252
THE REFORMERS.
(Daily Press, April 13th.) Speaking of those puritans of his day, who were desirous of forcibly converting the world around them to their own peculiarly narrow views of life, old SAMUEL BUTLER made the remark that they would
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
pro-
[April 18,1908. -
OLD LAMPS FOR NEW.
(Daily Press, April 14th). Into the editorial mail bag come tumbling all sorts of communications, and it is very often the case, no doubt, that those which the public subsequently see are less in- eresting than the ones with-held. Un- suitable for the crowded columns of a daily newspaper, they might be the brightest features of a "notes and queries" magazine. Sometimes it is difficult to know how to regard them. What, for example, is to be said of the following naive communication, coming to us, fully stamped, just as we reproduce it, all the way from Massa- chusetts?
March 9, 1909,
"
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "DAILY PRESS,' 818-It is interesting at times to recur to our own planet, our Home the Earth.
Circumference, about 21,899 miles (equs-
torial); diameter, 7926, (equatorial); area, some 197,000,000 square miles, volume, 26),000,000,000 cabio miles.
nature as being necessary for our existence | CHARLES II, when King and Parliament as a race, or essential for our enjoyment were pensioners of Louis XIV. is not a of life, the two being so closely connected pleasant period to look back on, yet we that it is impossible to separate them. But seem to be doing our utmost to bring it although these instincts have been im back again. planted in us for a wise purpose, it is also the fact that the perverse use of them may be injurious, not only to ourselves but to A tone for sins they were inclined to
the body politic. The wise administṛator By damning others that they had no mind to. knows this to his cost, and seeks so far as It is our misfortune to live in just such he can to restrain excess. He also knows another age of puritanic hypocrisy when that to seek to extirpate the instinct will every man who does not possess some as a matter of necessity not only entirely particular vica is moving heaven and earth fail, but be productive of worse results eveu to procure an act of Parliament to render it, than permitting the instinct to run riot as he fooliably imagines, impossible for his We may teach a monkey not to take certain neighbour to practise. A large section of things, but by no manner of means can we professedly good people in England do not teach him to comprehend that there is any smoke opium; a large number of professedly moral obliquity lu stealing in the abstract, good people in China, on the other hand, do Nature has not implanted in him the idea smoke opium. Opium annually in China of property. His friend the dog who has ruins a number of people who smoke more a very strong idea of the nature of private than is good for them. All this is allowed property, will disdain to take without per- on all sides, and it is also allowed that to mission anything that he knows belongs to convert from smoking the man who smokes his master, and will protect it from others to excess, or whose smoking is done to the so far as he can. To attempt to restrain detriment of his family financially, is a the monkey from stealing will not only of lacdable action. But there are many mil-necessity be a failure, but will in all lions of very good people in China who smoke bability spoil his good points and make him opium, and who do not ruin themselves, morose and savage; the trainer of a sheep nor injure in any way their families, and dog knows how careful he has to be to who on the whole conduct themselves in the encourage his pupil in his better instincts, affairs of life quite as well as their consors, leat in attempting to reform him from what who are honest and just in their dealings, he, the teacher, considers wroug, he may charitable in act and thought to their compel him to become a sheep stealer or mur- neighbours, bring up their families well, and derer. The very last man to reform your are in every external respect good and use. drunkard is the self righteous teetotaler, who ful citizens,—quite as useful in fact as their holds out the alternative of Hell-fire and accusers. Surely such men are entitled to damnation, and is unable to perceive how ask of the others, "Who set you up to be much depends on mere instinct on both rulers and judges over us? Are there no sides. So no-one is worse fitted to cure the beams in your own eyes that you would Chinese of opium smoking than your snug worry a world to remove a poor mote from anti-opium ranter, who has never smelt a your brother's ?"
whiff of opium smoke in his life, and is utterly unable to comprehend that sense of having nothing else to distrac. his attention from the humdrum of daily existence thun the opium pipe. We all have the instinct of climbing to Parnassus, the opium-smoker and the drunkard by seeking to forget their terrestrial environment; and the teetotaller and anti-opiumist by the less charitable method of exalting their own righteousness at the expense of their neighbours, forgetful of their own special iniquities, which they hope to cover by railing at the weakness of their brethren. The worst of all this hypocrisy is that it is the innocent who have to suffer the plain men and women who have nothing to say to either, but who for no crime of their own find that they for other mens' excesses are threatened with the loss of their own livelihood.
|
Comparisons. (1) Our Sun has 1,310,000 our volum, and 331,000 times our weight. (2) Our Mona has 1/19 our volume, and 1/81 our weight. (3) Jupiter, 139 times as large, and weighs 316 times as mach. (4) Mars has about 1/7 of our volume, and 1/10 of our weight.—Sincerely
CHARLES NEVERS HOLMES,
Brookline, Mass., U.8. 4.
yours,
I
Į
24, Stedman St. Who and what is our friend Mr. CHARLES NEVERS HOLMES? Why does he remind us of these disconcerting facts, that we all tacitly agree are best forgotten? Is it that he thinks Hongkong so benighted a place that its inhabitants have perhaps never had the opportunity of hearing such tilings ?、 Is he some new variety of American humourist, perchance, and too subtle for us? If it be a joke we confess we have not yet discerned it. Or is the gentleman a little-er-intellectually dizzy? Thus and thus do we wonder, and then, studying the caligraphy, we seize upon the idea that perhaps Mr. CHARLES NEVERS HOLMES is just young enough to have freshly discover- ed the facts which be so kindly passes on to us at a cost of half a dozen cents gold. Our interest in him waxes greater, and with it, our sympathetic esteen. These biggest of big things have burst upon his understanding, we suppose, and alto- gether eclipsed the bigness, for him, of the United States and its wonders. After Fall, those figures are not really so stale as we might at first suppose. They were fresh once, and they are of a sort warranted to. keep fresh in any climate. The wisest sayings of SOLOMON must have beeu platitudes before he set them down in writing, or caused them to be written, and the chance is that he shared some of the pleasurable feeling of the author, just like Mr. CHARLES NEVERS HOLMES. This preference of ours for originality is after all based on a dream. There is no such thing in reality. It is not possible. The philosopher who said there is no new thing under the sun was saying nothing new when he said so. What we call originality is a matter of defective education, or else of defective memory. NEWTON did not really discover the law of gravitation. Every mother's son before him found it out, just as every one has been credit for originality, because he forgot, or........ didn't know, that the thing was as old as the hills, or older. It is an original
But the habit is by no means confined to opium; we find even a man aiming at the high position of Prime Minister as little aware of the duty he owes to his fellow man. There are hundreds of thousands in England who drink for the sake of drinking; who when they have money in their pockets, utterly oblivious of their duties towards their families and towards themselves, make straight for the public house, simply for the love of getting drunk; and when drunk not only reduce themselves to the level of beast, but become a source of danger to the community. This too is allowed on all sides. There are others who feel no natural desire for alcohol, who in many cases actually dislike it and feel a repugnance to its taste and smell. This is likewise allowed on all sides. But why should this, except on the principle expressed by old SAMUEL BUTLER, be held to give them any authority to be judges of their neighbours? Far more reasonable would be the contention in any well re. gulated community that the very fact of their aversion from alcoholic liquors ren- dered them unfit to sit in judgment. If the counsel for the defence has any reason to believe that one of the jurymen called has some inveterate prejudice against his client, no judge with any idea of justice whatever will object to his challenge. This is the commonsense view of the subject, which till the present conjunction of affairs was always held to be a characteristic of the English nation, and which indubitably has The student of history learns a very been one of the main causes of its having different lesson from the past. It is well to attained its present position of eminence: remember that not the least influential Unfortunately it is not alone on the sub-course in bringing about the debauchery. jects of opium and alcohol that our modern of the Restoration was the self-righteous discovering it giuce. NEWTON gets the
puritans make themselves towards the world at large, not only unhappy but offensive. There are many instincts implanted in our
Society has never condemned those who for thousands of years have been engaged in the trade of brewing beer or preparing the opium juice; the Bible itself has never ung a trunt at the vine-dresser, and has vaunted on the contrary the work of his hands. Surely after the approbation of milleniums it cannot now be pleaded that all previous generations have been sinners against their, consciences, jet it is these innocents on whom the judgment of the wicked threatens to fall. We may well ask who has the right here of judgment? Surely not the self-righteous claimant who seeks to atone for his owa shortcomings, by holding up to scorn the weakness of his brother min.
puritanism of the Commonwealth. We seem to have fallen on such another contemptible period in our national history. The time of
11
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.