NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 6 November 1919, Page 26

NOTES

— Manana . Manana, mafiana [pronounced manyana] is " a Spanish word that ought to be as international as boycott’ or strafe’ or “vamos.” In the sunny South, , where life is easy and trouble light, men will as a rule put off till to-morrow whatever they could do to-day. Manana, —to-morrow, to-morrow, — they will say; for to-day the sun shines and why should a man worry about business? The word, indeed, is Spanish, but the thing it stands for is not confined to Spain.- Unpunctuality, want of discipline, lack of shame in breaking one’s word, callous indifference to the inconvenience others suffer when we fail to keep appointments, are, we venture to .think, just as common in New Zealand as in Lusitania; and more’s the pity. The man of procrastination is always too busy to be busy about anything; he loses so much time doing nothing that he has no time to do anything. He can neither catch a train nor catch a customer ; and an appointment kept for once in a while is sure to be the result of another missed. Who can tell what harm is done and what good left undone by shiftless, idle habits of procrastination? And who ever knew the man whose watchword is manana to achieve anything? Procrastination is the thief of time, but the worst of it is that it steals not only the time of him who knows no other use of time but to waste it, but it also robs busy people, who live by order, of time they can ill spare. It is a disease akin to sleeping-sickness or somnambulism; and, as a rule, incurable. And it is as old as the hills and the sea. Centuries ago St. Augustine denounced it when he said, Cras, eras, corvina vox! The End It is a philosophical truth that there is no such thing as an indifferent human act. Everything that a man does, as a rational man, is either good or bad. If the act is not good or bad in itself its goodness or badness is determined by circumstances or by its end. And no act is performed without some end or without attendant circumstances. We do not speak of spontaneous acts, or of acts in which the rational part of man has no play. . By human acts are meant all acts that proceed from man as from an agent who uses his : reason and his will. Apart , from reason and the will acts are not meritorious or culpable ; proceeding from reason and will they are always either the one or the other. The Church teaches us a sure way to sanctity our ordinary actions by ordaining them all towards God (Who is our last end) by making a morning offering at the beginning of each new day; and those who begin the day thus go a long way towards fulfilling Our. Lord’s precept to pray always. ' While we are bound to pray at certain times, we ought to remember that to work is also to pray, if we sanctify our labor by offering it to God with due recognition of the fact that we are His creatures and He is our Master. In the; same way, lawful recreation becomes sanctified and meritorious of an eternal reward. What a treasure in Heaven do they not store up for themselves who never neglect the sanctification of their whole day; and how much do they not lose who never think of God either at the beginning or the end of the day? To make eternity look through the windows of time ought to be our constant care. We have it in our power to : make the most transient act of eternal value; and we are foolish if we’ do not do so. At the head of the fresh page of life that we open each morning, we

ought to put the maxim of St. Ignatius: •** ::*“*■ . si ’ ■ Ad Majorem '■ Dei Gloridm. ' : nx piusis; The Humility of "Learning-' 1 "f Z 3^ J/: ■ ’ Dante in a memorable phrase said .that ! his book had made him lean. Few had' Dante’s intensity, and into the making of few books did there go such, patience, such study, and such genius as the great Florentine put into La. Divina Commedia. But without great labor and great study no book ’that lived was ever yet made, nor will one ever be made. The world’s best books were written painfully and in labor by men 1 who / tried to add one little ray of light to the , sum of human knowledge. None knew better their limitations; none so keenly felt that .they were but stammerers of the truth. Take Newton, for instance: “1 have but gathered a few shells on the shore of the ocean of Truth,” was his verdict of his life’s work. , The sincere student is humble in front of Truth, because he has advanced far enough to see that he can see but a very little way over the ocean whose confines God alone can measure. It is the sciolist, the dabbler in scientific encyclopedias,' the assimilator of knowledge-made-easy, . who like the proverbial empty vessel will make most sound when r men foregather to speak of the great problems that vex the human intellect. A Haeckel will pretend to set limits to the power of the unseen world where a Wallace or a Kelvin will admit that ho is an infant. A shallow-pated fledgling shot forth from. the highest form of one of our schools will lay down the law on political or economical questions with the assurance of a Solon, while scholars will feel their way and express their opinions with a reticence and a humility begotten of an appreciation of the difficulties before them. Here we are reminded of the old adage of the Schools; Two classes of creatures have no difficulties—angels and asses. Catullus judged us many centuries ago-* 0 sueculum in-si pie ns et infacet inn! Solitude In the Apologia Newman tells of the graceful compliment paid to him by, we think. Dr. Pusey, who met him as he walked alone in Oxford, and saluted him with the words, Aiinquam minus solus quam cum solus. To say ,of any man that no company is better than his own would in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred be but vain flattery, but in Newman’s case it was as sincere as it was true. Newman was never alone. He walked with God all his mortal days, and moreover he walked with the thinkers of all the ages whose great thoughts were ever in his mind. For him, indeed, the company of most other men must: have been a trial and a vexation from which he was always pleased to escape. But of how many of us can that be truly said? How many of us have religion enough to remember that wherever toe go and whatever we do God is with us and His eye upon us? How many can find in themselves and in the storehouse of the mind material for real intellectual entertainment and pro- • fitable reflection ? The tendency in modern times is to flee from solitude as if we were afraid of being alone with God and with our own thoughts. If lack of religion alone does not make us afraid, lack of intelligence will leave us helpless and yearning for distraction Still worse is it if in addition to these voids the sting of conscience pursues us and drives us to seek refuge out of ourselves and at_any price. To have to spend a day alone and in silence has become for most people a horror and a torture. Some ghost or other will haunt them: • > - ’

■ Post equitem sedet atra cura—“The black care he flees from sits behind the horseman” ; or in other words

Haeret lateri lethcdis arundo — .. . ,We may run but “we bear the arrow in our side.” Another .Latin verse goes to the root of the trouble:

In culpa est animus, qid se non effugit unquam —

“It is the mind which can : never escape itself that is in fault.’ ’ r The disease is' - common. '“ We know ■} the remedy. ‘ * v- : '- u ’