WISHING AND DOING.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 44, 8 March 1937, Page 4

WISHING AND DOING.

'^Our wishes may not always be thie best we might make, but wishes o£ some sort are part of our constitution and are a sign of a desire to rise upward. On the other hand," writes " W.C.B." in the Birmingham Post, u wishingi must be accompanied by active endeUvour, for fatalism, however pious, is moral rain. The old saying about wishes being horses (or, to be up to date, motors) is more trae to life than the fallacy that we have only to wish fervently enough to get what we want, so is the other saying about substituting a wish-bone for a backbone. It is men who form a purpose who move the world onward — and themselves, too. A noble purpose, formed in one's best moments, is the right start for a new year and holds the promise of achievement. The best puiposes, however, oan only be fulfllled b'y forming a praetical programme, neither too limited nor too ambitions, and endeavouring ,to carry it out during the year. There is a danger that a purpose, however splendid, may degenerate intd one of those good resolutions, the making of whieh, as Dr. Johnson said of secoud marriagea, is the trww&b -oi hope oyer exp^nenca."