ARE MEN MOSTLY FOOLS?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

ARE MEN MOSTLY FOOLS?

By KOTARE

Praise of Folly

I HAD been talking to Sandy on the wide ramifications of human folly. He had listened with more patience than usual to my recital, of events that seemed to me to indicate an altogether undue preponderance of sheer foolishness. He invited me to state clearly my examples and then analyse them. I had been talking more or less at random, and had probably been expressing myself with unnecessary vigour, and with the self-satisfaction one usually gets from a hearty denunciation of the stupidities of one's fellow men. I knew I was "on the mat," but there was nothing to do but drive straight ahead. "Well" I said "even you would find it hard to apply any other name but fool to such a person as this. I was at one of the concerts of those Viennese choir-bovs. It was a performance to exalt a man. Long do-id masters spoke again across the years with most miraculous organ. Magic casements swung open. The audience was rapt, lifted above itself, touched, one would say, to nobler issues. And then when we were trying to get our feet on earth again, a loud voice rasped upon our silence: 'Why in I heaven's name don't they give us swing?' If that woman wasn't a fool then the word has no meaning." - I "Yes," he said, "it sounds bad as you tell it. But if the music was not the kind that appealed to her why. should she pretend? Perhaps there' were many others there that were, in the deep places, thinking the same tiling. Her words grated" on you. She had as much right to her own opinion as you or anybody else. If that was her r,aste in music she was justified in refusing to conceal it because at the moment it was unpopular.

Easy Denunciation "1 am coming to think, that one of the worst phases of human folly is the tendency to dub as fools everybody that does not think and feel exactly as we do. Democracy is self-evident to you and me as the better way for mankind, the only way if you like. But that does not mean that only fools wijl oppose it. While we mingle our fears of the totalitarian state with a contempt for the mentality of the people that accept it we . shall never understand our neighbours, and never find the way of peace. "This intellectual snobbery is at the root of a lot of our troubles. what you do believe with all you are worth in body and mind and . spirit; but give other people the same right to form opinions as you claim for yourself. A man is not necessarily a fool because he does- not think along your lines. What's your next case?" "What would you make of this" I disked him. "I was in a tram-car some years ago when first inspectors were introduced to keep a check on the tickets. A man was talking loudly, for all to hear, on the iniquity of the innovation. He was going to .show them how a freedom-loving Englishman reacted to this new infringement :upon the liberty of the subject. He was not going to submit to any reflection on his honesty. He displayed about a hundred old tram-tickets which he had been collecting from the floors of tramcars for several days. If an inspector dared to ask to see his ticket, he would throw the whole lot at . him and tell him to take his choice.

The Bubble Pricked "To our delight an inspector came on board. Tensely we waited as the inspector worked down the car toward the lover of liberty. True to his promise. the loud talker emptied his collection into the hands of the inspector, and gazed round upon us in triumph. His great moment had arrived. But he had not thought out . the next step. With a calmness that delighted us all, the inspector let the avalanche of coloured paper fall to the floor, and with all courtesy said again 'Your ticket, please.' The blusterer began the speech we had already heard ad nauseam, but the inspector was completely master of the situation with his unruffled 'Ticket, please.'

"When the official pioduced «i notebook and politely asked for the conscientious objector's name and address, there was a swift abatement of belligerency and self-confidence. It ended in the humiliating offer of a second fare and disappearance at the next stop. If that man was not a dyed-in-the-wool fool I have never met one. 'And though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat With a pestle yet will not his foolishness depart from him.' " "I agree" said Sandy "that this sort of man is hard to bear. If he Was planning a protest, as according to his lights lie had every right to do, ho should have been prepared to carry it through to its logical conclusion. But in his muddled mind ho was asserting a principle that to hira at least hadvalue. His thinking was awry possibly, but a man must think his own thoughts. He may have been an exhibitionist and nothing else. But because the opinion of the meeting was against him does not rule him out as wholly an ass.

Revolutionary Ideas, . "The biggest things in human history have sometimes had their origin in thoughts and actions that ran completely counter to current ideas. —lt is hard to see the sense here, but -it would be a much poorer world even than it is to-day if men branded as fools by almost all their own clay and generation had not had the grit- to stand to their folly. "Ev~ry revolutionary idea has seemed folly when it was first propounded. And anyway none of us always acts ui) to tho full level of his-in-telligence. The only person I am justified in roundly labelling a fool is myself. For only I know exactly what is behind my word and my action. Not many to-day read Young's ponderous 'Night Thoughts.' His mind had a melancholy cast, but he was a neat phrase maker. And his idea, based one naturally assumes on self-knowledge, ran like this: At thirty man suspects himself a fool Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Resolves and rc-rcsolves; then dies the same. "Carlyle thought England was populated chiefly by fools. But the reservation in the back of his mind was that he was one of the few wise men. Folly is simply a misplacing, of emphasis. We think the little great and the great little. And aren't we all continually doing that? Don't throw the word fool around so generously unless vou sro applying it to the man you know best —yourself." a