EVOLVING A CONSCIENCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 99, Issue 16470, 11 April 1925, Page 11 (Supplement)

EVOLVING A CONSCIENCE.

i,_MY LEGAL ABORIGINAL FRIEND. (By “Darius.”) The Maori does not know where lie came from, any more than lie knows where he is going to. lie may have come across the Red Sea with the Israelitish host, as certain nasal formations indicate; he may have come from the Asian steppes, the European marshes, or India’s coral strand; he may have come from the cradle of the race, or he may have been a later evolution. lie will tell you lie came from Hawaii, just as I, living here in Auckland province, might tell you my parents came from Ireland; but wherever he came from he is an interesting biological and psychological study; and the more I think about it the more I say “Isn’t it?”

The Old Order.

We go about greatly interested in origins and discoveries in this Held place—man's nativity farther and farther .back in the misty ages. The four thousand years allowed by our fathers for the habltibility of the planet—to doubt which was heresy—show man almost in the zenith of his intellectuality in many respects, and there is no doubt whatever that order and good governm.ent obtained in India and China when man in the sheilings in the. misty islands we now call Great Britain was still in the dark ages. As I lay in bed, looking out of my window over the morning sea, with never a sail to be 1 seen between the line of creamy foam upon the shore and the low, lilac and old-gold horizon, studded here and. there with rare pearl and opal lights, I thought about this Maori people, and later, after breakfast, I discussed them with an aboriginal Maori, a quiet man, cultured and gentlemanly, and a barrister by profession. He had been telling me of a Native churchman, a descendant of Titokowara, and 1 said that if I were a Maori I should make full inquiry into my ancestry before I made any claims to tribal antiquity. Be it understood, I am not saying anything against Titokowara, but I have a fixed impression that Titokowara was by no means a Genghis Khan, and that there arc two distinct brands of Maori —one a man of ancient and noble family and the other most revolting product of barbarism. You may say there are the two classes in all clvllations, but I do not know . where, amongst barbarians, there was such a distinct line of demarcation between the low and the high as amongst the Maoris, and that distinctibn remains unto this day, and accounts for crime and criminal inclination in the native race. Between the Itangatira or Toa and the Taurekareka was as wide a *gulf as that which existed of old between the Israelites of the House of David and the Gentile Nazarites.

An Old and Sensitive Conscience.

1 do not think what we call cpusoience can be cultivated in one or ‘two generatiops. Conscience is greatly inherited memory of right. The lower orders cannot have this, as they have no traditions to keep it alive, if you search out aboriginal myths you will find a great deal of poetic justice in them —a good deal of romance, a good deal of the triumph of right and the punishment of wrong. By and by mythology and tradition develop into history, which Is the basis of national memory. Just as the primal people kept alive the tribal memory by mythology and tradition, we should keep alive for our education the national memory, for history is the only thing that can indicate to us whence we came and how fast or how slow wo have travelled.

It Is also the only indication we have of personal and national integrity. You may take it from me that a nation with a glorious history is like to have and maintain a pure conscience, and If with that it does not follow the gleam then the judgment must come, as came the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

The highest morality Is likely to be found In companionship with the highest and most sensitive conscience, and when I use that word I do not mean the thing that hurts you when you neglect to say your prayers; I mean the Inherent determination in your dealings with mankind and womankind to act as well as the best of your ancestors acted, and a little better. I moan the inherent quality, voiceless and yet commanding, that says: “Thou shalfc love thy neighbour as thyself,’’ and then some, •.because self-love is not practised in “our set,’’ but sclf-forgetfulncss is, and that is nearest the. Divine, the likest God, within the soul. The Shaaow Hand.

Night, with her heaven full of stars, is likely to he upon me before I get to my conclusion through the manifold interruptions of this day with the “evolution of the native conscience," ever a shadow robed in mist before me. There is room for big and sustained thinking here, but my friend speaks: “Things were going hardly with me when 1 was at St. John’s. I was very poor in goods, and in spirit also; but somehow this had come to the knowledge of a noble Archdeacon, who is now dead. I shall call him Archdeacon Sam. From that day I considered the flowers of the garden and field, the trees and the birds, and took no thought for the morrow, for at the end of each month came the punctual cheque signed by Archdeacon Sam. I was enabled to complete my University course and pass rny final examination. When I said ‘I look no thought’ I was scarcely correct, for at times tills unobtrusive bounty oppressed me Not only did it scorn unlikely that I could ever repay rny generous friend, hut 1 had a fear that [ might not turn out ail right—that I might eventually become a rogue or a scoundrel, or, at the least,, I might lose my ideals in fhe desire, for wealth and position; so I went, quietly away, leaving no address, and entered the office of a respectable legal firm. After a lime I wrote to my benefactor a due explanation, and lie replied that lire risk was his affair —small in Ids estimation, —and he was quite prepared to take it. I believe that The aintly and masterful man had some unguessed resentment that I had interfered with his further shaping of rny destiny, but from the sliadow-Jand that kindly shadow-hand is still guiding, and will still he a helping hand, o’er moon and fen, o’er crag and toerent, till the night he gone,’ and morn and the angel smile in ‘gladsome unison.’ ” «