PASSING NOTES

Otago Witness, Issue 2649, 21 December 1904, Page 5

PASSING NOTES

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

For reasons undisclosed and undiscoverable the Baltic Fleet chose to go to its doom in two sections and by two routes. At this moment one admiral is coaling on the West Coast of Africa, the other on the Bast, and the whole breadth of the continent lies between them. Ostensibly both are on their way to the Yellow Sea and Admiral Togo ; privately their wish and intention is, I imagine, never to get there. We have heard of "unemployed" who look for work praying that they may not find it. This seems pretty much the ca^e of the Baltic Fleet. For my own part I can't in the least see what end was to-- be served by the division into two sections and the two routes except the end of never arriving. If this view is sound, the Russian people, or at anyrate the civilised part of them, the part that read newspapers and are sensitive to criticism from without, deserve the deepest sympathy. Imagine their case were ours ; — how should we feel? Think of our petty humiliations in the Boer war — for example the " Black Week " as we chose to call it, when we were simultaneously checked at three points and lost a few hundred men at each — liow we squirmed at the thought of our ill-disposed neighbours and their sniggering. Then what must be the present misery of the Russians ! In actual grapple with the despised Japs they have had no success whatever ; as respects their fleets, the arm in which any Western Power should have been easily superior to all Asia, their record from first to last has been mourning, lamentation, and woe. The Baltic Fleet in particular is, was, and seems likely to remain the laughing stock of universal mankind. All of which must be bad to bear, and, if I were the Czar, which is a wild sorb of "if,"' I should decline to bear it. I should prefer to pick quarrels right and left, set the world on fire, and go off in a general conflagration.

The apparition of "An Atheist" in the columns of the Dally Times has naturally fluttered some simple souls ; but there is nothing in it. The atheist properly speaking is as extinct as the dodo. Science has cleared him out. What now and then parades as atheism is bottomless ignorance ; also it represents a reaction from bad theology. The go-as-you-please religions of the music hali, the illuminated tub-thumper, the vagrant revivalist, have a good deal to answer for. They make enthusiasts, true ; they also make infidels. flowever this is none of my business, and I pass on to notice that the soured evangelical who professes himself "An Atheist" in the Daily Times has not repudiated all authority in these matters, oh diear no! — malcontents of his kidney s&ldom do ; they usually evolve a pope of their own. The Dunedin " Atheists' " pope, as I make out, is an American sage called Itersey Graves. Any reader of this column heafd of him before"? Ne'er a one, I'll take my 'davy. Yet this -Kersey Graves is sprung upon us as an authority superseding the Bible. My nerves are pretty good, but I can't stand surprises of this nature, — first a phantom " Atheist " stalking belated , through the columns of a modern newspaper, next a Kersey Graves wHh a brand new American refutation, of the Bible. Brruid new? — not at all. Thomas Paine, "Age of Reason" Paine, did this sort of thing immeasurably better a hundred years ago. Kersey Graves, judged by a half-column specimen offered 1 us by the admiring " Atheist," 1 take to be no human entity but a mere theological scarecrow, and out of- perpendicular at that — a tipsy spread-eagling of eighteenth century .'.ld clothes, the rags and tatters of Thomas Paine in particular flapping about it in the wind.

Thomas Paine — yrhiom gur grandfather^

in token of then- esteem, always belittled as " Tom Paine " — was of Quaker origin, and early ran away from Quaker principles to join a privateer. By trade a staymaker (hence by Carlyle dubbed " the rebellious Necdleman") lie became usher in a school, exciseman, pamphleteer and candidate (unsuccessful) for holy orders in the Church of England. Abandoning his own country as hidebound and hopeless, he devoted himself to the enlightenment of America and France, assisted at two revolutions, subscribed 100 livres towards a French descent upon England, v/as invited by Napoleon to join the expe- j dition and flattered himself in the hope that he might bestow liberty upon Great Britain under Napoleon's wing. Paine was twice married ; his first wife early j died out of the way, the second he put away by a deed of separation. " When : drunk," says one biographer, "he was given to- declaiming upon religion,'" - After a, restless life his very:_bones were denied repose. Cobbett dug them out of the American grave^m which they had lain for 10 years, canned them to Liverpool, bequeathed them to his son, from whose possession they passed into that of the bailiffs »nder a bankruptcy order. This I suppose was the last of them. Pity that the original owner had not thought of Shakespeare's interdict : Cursed be he that moves my bones ! Be it observed that Paine, though in religion a mutineer of the first rank, was no atheist. " His ignorance was vast," says Leslie Stephen ; but at least he knew, enough to save -him from that extreme of absurdity.

Of declared Atheism there is, as everybody remembers, one clear case in modern English literature, the case of the poetShelley— " Percy Bysshe- Shelley, Atheist," as he subsciibed himself in the visitors' book of a Continental inn. Shelley was a man of genius, but not the less a crank ; Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do tneir bounds divide. In Shelley the partitions were down. As a schoolboy at Eton he was already nicknamed " Shelley the Atheist," and was known amongst his schoolfelloAvs for a habit of " cursing his father and the King." At Oxford he secured a unanimous sentence of expulsion by submitting to the bishops and heads of colleges a printed syllabus of arguments supposed to demonstrate " the necessity of Atheism." Shelley's private life exhibited the phenomena that usually attend opinions such as his, and even such as Paine' s. He made a runaway marriage with Harriet Westbrooke — a milliner's apprentice, or something of the kind ; her he deserted for Mary Godwin, the daughter of another crank nearly as far gone as himself. Poor Harriet ended, by drowning herself in fhe Serpentine. Shelley wrote " The Skylark " : Hail to thee, blithe spirit — Bird thou never wert — That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art; — he wrote also the " Ods to the West Wind," a finer piece than " The Skylark." Nobody grudges him his high place amongst English poets. But Shelley's life on the moral side is a sorry example of what Atheism can do for a man.

It has already been explained in these Notes that Hans, the Berlin thinking horse, is more than a circus curiosity. For one thing he refutes in his own person De« 3 Cartes and Huxley on the automatism of the lower animals. Hans may be a lower animal, an automaton he is not ; how can he be, when he possesses a mental equipment that thinks and knows, wishes and desires, rejoices aud is sorry exactly like any philosopher's? A committee of experts has verified his " genuine intellectual ability," and, if the Germans had any decent political system, Hans might \ote at elections. He certainly might in New Zealand, provided, of course, he voted for Seddpn. Hans " inhabits two stables " — so we read in the Daily Times the other day — " one of which serves as his bed and living room, while the other is his schoolroom,*" and contains a blackboard, arithmetical tables, and other scholastic accessories." There is no mention of the day's paper ; but that proves nothing. A German horse of Hans"s intelligence would naturally wish to know about the Kaiser's latest indiscretion in "speech or' telegram, not to mention the Japanese war. I fully believe, therefore, that Hans takes in the Lokal Anzeiger or some other Berlin daily. And this brings me to an advertisement in a southern paper announcing '' The Southland Metropolitan A. and P. Show, QueenV Park, Invercargill, December 13 and 14," and ending with a nota bene as follows:

N.B.— Ca-ttle are requested to leave the Grounds by the gate nearest the Water Tower. The advertisement is official, and is signed by the secretary. Obvioxisly it dismisses the stockwhip and assumes that cattle at the Southland show may be regulated as respects their exits and their entrances by official politeness — " cattle are requested," etc. This doesn't stagger me so much as the further assumption that Southland cattle read the newspapers. But really, after German Hans, one ought to be prepared for anything.

Under the heading '' School Vacations," amidst vast desert stretches of platitudes and, prize-lists, some remarks by the Rev. Dr Nisbet bring the refreshment of an oasi.s. Dismissing a girls' school Dr Nisbet discoursed as follows :

A great many of them Iciew, without his telling them, how nice they looked that afternoon — (laughter), — and how they would look as they gradually got older depended entirely tipon themselves, because if they had only got pretty faces — an outside sort of beauty, — unless Ihoy were growing m goodness, unless their souls were being educated as well as their minds, they Would gel gradually uglier. G-ood-ttisjs was HQt oiilj profitable because the

Church said so, but it was profitable for all things, and would even make tkem, as tht years went by, beautiful if they strove to gro-w in goodness as well as otherwise. In other words, Be good, deai child, and beautiful for ever ! Well, there is, I suppose, a real relation and proportion between goodness aud goodiiness. Not seldom the qualities of the heart qualify also the face. Not seldom,, and yet not always. Socrates is thought to have been, a good man, as goodness went in his day ; yet Soorates had the phiz of a domesticated gorilla. The eminent Apostle Paul, moreovex*, is described to vs — I don't know on what authority — as "an ugly little Jew." No doubt Paul himself allows that his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible. On the other hand Nero, who cut off this apostle's head, was excessiveh T good-looking, in fact, as th« novelists say, quite an Adonis. Nor is it to be doubted that a man may smile and smile and ba a villain. All the same, some real correspondence between inside and outside there must be. In my own case I shoi'dd like to believe that every good action rubs out a wrinkle, and it would be a comfort to think that by steady church going I may arrest an incipient tendency to baldness. We shall see. Anyhow, Dr Nisbet offers us a new argument for Christianity, and a- mighty strong argument too. Especially in a girls' school. Civis.

At the meeting of the Dunedin Drainage and Sewerage Board on the 13th it was decided to call for tenders- for the purchase of 500 debentures of £100 each, being the third instalment of the loan of £200,000 authorised by "The Dunedin District Drainage and S&werage Act, 1900," and th& amendment act of 1902. - The loan will bear interest at the rate of 4-^ per cent, per annum, payable half-yearly, and the amount is required on the following dates: £20,000 on February 1, 1905; £20,000* on June 1, 1905; and £10,000 on October 1, 1905. The loan will have a currency of 21 years from July 1, 1905, and no tender will be received below par. Tenders must bo lodged before 5 p.m. on January 24next. Interest will be payable at the option of the holder at the branches of the Bank of New Zealand at Dunedin, Christohurcb, Wellington, Auckland, London, Melbourne, or Sydney.

Our Naseby correspondent telegraphed on the 13th that snow commenced to fall early in the morning, and by 8 o'clock it lay on the ground to a depth of 3in. The weather was cold during the day, with cold} rain showers frequently.

At a special meeting of the High School Board of Governors it was resolved to appoint Mr R- A. M'Cullough, M.A., as chief mathematical master in the Otago Boys* High School. Mr M'Cullough, who is now assistant-master in the Auckland Grammar School, is a graduate, with second class mathematical honours, of the University of New Zealand. He has had considerable experience in teaching mathematics, and is highly spoken of by his present head master as an able and vigorous teacher. At the same meeting Mr E. J. Paj;r, M.A.,. B.Sc, was appointed chief science master. Besides taking his science degree, Mr Parr graduated M.A., with honours in English and French, for which subjects he also won. ihe- University senior scholarship. During his university course Mr Parr held successively two college exhibitions in chemistry, and subsequently acted •as demonstrator iv. practical chemistry at Canterbury College. Mr Parr is at present on the' staff of the Xapier Boys' High School, where he takes the chief work in science. Both Mr M'Cullough and Mr Parr interest themselves actively in athletics, and are enthusiastic Volunteers.

At last week'e meeting of the Education Board, when the plans for the proposed school at Musselburgh were laid on the table, Mr T. Mackenzie, M.H.R., referred to the anomalous action of the department in granting this school, while nothing was done in regard to Inch Valley, where children had to trudge from five to seven miles to reach school. The school at Inch Valley was one of those recommended by the board, and though representations had been made to the department by members and the board, no information could be had from the head office. In the past the board had power to decide what schools were mosfc urgently required, and it was largely due to Otago members that this power had been taken away from them and put into the hands of the Government. Mr Snow observed that he thought the time was not far distant when the board's powers would fade away altogether. He protested against the action of the Otago Teachers* Institute in going behind the board in reference to the Musselburgh School.

Speaking at the Braemar House School ceremony in the Choral Hall on the 13th ircst. the Rev. Dr Kisbet drew attention to an ever-giowing defect in regard to Duneclin audiences, for which he deserves the thanks of the male patrons of concerts and other forms of entertainment. During the greater portion of the proceedings the doctor had been silting about the centre of the hall, and. speaking at a later stage, he congratulated the pupils on the excellence of their performances, but saici there had been one drawback to his enjoyment. He was not very little, and yet he had got a crick in his neck trying to look round, or o\er, or under, a big hat worn by a lady a -few seats in front of him. He thought it would be a splendid rule to lajj down that ladies wearing big hats should! sit in the gallery. There was a cordiality in the applause which greeted tho thrust^ which seemed to imply that even sister-^ woman is at times inconvenienced byf the headwear affected by some other siste^ sitting in front.