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THE WEEK.

" Nusqusm aliud nature, aliud Eftpiep.tia dixit."-» JH.TItITAL. " Good nature and good sense must erer join."—PO>E. The sensation of the week has been tha veport-ed 'success of the Dr Cook's "dash for the North Pole," Daring Umli undertaken by ' a famous lor the I'ole. American physician and axplorer, Dr Frederick; Albert Cook, who fitted ""-'a* surgeon of the Peary Arctic Expedition of 1891-2, and also of the Belgian Antaivtic Ex- ' petition of 1897-9. Aad although,- in '■ consequence of Dr Cook's attempt being ' a one man expedition and therefore lack- - in£ corroboration, a certain scepticism exists in some quarters as to the genuine- [' ness of the record, yet «^1 things con- ', sid'sred probabilities point to the absolute accuracy of the reported feat. Nan«*en, ; in the concluding paragraphs of " Farthest: X North,' makes .* remark which may» almost be taken as prophetical of Dr *" Cook's wonderful two years' journey TheS ;, Norwegian explorer writei : —"There is.' also another lessor which I think qur j expedition has taught, namely, that a—l~ good deal can be achieved witb small) } resources. Even if explorers have to live ; in Eskimo fashion, and content them-..-selves Avith the barest necessaries, they\ < may, provided they are suitably equipped, i_ lr.ake good headway, and coveu consider- ! able distance* in regions which have ' - hitherto been regarded as almost mac- . Vj ccssible." Once the human possibility 06 "■■ the feat is established —and who is able '•: to declare the limit of human endurance—* it is not credible that a man with Dr. Cook's record behind him would know-.' . •ingly attempt to bamboozle the world..i -■ President Taft, despite all the reasons^ educed by Admiral Nares for scepticism,' ,i evidently accepts Dr Cook's record with-, -} out questioning,' for he has cabled to the) i explorer his heartiest congratulations upon/..; 1 an" achievement whict ." stirs the pride;. / of all Americans 7-r-an achievement "which*' -; had so long baffled thV,Wprld," but which :'. has been "accomplished by the mtelli-' ; gence, energy, and, wonderful iendu<ranc«t of a fellow oountrymaa." And America! has every reason to be proud of the maa and his' discovery The point has natu- ' Tally been raised as to whether it is possible foi a human being to exist afc the temperature of *g degrees Fahrenheit'

zero, the lowest temperature ever i recorded. Professor David and other on the strength of their Antarcexperience, incline to the opinion that temperature recorded by Dr Cook, improbable, is not impossible, and a* suitably provided man could enit without difficulty. Dr Cook himattributes his success not alone to fact that he used Eskimos and dogs travelling companions, but more imstill, that he lived in the same m the Eskimos. of th« most remarkable things in the ' history- of the human race Maaa*d i<> man's power of adaptathe Earth. tion to his environment. This is seen in the varieties the races proportioned to their peculiar The theme is interestingly by Professor Kirchhoff, in his on " Man and the Earth,'* in he describes and discusses the relations and influences of man his environment. Thus, dealing with matter of telluric selection, the Prowrites: — " In the extreme of North we find that the Esquimaux exan ideally perfect adaptation to the conditions of life in the Arctic Zone. removes every frail body from the furnished table of the Esquimaux. for their clothing and homestead, they elaborated, taught by the experience' centuries, an excellent defence against inclement temperature, which not unfalls below the freezing point quicksilver. The ' Danes, too, that have on the west coast of Greenland sustain life only by clothing themHjplves, after the manner' of the natives, Hprith tightly closed furs, that leave a free between the skin and the fur coat, the imprisoned air forms an ex-non-conductor of heat on the prinof the double -windows used in. counHgties subject to severe winter cold. The Hffisquimaux can only support himself by near the shore, because there alone Hjbe can hunt seal even, in winter, and sealis his only means of livelihood whole year round. No Esquimaux is permitted to induct his some-fish-scented lady love into his home he has given proof of his ability maintain her by killing his first seal. what an unexpected and apparently Bmcomprebensible contrast is presented to Hue. In presence of the Gorgon face of K|he ice-clad aspect of the polar regions Hpith their cruel winters, where for several Hxhontbs on end the earth is not cheered Hpy a single ray of sunlight, the Esquimaux Hpevel in their indestructible joyousn-ess of Hffieart. A striking instance of natural ■psychical selection. The enduring absence Hprf -. light acts depreasingly on the minds Kpid spirits of man, and, by an inevitable Hpeaction, undermines the health of the Hbody. That is why Julius Payer selected Kibe crew of his ship, Tegetthoft, from the graver merry inhabitants of the small HHOarnero Archipelago, and what ingenuity Hpe: had to exercise in the invention of Heunes and pastimes to rescue his men | ■gXqm dull despair when his ship, emBpedded in ice, drifted, hopelessly away into j Iphe apparently endless polar night. Indeed, Kbnly men endowed by Nature with seren© Blpheerfulness are able to sustain life in K&ose bigh latitudes into which the New Kwbrld'extends. This bright, indestructible of heart was hereditarily passed from generation to generation to a number of thousands, and that in- j boon was preserved to them by inexorable sentence of death proKbounoed by Nature on any member of that given to melancholy. Another Henviable characteristic of these ' last Hmuman beings ' is their peaceable disposiIpion, an evident product of telluric selecHpon. From want of fuel the Esquimaux Bran only keep from being frozen to death Kr their living close together and warmBlfg each other. Their huts, albeit narHdv and low, can be warmed to the reRbuired temperature only if, with low par- < llbitkras, they are arranged to accommodate H|k number of families. 'Now' says Fate, ' ■f|you will either live peaceably together, ; be frozen to death separately.' Wisely j Hpbis merry folk chose the better alter- | HlaaHve, and learnt, in spite of their : Brctarally more choleric than phlegmatic ! to bear with each other to Hnigh a degree that feven quarrels conRgproing right and .-wrong are settled by Hsaiirical lyrical contests : the parties to the ! H|Suit inveigh against each other in presence , Ifof . the whole community by reciting j ■Satirical songs, and he is declared victor ! ■fin this bloodless battle who has the final ; ■Paugh on his side. Thus does an un- I wbia&sed investigation of the causes of ■|phenoTneiia reveal the fact that man is l|everywhere, in his innermost heart, di■pTectly or indirectly a genuine product of Khie native land. " ;What, then, are the motives which lead men T^~ of the calibre of Dr Cook \ %. Tfce Passion to voluntarily abandon ] fS»r civilisation and all that j ?•. KxpUrmtlOß. civilisation stands for, and j ■' travel the uttermost parts \ *>f the earth in search of the comparatively ■ barren honour of discovering a few new j ■data, and fresh phenomena upon which cer- j itain scientific theories may be based or restated? One motive is probably to be Pound in a certain primitiveness in men !Nrhich yearns to struggle with Nature face j l±o face, away from the artificialness of f civilisation. Mr John Foster Fraser al|lades to this in his chapter on the "Rek<unn of the Wanderer " in his book, £' Life's Contrasts." Here is the picture |tof the wanderer's return: — "He laughed S«fc those people at home who commiserated 'men who risked their lives in Arctic exploration, mapping swamps " in Central enduring hardships from Obi sandstorms whilst searching for fthe buried cities of the past without a rhistory. Tut! Men did these things pbecause they loved to. Livingstone never wanted to be found, did he? Civilisation, jgwith its white starched shirts and gaudily red women, was all artificial. The ( thing, for which the inner heart of .

■ y man cried out, was life close to Nature, ■ rough clothes, few wants, fighting, killing — ah! that was when the man who had , cracked the veneer gave rein to his w- , stincts, and could lead the genuine life.' [ Here then is one reason; another equally potent is described by Nansen in his introduction to "Farthest North," ' where he asks, " Why did we continually return to the attack? There in the darkness and cold stood Helheim, where the death goddess held her sway; there lay | Nastrand, the shore of corpses Thither, ; where no living being could draw breath, : thither troop after troop made its way. i To what end? Was it to bring home the dead as did Hermod when he rode after Baldur? No! It was simply to satisfy man's thirst for knowledge. Nowhere, in truth, has knowledge been purchased at greater cost of privation and suffering. But the spirit of mankind will never rest till every spot of these regions has been trodden by the foot of man, till every enigma has been solved. Minute by minute, degree by degree, we have stolen forwards by painful effort. Slowly the day has approached ; even now we are but in its early dawn ; darkness still broods over vast tracts around the Pole. I Our ancestors, the old Vikings, were the first Arctic voyagers. It has been 6aid that their expeditions to the frozen sea were of no moment, as they have left no enduring marks behind them. This, however, is scarcely correct. Just as surely I as the whalers of our age, in their per-. j sistent struggles with ice and sea, form our outpost of investigation up in the • north, so were th« old Northmen, with J Eric the Red, Leif, and others at their ! head, the pioneers of the polar expedition of future generations. . And thai which impelled them to undertake I these expeditions was not the mere love j of adventure, though that is indeed one jof the essential traits of our natural character. It was rather fie necessity of J discovering new countries for the many • restless beings that could find no room j in Norway. Furthermore, they were stimulated by a real interest for know- ' ledge. . . . The strength of our people now dwindled away, and centuries elapsed before explorers once more sought the j Northern seas. Then it was other nations, especially the Dutch and English, that ted the van." J • It is safe to assume that the identical individual enterprise and The Conqaett international pride which of the Air. p U t s ii n n o motion the successive attempts at polar I exploration will ultimately render aerial navigation at once practicable and safe. The detailed accounts which have just reached us of M . Bleriot's great flight from France to England across th& Channel see-m to bring the feat of flying through the air at will within the compass of the average man. And with the perfection , of the art of aviation there can be little | doubt that the exploration of the hidden parts of the earth will be completely canvassed. As going to prove that after all there is nothing new under the sun, it is well to remember that the art of j flying was the speciality of those witches in whom it is no longer the fashion to believe. Mr Oliver Madox Hueffev, however, in his "Book of Witches" puts in a powerful plea for a revival of the old J belief. His concluding sentences are worth .quoting: — '• Demonstrably true or proven j false, the cult of witchcraft has existed j from the beginning, and will continue j f until the end of history. Worshipped or reviled, praised, persecuted, or condemned, > witchcraft and the witch have endured and will endure while there remains one . 'nan or woman on earth capable of dread- ', ing the unknown. Rejoice or grieve as you will, the witch is the expression of ] one of the greatest of human needs, that i of escaping from humanity and its limit- , able environment ; of one of the greatest ;of human world movements, the revolt ' against the Inevitable. She does and must ( exist for the strongest of all reasons, i that, constituted as it is, humanity could I ; not exist without her." Thus after all, ] in the last analysis, it is the same unquenchable curiosity — the desire to know — i i which leads men to explore the uttermost i ' parts of the earth, to endeavour to pierce the veil dividing the seen from the uns&en. This yearning is the father of ail romance, the salt of the earth, which : renders men sane by removing the I monotony which otherwise would land the J I world in the madhouse. Thus in con- ' ' elusion of the whole matter we will quote j another brief extract from " The Book of Witches": — Why should we accept the scientist more than his grandmother, the witch? We have no better reason for accepting him than for rejecting what he tell& us are no more than idle dreams. Let ; him discover what he will, it does but I vouch the more decidedly for the | illimitability of his and our ignorance. i It is true that he can perform ap- i j parent miracles ; so could the witch. , J He pooh-poohs the arts that were so terrible to foimer gene-rat ion.- ; our posterity will laugh at his boastful i knowledge as at a boastful child*. Already there are world-wide sign;, that whatever his success in the material world, mankind is ready to revolt j against this new tyiannv over the Unseen. The innumerable new religiou.s sects, the thousand-and-one ethical f.-ds, the renaissance of so many ancient faiths — the Spiritualist an-d the Theosophist, the Christian Scientist and the Cooneyite, the Tolstqyan and the Salvationist — laugh at them individually who may — are all aJike outward and visible j signs of the revolt of man against being j relegated to the insignificance of a scientific incident. And among many j such .troubled waters witchcraft may | well come into its own again. Consider the unsuccessful man. UiKler the regime of enlightenment, he can find no one | to blame for his sorrows, nor anywhere to look for their solacement. Every- | thing works according to immutable

laws; he is sick, poor, miserable, because the Law of the Inevitable will have it so ; he has no God to whom he can. pray for some capricious alleviation ; he cannot buy good fortune from the Devil, even at the price of his soul — there is no God, nor Devil, nor good fortune nor ill ; nothing but the imperturbably grinding cog-wheels, upon whose orbit he is inevitably bound Were he .not a happier man if he might find an old-time witch whose spells, being removed, would leave him hope, even though fulfilment never came? Undoubtedly. We have been told that, had there been no God ; it would have been necessary to invent one. Yes, and along with Him a Devil and good and evil spirits, and good luck and bad, and • superstitions as many as we can cram into our aching pates : anything, everything, that may save us from the horrible conception of a machine-like certainty, from which there is no escape, after which there is no future. Surely it is better that a few thousand old women be murdered in the name of superstition, a few million beinge butchered in the name of religion, than that all mankind be doomed to such a fate. i

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19090908.2.261

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 49

Word count
Tapeke kupu
2,543

THE WEEK. Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 49

THE WEEK. Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 49

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