FACTS VERSUS IMAGINATION.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 864, 9 July 1910, Page 6

FACTS VERSUS IMAGINATION.

Sir,—Would yiu kindly allow me to express myself through the columns of your widely-read journal on the remarks made by the Rationalistic Society's lecturer, Mr. M'Cabe, concerning secular education, and also the alleged up-to-date opinions of scicnce from the Hacckelian point of view. In the first instance, Mr. M'Cabe, in his lecture ai the Town Hall last Saturday evening, appealed to Franco as an instance where the advent of secidar education brought about a decrease of crime. Ho juggled with statistics in a manner which should well qualify him for the position of Treasurer in any Government in his endeavour to prove this. He made no reference to the admitted increase o! crime in and .around Paris- during t-hS past few years, by mere youths, wh< form themselves into armed bands called apaches (hooligans). • So great has been the increase of these crimes of violence that capital punishment has had to ba reinforced. Only last week it waj; cabled that at the execution of oue of those hooligans a crowd of his friends, armed with revolvers, gathered round and shot one official aud wouuded several others. Such - a . tiling would hardly bo possiblo in.any other civilised country to-day. Again, sir, how docs he explain that all principal crimes in France to-day are committed by youths? An official report from the same Department from which he obtained hit figures, under date March 5, 1907, saysi "The high-water mark of crime in boti sexes occurs among culprits from six. teen to twenty years old." Mr. M'Cabe omits all reference, to this Tcport-. And yet, sir, he is so - full of statistics!

Tinder. what system were these educated? According to Mr. M'Cabe it imust bo secular.-

Further, how does he explain that [the "free" schools, as now emancipated from the religious control, even fail in a school's primary object of imparting knowlodge because of tho wholesale absences even in tho Department of Seine (Paris). Mr. Steeg, a Deputy, is frank to own, "It is permitted to believe that these nomads, theso intangible vagabonds, do not altogether composo-an intellectual elite; but that they rather include 110 fow. illiterates." As a matter of fact, the trend of tho secular system in' Franco is not only 'to moral, but also to •intellectual, decline, and that is vouched for by judicial statements of tho highest authority. I would liko to seriously ask Mr. M'Cabe whether his opinion about the effect of secular education is tHo'same as that of Mr. Viviani, French Minister for Labour ; 1 "Wo. trumped up school neutrality to lull the scrupulous and appease the scary. Now all this is done-and , gone. Wo never had any other design than to create an antireligious system, and that, too, on active militant warwhoop lines." Or does he agree with another French Atheist, "That the consequenco of this (secular -education), I will not say the object of this identical instruction, will be to invalidate and render impossible •the belief, in God" ? The leaders and founders of our secular system in New Zealand have told us that it does not lead to godlessness. ' Whose statements are we to believe?. A.nd, sir, although we have liad secular education in. New Zealand since 1877, yet. the supporters of it have not yet been so foolish to claim for it a decrease in crime so far as the, statistics of the Prohibition electoral districts of . Masterton, Ciutha, . and Ashburton show. Wo have no temperance instruction embodied in our education syllabus,-and it is an admitted fact that the decrease of . crime in these districts has been largely brought about by the educative force of the churches. -

Now, sir, Mr. .M'Cabe is himself a product of religious education, as I .believe he owes his, education to the •kindness of the Franciscan order, and as a friar of that order ivas head of, preparatory school, and thus acquired his knowledge of German, which later on enabled, him to translate the works of Haeckel, who, by the way, was; last year found, guilty of forging plates and -illustrations to prove certain of. his scientific theories; and who admitted the fact; Sir Oliver Lodge recently wrote of .Haeckel (Life and Matter, page 28) :• "He is, as it were, a'surviving voice from the middle of . the nineteenth century; lie represents in clear and eloquent fashion which were then, prevalent among many leaders of thought, opinions which, by themselves, in many instances, and their successors still more, lived to outgrow; 'so that, ;by this time Professor Haeckel's voico lis as one crying in the wilderness, not |&S'the pior.oer or . vanguard of an advancing army, but as the ■ despairing ■shout of •a standardrbearer, still bold •and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks'of his : comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and ■ more idealistic direction." ■

j I:.sincerely trust that- tho -visit of .this" exponent of a 'defunct science will spur our reading and thinking men ■to a study of • a v progressive science .which is nothing if riot based on absolute. fact, and. not depend on. genealogical theories about .prehistoric animals which never, existed except in Haeckel's •imaginative brain, and a description of i which is only to be found in his works. 'Apologising for lengt-hiness, and anticipating your favour of insertion, —I am, in the interests of true science, : , ' . VERITAS. .Wellington, July 4, 1910., ; .. ..