TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XIX, 8 May 1897, Page 562

TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

THE POTENTIAL CRIMINAL IN US. \ GOOD deal of nonsense is talked bv people about their being able to read the villain in a man bv just looking at his face. The amateur physiognomist has been especially rampant about this time in connection with the passing ot Butler through Auckland on his way to Sydney, and nine out of ten men you meet, including the thousands who saw only the photograph of the alleged murderer, as well as the few who had an opportunity of looking him in the eyes, declare that thev would have known him for a scoundrel of the deepest dye. Now, although I would not have taken two steps to see the man of my own accord, business circumstances brought me into contact with him, and mv conviction is that the amateur physiognomists are generailv quite wrong in their assumptions. I saw Butler when he had been suffering from three weeks’ confinement in a close cabin, and from many weeks of severe mental strain. He certainly did not look at his best, but from what I saw I should hesitate to believe that when he was on board the * Swauhilda ’ he presented anv outward signs by which the most astute student of human nature could detect him to be the monster he is supposed to be. There is no such thing as the brand of Cain, and all the world over “ one may smile and smile ar.d yet be a villain. A devil incarnate may wear the face of an angel, and a countenance revolting in its ugliness may belong to a phi’antrophist and martyr. Instances of both cases are innumerable. One of the great weaknesses of physiognomy and phrenology when associated with criminology lies in building up a system on deductions drawn from individual examples. The head of this great criminal and the face of that are the object lessons from which we are taught what are the outward signs of wickedness and depravity. Fortunately we do not act according to that teaching in our daily intercourse with men.or we would be making some terrible mistakes. The fact is that we soon learn that neither face nor head is to be trusted as an index of moral temperament or intellectual power. The potential devil as well as the potential angel is present in all natures constantly at war with one another. The best of us do not know of what outrages we might be guilty under certain circumstances. Everybody remembers the story of the old divine Richard Baxter passing Newgate during an execution. and exclaiming as he pointed to the poor wretch on the scaffold. ' There goes Richard Baxter if it were not for the grace of God. ' And even a man like Goethe was so conscious of this twin nature, this good and evil spirit within him, that he declared that there was not a crime in the whole category of human offences which under given circumstances he could not suppose himself to be ready to commit. You, gentle reader, cannot fancy yourself a murderer, for instance, but that does not necessarily prove that you are incapable of the heinous crime ; it may only prove that you do not know yourself. One says we are villains all. and certainly when opportunity is given to the beast in us to rise uppermost as in war. it is terrible what fiends men can become.

‘ HEY '. BUT IT S DOLEFUL, WILLOW, WILLOW, WALY!’ LIFE is a vale of tears. All ot us, except the very youngest, know it. As we tread our weary way through the vale, we look back and see the path we have trodden strewn with wreckage—our fallen ideals, our shattered illusions, our broken hopes ; and if we try to beguile ourselves with the fancy that the more or less short pathway that still remains to be trodden by each of us ere we reach the dread place where sits the ' grim fury with the abhorred shears.' maybe passed without our passage leaving it covered with such sad mementoes, our grisly companion, Experience, who keeps step with u in our melancholy march, whispers in our ear. * Alas, alas ! fallen ideals, shattered illusions, broken hopes — these will always mark the way you have passed up to the terminal portals, guarded by the ' Shadow feared of Man.’ The foregoing remarks are simply a suitable prelude to the announcement of a sad fact. I have taken some trouble to pitch them in a sufficiently melancholy key. and I hope the reader's mind is now properly attuned to receive mournful news. I give the news only second hand. It emanated first from some of those scientific people who know more about everything than anybody else, and who will insist on making everybody else partakers of their blasting knowledge. They have already made us know that about the food we eat which is slowly undermining our appetites, and have caused us to look equally askance on the cup that inebriates and the one that doesn't. Now they have gone a step farther. In this epoch of the world's history, wherein our lots are cast, the wheel and drift of things, the concatenation of circumstance, the high pressure of life, the flux and reflux of thought and sympathy and some other important factors have so moulded the mental attitude of the civilised peoples of the globe that the desire to possess and ride a bicycle has become inextricablv tangled up with the desire to live. Those who possess and ride a bicycle are as happy as their passage through this vale of tearswill permit them to be. The others are also happy, though in a less degree, in their hopes that they too will one day possess and ride a bicycle. Don't tell me that there are some people who declare they don't want to ride a bicycle. It simply means that their hope of getting one is so distant that they pre r er to keep it hidden, and could you see into their hearts you would find the word ‘ Bicycle ' as deeply graven thereon as ever was ‘ Calais ' on the heart of Queen Mary. This being the state of the world’s mind in regard to bicvc'es, xou may imagine what a fell effect will be produced by the bomb which the dynamitards of science have recently launched through the press upon the public. Those destroyers of peace have been making investigations and compiling statistics which have now resulted in their announcement that a certain high percentage of the population of the globe will never be able to ride bicycles. And this not from any pecuniary disability, which might very probably be got over, but from a physiological disability which never, never can be got over. There are no outward signs bv which we can distinguish those unfortunates on whom the inscrutable hand of Fate is laid so heavily : they mav be short, they may be long ; they mav be fat. they mav be lean : they may be lithe and agile, or they may be unwieldy and clumsy. It doesn't seem to matter what their physical build may be, there is something lacking, and this unknown lack makes it impossible for them to sit a bicycle, unsupported, for a single revolution of the wheel. They may try, time after time, but the result is always the same — at the verv first start they tumble off the bicycle ; or. as thev put it, the bicycle, animated by a peculiar spirit of malignity, deliberately throws them off. At length, those iil-fated mortals abandon all further attempts to ride the wayward machines, and, cultivating as much of a spirit of resignation as they can. they stand aside and look upon the rest of the world gliding merrily past them on wheels, or retire into the by-ways, striving to repress the rising tear. Here is, indeed, a moving picture of what must be the lot of a certain percentage of our fellow men and women, and their misery is brought home to us by the awful thought that in that doomed percentage we ourselves may number a dear friend or relative. Nay, even more dreaoful still, howcan we tell, unless we have already proved the contrarv. that we our own selves may not be among that unhappv band ot mortals who can never learn to cycle—never till the seas run dry I A MODEL TEACHER. r PHAT our present system of education—free, secular -L and compulsory and all the rest of it—is not perfection has occurred to a good many people before today, but as the efficiency of the system is only to be judged by results after a fair trial, and there has scarcelv l>een time for that yet, the voice of the critic has not been very loud on the subject. Occasionally, however, we are forcibly reminded of the mistake we are commit-

ting in training so many of our young people in this colony to take up careers which are already overstocked, and in filling their heads with erroneous ideas as to what is genteel employment and what is not. The most sweeping condemnation of our methods was quite unintentionally supplied the other day in Auckland by a professor of the teaching art, who has furnished an object lesson we’l worth considering. If onr system of education is to produce men and women of the stamp of that individual, the sooner we close all our schools and allow our youngsters to grow up in ignorance the better. The man in question had applied to the Stipendiary Magistrate for a maintenance order against his wife on the ground that she had sold all the household property and was about toleave for Sydney without him. In the course of his examination theapplicant explained that he held a teacher’s certificate, but had been unable for some time to obtain employment at his profession. Glancing at the stalwart figure, the Bench naturally asked why the ex-teacher had not tried his hand at something other than teaching. The latter's reply was rich indeed. He had been brought up to a profession, not a trade, and he could not do manual work. Healthy and strong, and at a time of life when scores of men quit one occupation to enter on another, this specimen of manhood had the effontery to come into court and demand that his wife should be bound over to support him. He was apparently in such dread lest she should depart and leave him to the merev of a cold and unfeeling world that he did not feel shame to invoke the aid of the law against her. Of course the invocation fell on deaf ears, and the plaintiff was dismissed with scant courtesy. But the case is not to be so easily forgotten. I would net for a moment suggest that the ex-teacher is anything but an abnormal specimen of his class, but the very fact that such men can become teachers points to one weak spot in our system. The only real teachers of the young are born such, and are exceedingly rare, and we are vet without the machinery for discovering them. Practically anybody who can manage to pass certain examinations can take to the profession, and the result is that hundreds utterly unfitted for it are to be found either in our schools or craving admittance to them. So far as their scholastic attainments are concerned they may be up to the mark, and thev mav even be possessed of the valuable faculty of being able to impart their knowledge to their pupils. But these are secondary considerations. The first attribute in a real teacher is character. What should be taken into account in the choice of a man who is to prepare the young for the world is not what the man has achieved in the examination line, not what he knows, but what he is. Consider the effect on any class of boys of a teacher holding such views of life and its responsibilities, of honour and selfrespect as our Auckland friend. What valuable lesson of any kind could such a man teach, and what frightful errors might he not inculcate ? As it is I am just a little afraid that among our teachers there is that tendency to discriminate between professions and trades, mental ano manual labour, genteel and common emplovment. It was the very tendency to disparage and shun the latter, rather than any devotion to teaching, which probably led them to take up the scholastic profession, and it would l>e strange indeed if they did not convex to their pupils some of the prejudices of their caste Hence, we can scarcely wonder to find, as we have found more than once, voung colonials folding their arms and saving, * I have been brought up to a profession not a trade, and vou cannot expect me to work with my hands.' Scarcelv a hopeful augury in a colony like this, where so much hard work has to be done. THE ART OF CONVERSATION. "VJ OW that we are on the threshold of the winter season and * evenings ’ are likely to be as much in vogue as ever, I am tempted to touch on that o’d subject which naturally crops up at this time of the year, namely, the decay of the art of conversation. That conversation is one of the decadent arts needs no proving, I think. If you go into ‘ society,’ especially if you frequent 'the upper circles’ which arrogate the name to their own exclusive use, you must know how in the best cases the talk is singularly ‘ cribbed, cabined, and confined ’ to the narrowest range of subjects It is not that the talkers are necessarily ill informed on a variety of matters, but they have lost the power either of conveying their ideas to others in an interesting way, or of receiving those others’ ideas with any interest. Do we not all know those ghastly afternoons and evenings when conversation languishes in the artificial atmosphereof a gatheringof poor self-conscious mortals who are all mutually bored by one another's society? How impotnt we all feel on such occasions if we think at all ; and if we have a little more energy than our neighbours, what frightful work it is to galvanise the wretched congregation into some semblance of life. Fortunately they of old-time devised cards, and modern ingenuity has invented a few games in which poor

mortals can take refuge. If it were not for these I feel sore we should all grow to loathe one another as Nansen's men did on board the * Fram ’ during their long enforced companionship in the Arctic regions. But these diversions are only making matters worse, for with every escape from the necessity of conversation independent of any of these aids, we are making it all the more difficult to retain the art. As an instance of this no one can have failed to mark how dances, one of the most successful devices to bring people together without the necessity for talk, have killed the art as far as the dancers are concerned. There is no conversation at a dance worth mentioning, merely a dreary recital of commonplaces which everyone knows by heart, and in which no one has the ghost of an interest. These meaningless counters are exchanged with more or less difficulty, and each party feels relieved when the music strikes up for the next dance. Now, why should there not be classes for teaching conversation as well as for the instruction in the Terpsichorean art ? The latter is by far the less valuable of the two. It does not merely belong to the category of polite and ornamental accomplishments; it is of such intrinsic importance from an educational point of view that I do not doubt when education is more of an exact science than at present the facnlty of verbal interchange of ideas will be as carefully cultivated as it is now neglected. If you will but consider it you will see to what an incalculable degree we are indebted for our education in life to the spoken word. Yet conversation, which of old was looked on as the best of all mediums of instruction, has fallen into disuetude as such. We look elsewhere for knowledge—to professors, to books, to newspapers, and store up no end of useless material —but for what ? In nine cases out of ten, nay, 999 out of a thousand, nobody benefits by our labour, and we ourselves quickly forget what we have learned. But if conversation was what it might be and what it should be, both we ourselves would benefit by our own knowledge, and so would our friends, while, on the other band, we would reap the fruits of their industry. Don’t let it be supposed that I am advocating some standard of conversation in which only prigs could participate. The draw-ing-room is not the lecture hall. But lam thinking of a standard of conversation into which all that interests ns in our daily life and is likely to interest others could be introduced and discussed in an interesting way. The thing is doable now but we must be quick about it. We are narrowing and narrowing down the province of conversation till it must eventually be driven out of our lives altogether. Already there are hundreds subjects which one has to taboo—subjects that half a century ago were in perfect form. The gaiety, the education, the very social life of the people is threatened by this decline, which is as marked here in the colonies as anvwhere. We are sadly in need of a few professors of the art of conversation if such could be found. We could well spare professors ot many 'ologies to make way for them.