102
ON THE CULTIVATION OF
CANDOUR-
It
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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Mr. BLAND pointed out that about half the children at school in England were [receiving no definite religions instruction · (Daily Press, Felnuary 7th.) in the lay school: were they noticeably JEROME K. JEROME regards his pipe is devilish? The other man claimed that the his "strongest friend," chiefly because it example of the other half saved them, as never tells him of his faults. Candour is well as home influences. In this citizen's conventionally included in the category of home, Mr. BLAND happened to know, “yon virtues, but there is candour and candour. might stav a year (if you went away for The candid friend is notoriously friendless., week-ends) without guessing that anyone Intellectual candour is rarer, less easy to in it held any religious views at all." produce, and there is a great need of it. There were no family prayers; religion was The average man forms strong opinions, eschewed as n topde. Each member of, without first thinking them out. Professor, the family went to church once cach KINGDON CLIFFORD in one of his essays Sunday, and that was all. Yet this citizen "it is wrong always, everywhere, and seemed furiously eager ta give definite Haya for everyone to believe anything upon in- religions instruction to the children of the sufficient evidence." Striving after candour working classes, without taking any steps to of the intellect, striving as hard to be honest give it to his own. If we all only dared to with themselves as honest with others, speak out fearlessly exsetly what we each makes men captains of their souls. For know! Mr. BLAND makes the effort. He most, however, it means a strenuous strife, casts his mind back to his own childhood. a never-ending Sisyphean struggle. The I did believe in ghosts with an urgent, in- eled to come lazy vice of taking things for granted issistent, practical belief, their rebounding houlder on life's acclivity, across ghosts in dark corners and at the end of dark passages in our old house, and took un- The other candour is too cheap, though, commonly good care not to pass these dark like many cheap things, it has its 118e8.
corners alone, and to keep well away from the is curious to watch how different people end of those dark passages. But I don't think behave when they encounter it. Well-bred 1 ever expected to come across an angel any people take it smiling, as when Society whore. And yet I was always being told went to hear and enjoy Father VAUGHAN'S that there were nach things as ghosts, and fulminations. Il-bred people canuol endure that angels were all about us, especially about ît deserving or undeserving. They get
I never cross; especially if by chance the cudidoking buck, I am quite sure that
drew any e tufort from the presence of those critio fingers a sore spot. Occasionally it
angels about my bad. I can't say I disbelieved falls on ground that is not stony, and then in them, because that would have been to doubt it gives furiously to think. At a local the word of grown-up people, but in those tiffin table yesterday a Doctor made a dreadful twenty minutes after the light was out remark that prompted a Piece-goods Expert and before I fell asleep, what comforted me was to say that he was surprised to find a man the noise of talk and movement downstairs, That was real, I felt. Now, how was it, in his position giving expression to such opinions, &c. &c. A little heatedly the grisly ghosts I did not believe with a vital medical man rejoined that he never pre-belief) în r-dient, white-winged angels? Well, tended to be a good man, or words to the I think, it was because I noticed that the effect that he never pretended to be any. grown up people about me, my nurse and the thing at all other than he was. One of other servauts, for instance, did baliere in those cantankerously candid nuisances of ghosts, while none of them, so far a‹ I could society sententiously observed that it was gather from their conduct, believed a single
little bit in Bogels." pretentions to pretend to have no pre- tences." It was rude, but it was suggestive. It led us to look again at a new book of essays by HUBERT BLAND, from which w quoted the other day. This new writer, w,
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our beds when the light was put out.
Yes,
I ask myself, that while I did believe in
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Then with regard to divine anger or
found that when he had been guilty of some sorrow over naughtiness, Mr. BLAND always small off ore his parents forgav him, and he reased therefrom that divine forgive ness was equally sure. Stall children. very small children, d› reason and they reason rather weil.” So those considerati is never affect d his conduct; he mus have been a calculating little monster. He shared with countless other children the sympathy with the bid, unfortunate characters in the Bible stories,
used to clench my small fists he ever I thought of Elisha and those ghe-bears.
remembered, is one who makes an effort in the direction of candour, candour, of both sorts, the cheap and the dear.
As might have been expected, we find that he is less succesful when trying to be honest with himself than he is when dealing faith. fully with the foibles of his public. The question of the religious education of young children is a question which all of us, who take any interest in public affairs, have got to tackle whether we like it or not," he says, and he tackles it with a most refreshing candour, ns will be seen. Yet in the same book we find the same man taking comfort in WORDSWORTH'S line, We live by admiration, love, and awe," and on that poetic nectocalyx swimming toward the postulate that there are many occasions on which man has to rej et evidence in favouri numerous other difficulties. Look round, of faith. On the subject of secular versus the other kind of popular education. he that marvels to find "how curiously lit.le clear, close, honest thinking had bon given to it at all." This applies to an amazing number of conventions. As shareholder in Life,
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[February 17, 1908.
THE RAILWAY ESTIMATES,
(Daily Press, February 8th.) The railway question simply bristles with different points of view, none of which can well be ignore 1. Unfortunately, fov of us can claim competence to discuss them all. When estimates are submitted for a railway in a new country, it is nothing new to find them being exceeded. It is only to be ex- pected. But when they happen to be so greatly exceeded as is the case with those first submitted for our short Ine, enquiry No amount is as proper as it is natural, of official palliation can abolish the con- Plusion that the estimates in this case must have been arr ved at mainly by a process Even then the trouble is of guess work.
his monstrous toneliness about his bald head!'
And so on, he goes through the tragedy of the unfolding chill mind, and we can sym; a his heartily, forretting to be shocked
"Ohe may as¦ well speak out; if we don't tell the truth to ours yes and to each other about children we shall never got to the bottom of the religious diffi-ulty." Quite so, and
of
take up almost any question of the day,
as any vitality in it at all, and see if, ples for candour, for intellectual honesty, is not timely, not urgently to be made and earnestly weighed. Who deceive themselves are surely the most mischievous of liars,
not all stated. Should the expenditure
have swollen to the dimensions it has? Very fow men ein see why such a short line should cost so much. One popular solution does not lend itself to much argument. A shrug of the shoulders, the three words "Crown Agents again," and the answer is Then there comes obvious to most men.
the extraordinary variety of opinion as to the best alignment, by the admittedly competent engineers. Á battle of routes, in which the amateur surveyor is sometimes less disinterested than dogmatic, has been spared us, but in its place we have had a chopping and changing by men we can trust to be at once competent and disinterested, At the Legislative Council on Thursday, His Excellency was obliged to point this out, and at the same time ingeniously ex- plained the reasons, which by the non-
prt must be accepted without demur. His Excellency also reminde the council- ors that the line was demande practically irrespective of its cost or earnings. Those
t-er
were not his words, but the broad effect of them. The line had to be, to preserve the predominance of Hongkong, by making it the terminus of the great trunk line that will eventually connect the north and south of China. Yet it almost seems clear from His Excellency's remarks that this aspect was temporarily lost sight of when the first exiunites (totalling ouly five million dollars) were published. The single bridges and so forth were projected as if for a However that may be, merely local line. and while there shoull be n› niggardly carping over fractional expenses in such a momentous undertaking, which is moreover generally regarded as a vital issue for this Colony,
ix a difference between legitimate and unfor sea augmentations of cost, and preventible extravagance. was, we suppo e, a sspicion, or at least a fear, of the latter that prompted the anxious enqu rios that led to His Excellency making the full st ctement on railway affairs appearing in our issue of yesterday. Much emphasis was placed on the statement that the Colony that pass the piper has retained control of all important factors, but how worthless this local eintral really is, so far as limiting the expenditure goes, is quite easily dis vered. It was the secretary of State for the Colonies who decide that the line should be constructed on the depart- mental system, by the Crown Agents. a correspondent recently pointed out in our elumns, quoting Malaysiin experiences, this al me makes the local control ineffective
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in the all-important matter of cost. Estimate
no estimates, the ultimate outgỗ thus
His
Limited, we are all prone to accept the bin, Because introspection in excess is morbid, of the Directors, and to "take it as read," perhaps, m.n ignore one of the most valu. and very often the things we regard as abl clues they have to the underlying becomes as uncertain in amount as that of a axiomatic are those that are truly most forces of conduct. Yet a depermined prob. man who forwards a càrque signed but dehateable. Mr. BLAND quotes H citizen's declaration that "to banish definite and fearless tabulation of the evilence Exe lleney admitted that the system allows
typical ing in that direction, an a perfectly frank with the amount and date unfilled in. religious instruction from the clementary so obtained, may sometimes throw a much of very little local control over the consult- schools would be to bring up the rising needed light on external phenomena that, ing engineers, and even if it did, those etui- generation to be more like devils than like at present seem puzzling.
nent gout'cmen are usually in a position to