PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3619, 24 July 1923, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’* Dally Tima*.} Mr M’Cabe, popular science lecturer, is a capable dogmatist,—full of facts, which facts you receive in faith. Dogma and faith are old associates. Moreover, as Burns says, “facts are chiels that winna ding.’’ Taking Burns’s word for it I am sure they winna, though I don’t know what “ding” is. One of Mr M’Gabe’s undinging facts is that man and the apes parted company 2,000,000 years ago. Considering that Mr M'Cabe had all eternity to draw upon, his 2,000,000 years is very modest; he might have said 200,000,000. The family relation between man and the ape is a M’Cabe fact that need not be debated. Both have four limbs apiece, and man has the rudiment of a tail ; what more would you ask? It is the kinship between Harry of Monmouth and Alexander of Macedon as argued by* Fluellin in the play—“there is a river in -Macedon and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth, and there is salmon in both.” In a lecture bv Professor Gilbert Murray I find revived a story about the Duke of Wellington when Jus word was doubted by a subaltern. The Duke, when he was very old and incredibly distinguished, was telling how once, at mess in the Peninsula, his servant had opened a bottle of port and inside found a rat. “It must have boon a very large bottle.” remarked the subaltern. The Dolce fixed him with his eye “It was a damned small bottle.” “ Oh,” said the subaltern, abashed; “then no doubt it was a very small rat.” “It was a dam nod large rat,” said the Duke. And there the matter has rested ever si nee. Quite so; —ipse dixit, and what more do you want? The Duke in his old age would have made a good popular science lecturer. Having chanced on the mention of Gilbert Murray, I may add that this distinguished scholar has shown a disposition to wander off from his proper job into politics, his proper job being the teaching of Greek from a professorial chair. I seem to remember that he was a defeated candidate at the last general election. If he was, his published lectures on subjects social and political suggest the reason. In tone and spirit they would better befit the Communist' M.P., Mr Newbold, than an Oxford professor. In one of them he presents sympathetically a Revolutionist who would “shatter this had social order to pieces and go back to simplicity.” “To savagery?” asks an objector. Not at all;

Intellectual and moral nature do not depend on a complicated social system. Thoreau and Emerson and Tolstoy and Walt Whitman and Rousseau and Plato and Epicurus did not become debased in mind because they turned their backs on civilisation and tried to return to simplicity. If modern man ever breaks through his prison of convention and capitalism and wins his way hack to simple life he will bring to it the powers of intellect and character that he now possesses. He will not forthwith believe in Mumbo Jumbo or execute his wife for witchcraft because he has rheumatism. Perhaps not. But he will do some other things equally remarkable. Peruse in last Tuesday’s Daily Times the official programme of the Australian Communistic Party, “with which the Labour Party has resolved to take steps to affiliate.” The workers’ government must nationalise the banks. It must take ever all large industrial undertakings, mines, and shipping. It must declare all land and houses public property. It must establish a State monopoly of foreign trade. It must annul all debts, publio and private. Here is simplicity of life for you ! The last sentence clean carries me away. Let me exhibit it single and alone in all its delightful audacity—The workers’ government ipust ANNUL ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ! Which done, what matters it whether we worship Mumbo Jumbo cr not? Nothing will matter. Nobody will owe anything, nobody will own anything. We shall all be equally rich and equally poor. Gcod-bye tile fever and the fret! We are in the land of the lotus eaters, the land in which it always seemeth afternoon. And the music cf the spheres, playing us to extinction, resolves into the familiar strain, “We’ll never get drunk any more !” But I go back to that list of eminent examples who turned their back on civilisation in search of' the simple life, —a saints’ calendar beginning on the Bostonian “hub” with Thoreau and Emerson, and ending with Plato and Epicurus on the steps of the Parthenon, a wide sweep. Let us select two of these worthies. First,. Rousseau, who opens his volume of “Confessions” after this fashion: “I am going to do what no other man ever did or ever will do, exhibit a man in the whole truth of his nature, that man myself. Let the Judgment trumpet sound when it will; this book in hand I will say to the Judge, Here I am —here is the record of all that I ever did or thought or said; see if you can find anywhere a better man !” This consummate Pharisee, Jean Jacques Rcsseau, whilst winning distinction as a writer on education and the domestic affections, was all the time disposing of his own illegitimate children—five of them—by dropping them secretly, one by one as they came, into the receiving box of a foundling hospital. The other specimen I select is Wait Whitman, of whom an American writer in the Spectator of June 2 says that when he, Walt Whitman, was “receiving the financial contributions of admirers in Philadelphia, two of his families—children of unmarried mothers—were given no support and were entirely neglected by him.” This writer refers to what he calls the “barbaric yawp” of Whitman’s alleged poetry, which shows spite. I have nothing to do with that; I am concerned only - with the way in which these two egregious examples turned their hack upon civilisation and sought the simple life. The promoters of the new Town Hall project made a miss, or, to put it with delicacy, a coup manque. For good or ill we turned the project down. It is startling to find the Dunedin Town Hall figuring in Hansard as a reality, at least as a probability. The Hon. Mr Newman, one of tile new men of the Legislative Council, lamented this probability:—-“Dun-edin is a magnificent city, and has fine citizens, but I feel sure if they realised the conditions under which the back-

settlers in the North Island are living through want of roads and bridges they would do without a new Town Hall for a few years longer.’’ Well, we are going to do without for a few years longer ; Mr Newman’s tears may be dried ; but how this abstention can benefit back-block settlers in the North Island is a riddle. If the issue, yes or no, had been for determination by the Council, cur Town Hall were as gooc as built; —half-a-dozen Honorables following Mr Newman asserted that we ought tc have it, might, could, should, and would have it. The Hon. G. M Thomro;. descanted on cur merit in filling from this city most of (he great judicial positions Nearly 1! the members of the Supreme wurt bench, together with the Grown- Prosecutor in Wellington and the S.M. in Auckland, were contributed by us; so, also, both Speakers and the leader of the Council, —all Otago men. Generous feeling ran high, and it was quite on the cards that their lordships would themselves present us with a Town Hall—if they* had the money. In matters municipal are we by any chance capable of extravagance or waste? O dear no, far from it, not in the least: The Hon. Sir Thomas Mackenzie. — We need not fear extravagance: it is a Scottish community. Dunedin is one of the most economical cities in the whole Dominion. An Hon. Member. —Mr E. Newman is Scotch. The Hon. Sir T. Mackenzie.—l know he is; that is why I am appealing to him and the Council on behalf of the Town Hall for Dunedin. Bred in the bone is our virtue of thrift. At this very' moment we are hoping to hire a city engineer at about one half the usual rate. Whether on pleasure or on business bent we have a frugal mind. And here is a story to suit: An old man (Scotsman) lay dying. By his side sat his wife, waiting in silence. Close to the bed on a little round table burned a solitary candle. For a long time the silence continued unbroken. Then the old woman rose from her chair. “ Donald,” she said. ‘‘l’m going into the kitchen, and I may be awa’ some conseederable time ; but if thou shouldst take thy departure before I return, first blow out the light.” Careful soul ! The classical ‘‘Bang went saxpence!” story, hitherto at top, goes down one. Here is another of similar drift; I cannot prove it to be Scottish, but it ought to be. After service, the visiting minister went to the deacon’s house for supper. Would he not stay the night? Tito deacon was pressing, but the minister noticed that the deacon’s wife showed no enthusiasm. However, he consented, and went outside the room to take off his boots, while the deacon’s wife went upstairs to bring down the Bible for family worship. Descending, as the minister was skill fumbling over his boots, she saw a bald head which she took to be her husband's. Lifting the Bible, she brought it down with a resounding thwack: “There, take that, for asking him to stay the night.” In reply to an editorial “questionnaire” —I think that is the word—a number of conspicuous people in and about London have been telling how they sleep at night. Lord Haldane : “I go to bed when my work is done. That is usually late. Last night it was 1.45 a.m. I sleep between six and seven hours: and I do not sleep in the daytime.” Mr G. K. Chesterton : “ I like as much sleep as l can get, and as I go to bed very late I invariably get up very late. I never sleep in the middle of the day.” On the other hand Lord Leverhulme (of Sunlight Soap) takes “what are called forty winks after lunch;” but Lord Burnham ‘‘not even in the House of Lords;” and Lord Ernie not unless he is “at a public meeting.’’ General Booth, when lying awake at nights, resorts to “a philosophical work—e.g.. Mr Balfour's ‘Foundations of Belief,’ ” —no doubt an excellent soporific, but he adds “ on occasion I take something of another type,'’ —nothing liquid, let us hope. With the same unreserve a dozen other celebrities publish their nightly habit. What they do when they get up in the morning will be the next catechism : “Tea or coffee at breakfast? Do you take sugar? And”— remembering Swift’s Big Endians and Little Endians—“at which end do you break your egg ?” Civis.