WITH PIPE ALIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 19500, 14 March 1925, Page 11

WITH PIPE ALIGHT

THE DANGEROUS LIFE.

(By

“Criticus”)

Florian stood before his judges and listened, with his soul shrinking, to the record of his life read in a terrible voice by the Prosecutor, whose knowledge of his earthly doings seemed to be as expansive and as profound as the great spaces through which Florian had just travelled, and as particular in detail as the silver-brilliant track of the Milky Way. Florian was aghast at the length of that terrifying list of events, which for the most part seemed to consist of a few inconsequential neutralities and a host of blunders and evils—he was aghast and frightened. He tried to console himself with the thought that the standards by which his human record was judged was that by which Olympus measured the merit of its inhabitants; but his honest mind swept the sophistry away with the reminder that he himself was hearing and judging and finding cause for fear. Florian realised that he had lived his life to the full, neither as a starveling nor as a gourmand, and his fellow creatures probably regarded him as a moderately decent citizen, who took cheerfully what the gods sent, but never begged and never stole, whether by force or cunning, from their storehouse of wonders.

Florian had not been so scrupulous where the laws made by his fellows were concerned. Where he had disagreed with the righteousness or the expediency cf the restrictions they-attempted to put on him, where the i-.oral code of his age had gone beyond Nature and had become artificial and inimical, Florian had trusted to his own judgment, keeping firmly to the course he mapped for himself. Conventions and ether man-made laws he regarded as subservient to the indefinable, the immeasurable power within him which inevitably pointed the way, and invariably he had followed that guide, which now he seemed to see was really the creature of his own desires.

There had been a time when Florian had been perplexed by his own thoughts. On several occasions he had looked within himself, trying to discover the “secret springs of action,” but like most people who indulge in introspection he made devastating blunders which more often than otherwise did himself grave injustice. As part of those searchings for the inspiring force, Florian had taken the advice of the philosophers and the scientists, but all that he gained from their ponderous verbal mazes and their polysyllabic expositions was that deep-seated within himself was Desire, the initiator of all the things which now glorified or damned him. He realised that the thirst to penetrate the mysteries of this power sprang from the power itself and that it was left unslaked because this inspiring force was denied the skill to make the instruments essential to the successful prosecution of the inquiry. Theology for a time had claimed him, but there had come the insistent bidding to leave the warring sects to themselves, and to justify himself by a life lived without curiosity concerning the things beyond the shadows. Life, after all, was an interlude in some vast play, and he could know the past with no more certainty than the future. The Ruling Force was inscrutable and there were grave risks—to say nothing of racking anxieties—attendant on the interpretation of that Force in terms of humanity and through human agencies. Florian came to the consoling conclusion that the present was the only reality known to him, and for and in that reality he had to live. The Romanticist might be the only person capable of evading the hum-drum things of life; but Florian had no desire to disguise the flavour of life with such sweetenings—he wanted to live.

And so he had given Desire free rein, doing its bidding without check, without protest, without reproof. To have stored knowledge of law’s and conventions, to have armed himself with some grand exposition of the etiquette of morals might have restricted the liberty he wanted to give his Desire, and so Florian never asked the Why’s of anything, he never thought of the consequences—he tasted the faregplaced before him and went his way. At the time it had seemed fair and just to himself, fair and just to his fellows, and locking back over those years—or were they moments?—he realised that he had enjoyed it; but now he was not quite so certain. The recital of the events of his life—everything down to the shred of. a thought which never reached consciousness —was a terror-striking ordeal and Florian, faced by the final, impartial assay, was full of fears.

The end of that crushingly complete, that merciless biography came at last, and Florian, relieved to find that the sum was totalled, waited with more resignation. Appeals and disputings were impossible before this court. He was helpless but he would be asked to pay no more than a fair price. Then it was that Florian heard a Voice, which spoke with the authority of illimitable wisdom, and with the sweet .severity of a Justice which was without knowledge of justice itself. Florian knew that the moment of decision had come, and he was surprised to find himself entirely devoid of emotion. He was a disinterested spectator of his own fate, without fear or hope because he was so utterly helpless. ‘You have lived a dangerous life,” he heard the Voice saying. “Invariably, you have given way to your desires, to your tastes, offering no resistance, counting no cost or consequence, and making no pause until those, desires were exhausted. You tock much from life and you found pleasure in living; but the risks were enough to awake fear in even the gods. Who could go through such dangers and emerged scathless, who could survive without hurt ? Only one man, Florian—he of the Clean Mind.