Rapid Reviews

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 58, 19 April 1912, Page 7

Rapid Reviews

Blatchford's "Not Guilty."

By CHARLES SMITH.

How any reader of Robert Blatchford's masterly, clear and logical "Not Guilty" could return any other verdict on the case for the Bottom Dog than tho title of tlio book is beyond my aplirehension. From the first to tfho ast chapter tlie reader is hold enthralled in one of tho most interesting and ■addost, as well as one of tho most neglected subjects ever studied by man. # • * Tlie well-loved Robert knows life; he has seen it in its various forms, ajid he ■peaks to us with the authority of one Who has "been there." Right down to the core of the trouble does ho go. No respecter of time-honored customs and traditions is he; no leaning to any one particular sect or creed has he; no other motives but Truth and Love interest the author. • ■ • * His plea for humanity and universal love is well known { but in this interesting work he has given us all his heart, ■II his love for the. downtrodden,, for th© weak, for tlio Bottom Dogs of Society. With an earnestness that cannot fail to elevate and impress his readers, fee places his ease for the mentally as well as physically weak. Heredity and environment are the two forces on which he so successfully builds his ease; ■top by stop he takes us along the pathway to a higher and moro humane ideal. * * * Ho strips Darwin and his follow-; ■oientists of all their wordy and scientific terms; Iwils them down and submits the meaning to us in a manner which a school child could understand. * » - * Tho ohapter on "Whcro do Morals Come From?" is a splendid treatise of this iniich-confußed subject. Ho quotes ■uch authorities as Prince Kropotkin and Winwood Reado to prove his statements that "morality is the result of evolution, not revelation. Tho social feelings from widen morality sprang Were partly inherited by man from his animal ancestors and partly imitated from observation of tlie animals he knew so well in his wild life." * * # .His chapter on the "Origin of Conscience" is ono which particularly appeals to those of us who have believed that "tho Voice of Conscience is the Voice of Cod." Those of us who were taught that conscience was "a kind of heavenly voice whispering to us what things were right or wrong" receive •rather a severe shock when we start to study these interesting pages. He claims that conscience is divisablo into four grades, viz.:— Geographical.—That it is not the samo in one country as tutother. Historical.—That it is not the same in one ago as another. Personal.—That it is not the mime in ono person as another. Changeable.—That it altera with its owner's mind. So painstaking, so convincing, and 60 logical arc his arguments that ono cannot but agreo with his contentions. # * * But it is when lie treat-s with "frco will" that we find tho essence of Blatchford's searching mind. Illustration alter illustration ho quotes to show the futility of the free will party in claiming that man's will is free to choose between right and wrong. This v ono of the most interesting pages in the book. Where ..-.oubi a man find a more pathetic and soul-stirring plea or a finer literary effort than that put forward ty the author in Chapter 5, "Tho Ancestral Struggle Within Us'E 1 Speaking of the atavistic (bred-back) man, he Bays: "Unhappy, unbleat atavistic man, that in lieu of love has only lust, in lion of wisdom only cunning, in lieu of power violence; and with a wlmle world to walk in, as in a garden fair, lies wallowing hideously in the foul dungeon of his own unlighl'.'d soul. « » » "What aro we fo do for this wretch*-d deeper-'to brother, lEiio will net leva us though, we whip him v.iih v.hips of wire; who Mill not make friends of us though we spurn and spit upon him ; who, though we preach to him, cannot Understand; who, though wo teachJiim, cannot learn; who, though we hang lliiini high as Hainan, will 'die game,' cursing us with his strangled breath, mocking us with his blinded eyes; and in spile of all our intellect and righteousness going back from us unbettered and untamed into the abyss of otomiiy '»»d the laboratory of evolution, whence lie and we were drawn, goling bn k from ns a r.iv.ni'-" still, and in his angry heart and batiicd mind hold-

ing our half-fledged knowledge and green morality in derision?" * * * Where did man take up a harder task than where the author defends the murderer of a little girl, and pleads for :» verdict of "not guilty"? With everything against him, "the dearest faiths and tho oldest wrongs," he puts up a plea for the accused which will kindle in cR-ei'v waders heart a desire to do soir.ebh.ing, not only for the Bottom .'"■..-if?:s. but for the society which breeds Pottom Dogs by the millions. * * * "Not Guilty" is a book which makes the render think nunc of his foliowman ; it toaxhr-s him to pity, not, blame : to raise up, not knock down ; and to nE.-id for (Eose of our poor .sisters and brothers who are ''accursed of Christ and injected of men."