Putting on Airs

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 32, 10 August 1905, Page 1

Putting on Airs

In one of his delightful books Lewis Carroll makes the Duchess say to little Alice : ' Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.' The moral of the following story is not far to seek. It was told In the London ' Times ' some years ago by Canon McColl in the course of a controversial letter on tTie evergreen subject of Ritualism. ' A friend of mine,' said the Canon, ' once shared the box-seat with the driver of a stage-coach in Yorkshire, and, being a lover of horses, he talked with the coachman about his team, admiring one horse in particular. " Ah," said the coachman, " but that 'oss 'ain't as good as he looks ; he's a scientific 'oss." " A scientific horse ! " exclaimed my friond, " what on earth do you mean 'by that 1 ? " " I means," replied Jehu, " a 'oss as thinks he Knows a deal more nor he does." '

The true scientist and the cultivated scholar an ( gifted with the inborn modesty which is about the best getting for either virtue or learning. It is mental rawness that is proud, and empty \essels make the greatest sound. Catholics are, more than any other religious organisation, the victims of the empty and far-res,ound-ing amateurs who, without ever having seen so much an the cover of a treatise on our theology or asceticism or canon law, stared on (metaphorical) barrel-ends awd profess 5 to teach these sciences to the Pope and the College of Cardinals and all the highest experts of our Faith. This curious and eccentric phase of current polemics is incidentally touched upon by the scholarly Dr. O'Riordan in a timely and remarkable work just issued from the press! (" Catholicity and Progress in Ireland ' -, Kegan Paul, publishers!) . 'It is curious,' says he, ' that, whilst a physician will not presume to lecture lawyers on jurisprudence, or a properly trained lawyer lectune physicians on therapeutics, a geologist lecture bacteriologists on the ways of germs or lecture engineers on the building of bridges, a carpenter lecture a tailor on how to cut a suit of clothes, persons are to be found in every walk of life who, drawing out an idea from their -inner consciousness and fixing that pet idea immovably as on a pedestal, make it the test of theological trtfth, and pass sentence, without a suspicion of being ridiculous, on all theologians and metaphysician;^ who have written, from St. Augustine to RosminV

That is a good ' slzing- U p »of the sort of • scientific 'osses ' that draw the rickety tumbril of cheap NoPopery controversy in our day, Artemus Ward poked some quiet humor at such know-alls In his report on th« speeches of John Bright, Earl Derfey, Lord Stanleyi/and W. E. Gladstone. He earnestly trusted that Earl Bright, JoJin Derby, Wm. E. Stanley, and Lord Gla4-' stone would ' cling inflexibly to those great fundamental principles, which they understand far better than I do ; and I will add,' he continues, 'that I do not understand anything about any of them whatever in the least ; and let us all be happy, and live within our means, efven if we have to borrer the money to do it with.' Many of our press and platform assailants have even less knowledge of what they attack than the Genial Showman professed to have of English politic*. A man who knew nothing whatever of the science of bacteriology once ventured to lecture Pasteur on his art in the columns of a London , daily. People merely raised their eyebrows and speculated as to • which lunatic asylum the critic's friends would remove him. But a in a yellow scarf, who knows nothing of the history or teachings of the Catholic Church, may make a coarse tirade upon her, and he will be greeted with rounds of applause by the sort of people who like that sort of thing., God forbid that we should condemn any man merely for lack of book-learning. Illiteracy, whe> her partial or total, is in itself no crime. Even ig,norance is not. 'It only becomes wrong,' says Loofs, ' when it presumes to judge where it is incompetent to judge. And when it states its baseless judgment in a form which would merit severe censure even if its grounds were jgood,j it becomes despicable. v

That is just tho position of some of the vehement enthusiasts who hajve lately been yapping at us from sundry pulpits and platforms throughout New Zealand, Wo have only respect for the decent mediocrity or unlearning which knows its limltavlons and Is careful to remember tkat the first lesson of liberty is to respect tho liberty of others, and the first duty of social Intercourse is to have proper consideration for the feelings of others. But we confess to a sense of contempt or of amusement— according to circumstances!— for the ■vociferous meddler who rushes out in broad daylight, with smoking tallow ' dip ' in hand, to teach the sun how to shine in the heavens. Newton was one of the most modest of men. So was Cardinal Newman. Of the latter Justin McCarthy wrote : 'He had no scorn for intellectual inferiority in itself ; h"e despised it Only whe?n it gave itself airs. 1 And there is a good deal of

that commodity airing itself, especially when the sun is over the Tropic of Cancer, and the heat of the dogdays is in the northern skies.

What it is coming to For ages goggled im estimators groped with crucibles and alembics after the philosopher's stone, which was to turn their leaden guttcis into shining tars of yellow gold. They discovered many things by the way, and laid the foundations of modern chemistry ; but their |qjuest for the magical medium of transmutation was as vain as the search of Ponce de Leon for the fountain of perpetual youth in the Everglades of Florida. Politicians, like the alchemists of old, are still in <q) est of the philosopher's stone that (they hope) will transmute the modern State into the sweet Utopia of the old dreamers' dreams. But Utopia is still, as before, the land of Nowhere, and -as many leagues as ever beyond Amauros, cr the Vanishing Point. And, as the world wags, ' there is,' as Herbert Spencer says, 'no mere political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts. 1 The Premier may, like Lewis Carroll's walrus (no personalities are intended), ' weep like anything ' to see the pass to which the ' leaden instincts ' that Dead to the divorce-mills threaten to bring domestic life in New Zealand. ' The foundations of social life,' says he, ' areibeing sapped by the number of divorces.' ' "Us true, 'tis pity ; and pity 'tis, 'tis true.' But are the Premier and other lawmakers so dull of wit as to suppose that the increased facilities for divorce that are being provided by the present session of Parliament constitute a sort of magical political alchemy to transmiute the decay that (as they say) is sapling the foundations of the nation ? Have they not before them the warning example of America and Australia, and of this ' God's own country '—an example which shows that e\ery additional tampering with the unity and sanctity of the marriage tie produces a further extension of the pig-philosophy, the temple of whose unclean worship is the divorce court ? * Members who vote the extension of causes of divorce and then deplore, in alvance, the foreseen results of their handiwork-, remind rs of the Walrus's hypocritical ' sympathy ' for t'-.e oyster ._ ' With sobs and 'ears he soiteJ out These rf the largest si/c, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.' One of the most discomforting signs of the moral dryrot that has sot in is the nonchalance or levity with which aipplications for divoice are often treated by counsel an 3 principals. In this connection, Juidge Hlodges ("Victoria) recently pulled up a barrister sharp on his haunches with this remark : ' You seem to troat siuch a matter as though it were merely a separating of dogs. The divorcing of a man and wife is a veiy serious matter.' In one sense Judge Hodges' rebuke was, perhaps, hardly fair— to the dogs. But it points like a fingerpost to the social chaos of Beelzebub towards which divorce in Victoria is moving on ball-bearings. Two weeks ago the leaders of the sectarianising movement singled out ' the old Eastern States ' of America as bright exaimiples of educational peace of the {■lu.ppbsed benefits of the sort of Unitarianism which they are scheming to force upon our public schools at the public cost. They forgot to state that the old Puritan stock of those Scates has almost died out thiough its own rottenness. Not to touch; upon other matters, there is in Massachusetts one divorce to every 10 marriages ; in Vermont one to every 10 ; in Rhode Island one to every 8.4; in New Hampshire (where till q^ite recently a Catholic teacher could not be legally employed in any public school) one to every 8.3 ; and in Maine one to every 6. Between 1869 and 1901 some 700,000 divorces were granted in the United States, directly or indirectly affecting, it is said, some 4,000,000 souls. And well

may President Roosevelt say : •If we have solved every other question in the wisest possible way, it shall profit us nothing if we have lost our own national soul; ana we will have lost it if we do not have the question of the relations of the family p,ut upon the proper basis.' And we may adrj^on our own account that ' the question of the relations of the family ' will not foe 'put upon the proper basis ' until the Catholic teaching regarding the marriage bond is recehed and acted upon. Mr, Seddon and our other legislators might pin this in their hats, in readiness for the next occasion on which they will weep when ' the foundations of social life are sapped ' by their own drills and raclcarock.