Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] TUESDAY JANUARY 26, 1932. THE GOLDEN AGE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 26 January 1932, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] TUESDAY JANUARY 26, 1932. THE GOLDEN AGE.

In a recent address to the Modern Language Association in Sydney, Mr Justice Piddington. spoke of an illusion that used to be very prevalent, namely, the belief in a Golden Age, a halcyon period in the remote past, in which there was no sin, suffering or sorrow, but all dwelt in friendship and happiness. Of course, anthropologists have exploded the fiction, and three hundred years ago Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, although no scientist, demonstrated the falsity of the. supposition that primitive, man was to be envied. His existence, said Hobbes, was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. ’ ’ A counterpart can be found among the African Bushmen to-day, should anyone desire to experience the amenities of life at the date to which the “Golden Age” used to be assigned. Nevertheless, the notion of a world from which all cares had been excluded, but which has since degenerated into this vale of tears, has had an irresistible appeal to the imagination of mankind. Numerous references to it occur in the literatures of antiquity, and even of a later day. The reason why man invented this chimera is not far to seek. Ilaiassed by the troubles and disappointments that constantly beset him, he has looked back wistfully to a Saturnian era in which all was perfect and the principles of quintessential justice reigned. However, although the theory of a Golden Age is fallacious, it _has exercised a strong and a beneficial influence on human institutions. Without committing themselves to chronological exactitude, those who yearned for the vanished Golden Age assumed that it corresponded with a state of nature. The Stoic school taught that man should live according to nature, which provided sovereign rules of conduct. This concept implied that there was a law of nature, an ideal code. The Roman jurists who, at the time when the Stoic philosophy reached Italy, were evolving the “jus gentium”—the law available to all as opposed to the rigid and formal “jus civile,” available only to Roman citizens — attempted, as far as possible, to model the new system on this attractive but mythical law of nature. As a result, Roman law became more simple, flexible and logical. qualities which the many modern systems deriving from it have inherited. The distinction

between law and equity developed. . The “jus naturale” gave birth to modern international law, and it is the source of many of the political and social doctrines which France has disseminated during the past century and a half. All this is no inconsiderable achievement for something,., that never was.