Apr. 26.
Im a recent number of the "Contemporary Review," Professor D. Fraser Harris writes a Most interesting article on the subject of "Childishness in Adult Life." Many things he ways may hurt some feelings, but are nevertheless true. In fact, he makes one, wonder whether after all our civilization is what we should like to thing it is, and whether the years really do bring so much wisdom as convention ally supposed. "Scratch the Russian and you find a Tartar" may or may not be a true statement, but the Professor shows that "it does not require much emotional scarification of the adult to reveal the unchanged child within," and judging by some of the charges he brings against the adults of yes terday and to-day, one rather wonders whether itis even a moderately intelligent child.
People who really believe that a horseshoe hung on the door brings good luck, or that a mascot stuck on the bonnet of a car can ward off collisions and dangerous skids are regarded by Professor Harris as still in the stage of those who believed that evil spirits bringing calamities could bg frightened off by the appearance of some particularly hideous image, Foreigners living in China frequently laugh at the Chinese belief that banging crackers, ringing bells, and beating drums can scare off demons, but are we after all much better than they? Numbers of apparently highly civilized and cultured white folk still act as though they held that bad luck was caused by inanimate things and matters quite outside their control. Professor Havris tells of & gméain prominent London lowy Aho never arranged for any of his clients to sign a will ona Friday, "This belief in i-luck" he rightly says, "is not confined to Irish peasants sind Chinese Iabourers; it still flourishes in the drawing rooms of Mayfair and Belgravia." He oes on to criticize the way in which women (and one might add, men, though to a lesser extent) will slavishly follow a fashion in dress whether it suits them or not, and whatever pain inconvenience it may cause. Children (and monkeys) are imitative individuals, and as wuch are naturally regarded by grown-ups as having a less high-developed intelligence than heir august selves, But what about imitativeness even in adults? Some one invents a phrase, more or less silly, and immediately it is in the mouths of millions of other persons, who ise it in season and out of sea~ on, generally without the least, dea as to the circumstances in which it may have been coined. Professor Harris instances that phrase "the psychological monent". spoken originally by a hatacter of Oscar Wilde's, and en as a joke, But what a is ance this saying has be-me! For years it has been outed out from pulpit, plat-arm, soap-box and the ' daily avess. An illiterate, meaning-ets saying, it has through the iildish _imitativene: of the ace, attained to the distinction a respectable old age. Other yids might be mentioned which, atimched into public life in the music and glamour of the music nail stage, may pass as wit and uni our, but when they are used all sorts and conditions of people degenerate into mere nanity. Had Professor Harris ived in China he might have in-udo his criticism that magi Pease "China's sovereign rights," a phrase which has infinitely more of tragedy than humour in it, Professor Harris speaks can: tically of processions and flag-waving, of "rat-weeks," "cleanup weeks," "pure milk weeks? and the like, which are so f shionable to-day, all proving that we are but children of a larger growth who cannot kill rats or flies, or Pasteurize our milk, without the aid of drum and trumpet. In a word, beneath the educated, and serious exterior of the adult there isa solid substratum of pure childisiiness. No doubt quite true. But for all the Professor's high contempt, one wonders whether it is quite so poor a trait in human nature after all.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.