem to be liable to be starved by

droughts, drowned by floods, or burned by fires; and, while these visible dangers threatened all around us, in <?very drop of water, every morsel of food, every grain of dust, would lurk foes in countless multitudes, foes unseen, and by all ordinary methods undiscoverable, that might at any moment attack our vitals, sap our health and strength, and drag us down to death.

"But we have lived all our lives surrounded by these dangers and enemies. We have met them, conquered them, lived with them, in large part ignored them. We have come through a thousand encounters with our enemies, for the most part unscathed, and in our multitude of escapes there is comfort. "So we sow, trusting that we shall reap; we build, hoping to inhabit; we labour at our appointed tasks, looking forward to the harvest. Every day, ignoring the risks in front, we start some enterprise, hoping to reap a benefit; every month we expect to find ourselves a little further along the road, and every year 1 order my slag." 1 thought the slag might be mounting to his brain, so refrained from interruption. The Deadly Quack "What dangers," he said, after a moment's pause, as the dust appeared to clear from his brain, "there are in this persistent hopefulness! How the quack fattens 011 it! Let man or woman suffer from any ill whatever, from tootha-che to rheumatoid arthritis, or from an unprofitable price for spring onions to a first-class world depression, as surely as the sun rises to dispel the darkness just so surely the quack will appear with his remedy. And whether the quack otters a pill that will restore any diseased organ to health, an ointment that will heal all wounds, or a change in the constitution of society that will make the production of wealth a mere amusement, he is certain, if his promises are only attractive enough to have hopeful men and women to furnish him with a credulous following. "No matter how often the promises of the quack are falsified, 110 matter how often his frauds are exposed, 110 matter how reasonless his remedy may be, let any man come forward offering an easy way of escape from toil or suffering, and credulous men and women will accept his leadership and place themselves at his disposal. The persuasive quack drives triumphantly through our civilised and educated modern society, reaping a rich harvest as he goes, while the man of science who devotes his life to laborious inquiry, and who presents without adornment the truth he learns, will have a crust for his livelihood. The Great Sustalner

"Hope is bred in our bones," said •Tones. "Through countless ages man has fought his way upward, weak and helpless, surrounded by enemies that were fleeter and stronger than he. Nature gave him little without painful toil, and always his harvests were uncertain. Beasts devoured his crops; fire destroyed his handiwork: Hoods swept awav his belongings. Constantly he found himself frustrated, and his plans brought to nought by the hostile forces that encompassed him. Only by invincible hope was he enabled to struggle on and hew his way to advancement. "Through countless generations our race has been sifted and sorted out by the difficulties confronting it. Only the hopeful could survive, and so wo have become a race of optimists, incurably trustful of success.

"And if hope was a vital need in the primeval struggles of the race, is it less so in the plentitude of our modern possessions? No man or woman will make effort to achieve any result without some measure of confidence, some ray of hope that the result will be achieved; and so hope is the mainspring or all our action.

"It is hope, dauntless hope; that supports us 111 all our trials, raises us from all our failures, leads us to all our triumphs. Befooled by it we may be, misled by it we often are, but eternally it leads us forward and upward and illumines our dull earth with a light from the stars."