GAUDEAMUST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2714, 21 March 1906, Page 13

GAUDEAMUST.

CHEERFUL COGITATIONS ON ANOTHER THRESHOLD. (Bt Trans. Mobtox.) The breeze ble^v cool from seaward, but 5n the dark garden the air was heavy with the scent of roses. Nothing disturbed the •tillness, except the thousand whispering Voices of the night. Even the restless sea lay quiet, only murmuring a drowsy mono, ione scarcely appreciable in the garden of jbhe roses. It was such a night of soothing calm as makes the veriest sluggard hate io go to bed, and keeps half the housemaids of town out after hours. Then cam« an eruption of tearing discords. Bells jangled, whistles screeched, foombs thundered, and heard crisply in among all this there was the crowning impertinence of crackers. After dark, the town lies (seen from St. Clair) in what it 3/rould be fierce exaggeration to call -a pool of light: .«ay, rather, a haze of glooming pallor. This haze was now spasmodically irradiated by little spurts of fireworks, crude reds and "cruder greens, while here and 4&ere half-hearted rockets leaped impudently against .the sky. The colours of pheap fireworks are always harsb_ and unnatural, like the colours of the cheap pastrycooks : the true . art of illumination is a, thing too subtle and delicate to fall easily within our scope. The Chinese understand something of it. having studied it quietly for several thousanjd years; and the Japanese, who are the natural parasites of China, have adapted dexterously. •When the Chinese make a venomous noise of crackers in the dark, it is for the truly reasonable purpose of scaring away the devils. Amid this clash and jangle, this scrofulous glare against the sky of midnight, with which Dunedin sees fit to welcome Nineteen Hundred and Six, I think regretfully of old Chinese new years, and the glories thereof — the wonderful lights and shadows, glows of transfiguring purple, glooms of dusky gold that grows inexplicably warmer as it dulls, wonderful tropical yellows and browns, rich reds that seem as Boothing as the green of grass — the strange processions, barbaric and bizarre, the shifting vagrom lights, the ruddy flare" of torches — all the uncouth but concordant (Bounds, booming of sonoi-ous gongs, squealing of weird instruments only slightly less impossible than bagpipes— the marvellous symphony of delicacies in contortion, the grotesque blooming into inimitable beauty that .makes the street of Asia a page of 'dream — sanbayang hantu, the Prayer to iDevils. Alas! our own devils are not so timid and obliging- They will not go away. •From every side they peer and gape at ua, malevolent and obscene. But because we »r© mild of our speech we disguise their infamy with velvety phrases, and often refer to them as blessings of our civilisation. .The near year, we are assured, is the proper period for good resolutions. Fudge! When I was a youth in Sydney I was clerk to a merchant who had a customer, a man perpetually and loudly resolving to be better. Him they afterwards hanged, beca-use it was his agreeable diversion to out up hie frequent wives with hatchets and bury them under hearthstones. It is well to do each moment the thing that is best for your neighbours and healthiest for your own development; but there is nothing much gained by the mere resolution to do something particularly fine next month. I find, as I grow older, that a pinch of performance is worth a peck of resolution, and that the man who protests too much is usually qualifying for a moral idiot. 'As one looks round on this foolish and perverse generation, one realises that the harvest truly is great but the labourers are otherwise employed. One would like to preach; if any persuasion could prevail, but — cvi bono? Perhaps a. few appropriate phrases of Thoreau you will permit me. <■ "Men have a singular desire to he .good without being good for anything, because perchance they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end." " There Is more religion in men's science thaa there is science in their religion Let xx& make haste to the report of the committee on swine." " It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I. Think you that sitting hens sire troubled with ennui these long summer days, sitting on and on in the crevice of" a hay-loft, without active employment?" "We must be slow to mend, r.iy friends, as slow to require mending. ' Not hurling, according to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety.' The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles." " We are independent of the change we detect. The longer the lever the le-s • perceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The •hero then will know how to wait, as well as to make haste. AH good abide, «vith Jiim who waiteth wisely : we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying over the hills to the •west." I am glad to quote these phrases cf JFhoreau, even at the risk of misrepresentin,; him to thoughtless and superficial folk ; ■because I am convinced that the one thing Speeded to redeem and sweeten our jpivilisaition, and to make permanent all "that is ihest is it, is a return to hu^nane e\i;curwswiam. Live mil/ r.s you oan in each moment of your life, and your whole life ,ivill be full. Learn to love beauty, or.d chastity (of which sexual chastity is but a jsert), and whatever you can apprehend of iart, for their own sakes, and your whole life will ba sweet. Realise that an honest attitude towards your neighbour is a necessity of jour owa truest well-

'being, and ydtt-"vrill begin to love your neighbour as yourself. Exult in your life, ajfd life ! will be well worth living. Glory in your youth, and it will not be so swift to flee. Be very tender of your fellows' faults, and no person worth considering will ever cavil very harshly at your own. As to the meaner creatures, the congenital hypocrites, the confirmed shufflers and snufflers, the hopelessly dwarfed and twisted, the righteous in their own esteem, — if you j would live your life in gentleness and freedom, shun these as you would shun the pestilence. It is only as he gets the greatest amount of aesthetic nutrition, the tullest measure of true sensation, the noblest fruition of positive good, out of each moment as it passes, that any man can really be said to be alive. Otherwise, we are mere human cabbages, fated to a rigid order of development and decay. If anyone says that this is a selfish ideal — well, how very absurd ! No man enters into the kindom of the joy of life unless he is very honestly tender to all living creatures. He looks forth on a smiling world, and everything that breathes or springs is part of his inalienable possession. All the little lovely lives about him are of the essence of his life — the poppies that glow in the garden, -the thrushes that nest in the snrubbery, the infinitely tiny things that live for a day in the sun and so pass back to the vast body of the eternal. All things grand and comely in all the treasurehouse of time are his, by right of destiny ; and his alone, by right of proprietorship, is the rich treasurehouse of his own heart. This, then, is the secret of life. To live with strong deliberation exuberantly young. To be neither deterred nor distressed by people who do not come into one's own reckoning. To drink joyously at all the clearest springs. To be without prejudice. To remember that each man's kingdom is hero and now ; and so, making of life the end of life, to live cheerfully, frankly, courageously, strenuously, in the sun, always remembering that in times of festival a little irresponsibility puts an edge to joy. From this standpoint. I have made a small song of welcome for Nineteen Hundred and Six. a song suited for very young and cheerful people : — While the flagons brim and sparkle At this glad mad merry meeting, Ere Death's ving swoops down to dark!* All YouVu's joys so fair, so fleeting — Whila young hearts throb soft in tune, While young lips are bright with June, While from care we're still imnuirie — Let us laugh while laugh we may, Joyous in. a joyless day, Trolling forth a new year's greeting! Out into limbo, Naught-Five !— with a I run. Shabby old year, you are drabbled and done. . . Let iv the infant who's bringing th« fun! Come in, Naught-Si*, lad! We greet you with glee. Here's choice of bottles. . . Now, what shall it be? Laugb, lads, while the gold days linger! I Lasses, laugh iri all your dimples! ' Time stands by with restless finger. ' Sour face blotched with pocks and pimples. i More he scowls, the more we mock. • . . I Life is joyous, stupid block! ! Jill, you jade, put back the clock! Let's be young before we're old! is a sorry scold) — Let's away and . . gather simples ! Dawdling you go, bald Naught-Five, but you must. Corpse! hie ye hence to the rat 3 and the rust! Youth mvLst dance on 'till youth's clsty turns to dust. . . Look you, Naught-Sir, there is room en your knee . . Ai! the girls love you. Now, which shall it be? Friends o' mine, ere ends our tether, Hope and joy and Love's entreating, Let's sing out our hearts together, All grim Care's vile plots defeating! While the light lasts, let's be gay! Night conies, but it's still To-day. . . 1 Let us feast while feast we may! On this threshhold, who'd say Die ? White the Hours are fair, who'd fly ? Shoulders back! — fling out the greeting! Palsied Naught-Five — to Oblivion, you l . . . Shivering imbecile, toothless and blue! (We'll be along in a minute' or two.) Here are fine toys, young Naught-Six, for you. See! Hearts for your breaking. Now, whose shall it be? And " meanwhile," as our dear R. I». S. puts it, "our rotatory island loaded with ! predatory life, and more drenched with | blood, both animal aild vegetable, than over i mutinied ship, scuds .through space with unimaginable speed, ard- turns alternate cheeks to the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million miles away.' 1 What, shall be said of the general situation ? Where there is so much, at be-st, to suffer, 1 and so iittle, at best, to get, is the tiling worth while? I admit that in the ordinary 1 case I cannot see that it is ; but, after all, I I am fitted to judge of no case but my own. To me, the merely vegetable existence of a gieat number of entirely respectable people is a thing terrible and appalling, if only because it seems to me that the first necessity of life is to be alive ; but I frankly admit that other men are within their rights if they prefer to crawl through life i ■very dead. That is, indeed, the ideal of existence among a very large number of good folk. They glory in what may be tf-rmetl the suffocation of their eges. They iiacurally prefer to be blind puppets, limp corpses in the niauling hand of circumstance. They find it most comfortable to take their ideas and their prejudices, their faiths and their dogmas, ready-made, ai.d to get them hot-pressed for special occasions. But. when they have got these slop 1 garments, and clothed themselves withal, they will straightway declaim thomselvos incomparable for fashion and bpemliness, the only well-dressed creature? in the visible uimerse. Their theories may bag at the > kne-es, or their creeds go raggedly out at j elbows; but, as they grope contentedly in I the amazing boggle of their misconception's, I they never know, and if you daro to | suggest that a patch or a brush-up ' would do .them good — oh. heresy ! Somoj times there are inevitable disturbances of another kind. lien discover the facts of ! evolution, and in that knowledge the whole 1 disturbing universe f<iUs into in-t.iMt harj mony. • Yet there are those i\ ho squeal at the natural order, and stand aghast at the blasphemy rof natural Saw. Now, there you have the 'sort of attitude that proves men spiritually dead. Prejudice is mere enslavement to a blind idea, and all prejudices hinder development, and prevent the healthy exercise of function. The jealous preservation of tho open mind is

the first essential of true manliness. If you accept a thing as bad merely because some other person has come along before you and labelled it bad, if you laud a thing as good merely because a tradition of ' its goodness filtered vaguely through dubious stages to your grandfather, you throw up the whole position, and are really ripe for the undertaker. I knew a dear old lady once who had been passionately loyal to the labels all her life. There had been in her at the start all the utuff for the making of a magnificent woman ; but she had fallen a victim to the label mania, and had been content to become a dear old thing. She laboured to prove to me, by the words of the prophet Isaiah, that it was wrong to go to the theatre, and when I gently disagreed she exhumed Micah and Haoakkuk. Many of you will laugh at this, but to me the thing seems inexpressibly sad, because millions of my kind cannot see the absurdity of the dear old thing's behaviour. On a modern issue, I would sooner take -the advice of a strong riian of to-day than that of the whole army of the Hebrew prophets, even if the prophets were accessible. I can't ccc that there is any sort of sense in consulting prophets on things that they know nothing at all about. Socrates and Plato one might consult, because they were seers of all the race, for all time. The world just now needs more than ever a civilisation and a religion that shall make mexf frea in fact, as well a& free in theory. Did it ever strike you that we people of British blood, particularly in New Zealand, are not properly speaking, freemen at all ? In so far as a cosmopolitan can have defects in that kind. I suppose that all my prejudices are English ; but the more I hear about the perfection of English freedom, the more I laugh. Citizens were freer in ancient Rome, infinitely freer in aJioient Greece, merely because in those States the individual freedom of the citizen in what I may call « his intimate concerns was rigidly conserved. Politically, we British are very .free ; personally, we are still bound hand and foot. We may cay that we have religious freedom ; and yet we are straitly trammelled with Sabbatarian observances. Our Sunday is not the Sabbath of the primitive Christians, but the seventh day of the Pagans, and it was first given to us by that Pagan patron of Christianity, the hypocritical rascal Constantine. You have a luminous reference in Hesiod : — The seventh day is a holy day, For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo. For us, the • only way in which Sundayobservance can. be enforced by a democratic Government is as a day of rest from the ordinary labours and businesses of the week. But if you do not go to church on Apollo's day, you are not 'respectable. Now I insist that I have a perfect right to spend my weekly holiday (assuming that I am a grocer, and have a weekly holiday) exactly ac I -choose to spend it. Outside certain narrowly defined areas, society has no right to interfere with the liberty of the individual. Every man is the undoubted master of his own body, the sole custodian(l suppose) of his own eternal destinies. Society has no right to interfere with his actions, so long as he makes no onslaught on the fundamental interests of society. One would think that so obvious a position would be easily conceded. Is it? Can any sane man suppose that the people of the thirteenth century will look back to us across their clearer day, and decide that we enjoyed the richest blessings of individual freedo.ni ? Does anyone suppose for a moment Hhat the little barriers of our passing day are going to stand for over ? Is Mr Richard Seddon, whatever else he be, fitted by nature or acquirement for the post he usurps as arbiter of our individual tastes and preferences? Unquestionably no. We might just row profitably resolve to rid ourselves of the most foolish of our prejudices — the idea, for instance that all porsons not of British blood (except the wily Japanese) are '"foreigners" and of necessity barbarians.' Le-t us remember, with due humility, that the great namesin art and literature, in science and philosophy, to-day, are not, with rare exceptions, British names. Let us try to realise that all our assumptions that we are t) c most moral people on earth, and the most enlightened people, and the most advanced people, and the most humane people, are mere stale fudge. We shall begin to know each other and our neighbours tetter, when wo become genuinely tolerant, and concede more.