CASUAL COMMENTS

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19180, 10 December 1927, Page 13

CASUAL COMMENTS

MAGIC, CHARMS, FETISHES.

(SPJCIALLT WSITTCK IO» TH* mil.)

[Py Lzo Faxnuto.]

"The moro this thing changes, the more it is the same thing," remarked a French philosopher. Antiquarians' fossickings in old lands have proved that the flapper flourished in Ancient Egypt—and if one of those dusky girls could be revived now she would have nothing; new to learn in arts and crafts of make up. Indeed, she could probably give the modern miss a few new points to complete the conquest of the mere male, doomed to become the weaker sex, as pessimists say.

As with the flapper, so witli magic, charms, and fetishes, which change their name but not their existence. For example, take that word "Abracadabia," on which an old encyclopedia has this note: "Abracadabra, a word of Oriental origin, generally thought to be the name of a Persian or Syrian deity It was formerly of high repnto as a charm, and was regarded as being highly efficacious in the cure of fever and ague. It was written on paper 01 parchment as many times as it had letters, omitting one letter each time, thus : ABRACADABRA ABRACADABR ABRACADAB ABRACADA ABRACAD ABRACA ABRAC A BRA ABU AB A "It was then worn round the neck. It is now only used in contempt to express any high-sounding but useless formula." Some of the democrats who would laugh to-day at the old belief in Abracadabra have themselves a more stupendous credulity in the magic potency of a phrase or a formula. Substitute "Bare Majority" (with its bareness based on "one vote, one value") for "Abracadabra," and the shades ot the old believers in this euro for bodily fever and ague would have the laugh on their descendants. Indeed, there was some chance for an individual to do some good for himself by fervent faith in a charm of talisman. After all. it was a form of faith-healing, not nearly as dangerous as the cult of the "Bulgarian burr" several years ago—tho "bug" which could easily spread much illness from house and house by its growth in contaminated milk.

Consider the modern pathetic, comic notion that it is possible to get. unerringly a satisfactory solution of a political or social or religious problem by decreeing that all votes have the same value—which means that all heads have the same value, in intellect and wisdom —and that a bare-majority decision must be the law of the land. The wrongncss or tightness of the decision docs not matter. It is enough that the count has been correct, and that an issue has been carried by a majority of one in the heat and confusion of a noisy balloting. Such a system of government would be based not on principles of ethics but arithmetic.

More pathetic even than this deifying of "Bare Majority" is the faith that a minority, beaten by one, will necessarily accept the ruling of their opponents on, say, the matter of a social custom. Assume that the minority includes 70 or SO per cent, of the men trained in arms, will they meekly submit to tho narrow arithmetical majority, especially as they believe that the majority are in the wrong? Can the history of any country support such an assumption? * # * Some of the big guns captured from the Germans and brought to New Zealand had these grim words cast upon them: "Ultima Ratio Regis," which can be variously translated, but this version will do: "The final argument of the King." It was a case of force for the finish, when all other expedients had failed. The reasoning under all this is, of course, that if a law is to be effective there must be adequate force behind it. How can a law have such force if it represents tho voting of a bare arithmetical majority against a minority which could quickly conquer that majority in a civil war? Persistence with bare-majority referenda on some questions will inevitably lead to a try-out of power. The deified- "Bare Majority" could easily become the very devil of revolt, with bloodshed.

A bare-majority referendum, with its jargon of catch-cries and slogans, on a great question of community policy is no more intelligent than the mechanical praying of Ladak, described in E. F. Knight's book, "Where Three Empires Meet." Here is a passage:—

"The laity take a conveniently lax view of their religious duties. 'I know nothing about my religion,' the Ladaki peasant will tell one. 'lt is not my affair. It is the business of the lamas. We pay. them to pray for us and sec that all is right with our souls.'

"The bulk of the praying is, as everyone knows, carried on by machinery in Ladak. For instance, wheels containing rolls of prayers are turned by water-power, and every time a wheel revolves it is working out the salvation of the man who put it up. Every turn exempts him from somo infinitesimal portion of tiino which would otherwise bo spent in one of tho six inferior spheres. If he have a big enough wheel and sufficient water-power, ho may hope to close one after another the gates of these spheres and attain tho 'perfect peace' on death. . . . Piety here appeal's to have nothing to do with moral conduct; it is but a question of the multitudinous turning of wheels, waving of flags, and mumbling of syllables that have no sense." # * * The balloting business set Carlyle's mind thinking of the "democratising" of teligion. "How teach religion?" ho wrote. "Why not apply to Birmingham and have machines made and set up at all street-corners, in highways and byways to repeat and vociferate the same, not ceasing night or day? Depend upon it Birmingham can make machines to repeat liturgies and articles; to do whatsoever feat is mechanical. . . . You order, at so many pounds a head, so many thousand iron parsons as your grant covers; and fix them by satisfactory masonry in all quarters wheresoever wanted, to preaeli there independent of the world. In loud thoroughfares, still more in unawakened districts, troubled with argumentative infidelity, you make the windpipes wider, strengthen the main steam-cylinder; your parson preaches to the due pitch while you give him coal, and fears no man or thing. "' * * * It would be just as logical to teach religion with mechanical parsons as to attempt to get good government by worshipping the fetish of "Bare Majority" poll, to the chant of "one vote one value."