THE LAST WORD

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 10

THE LAST WORD

THE QUIET CORNER.

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler.) "In the beginning was the word,” runs a scriptural passage. That, presumably, was the first word —the first thought that was expressed aloud. If eternity is a fact (and it must be acknowledged that “nothing,” or the non-existence of anything is hard to conceive) then the last word will never be uttered; the last thought will never be expressed. “When earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,” are the opening lines of Kipling’s “L’Envoi,” but Mr. Kipling knows as well as ice do that the last picture will never be painted, save with sulphurous figments, and in red and yellow tongues of flame upon the canvas of a frenzied and shattered world. If a last word accompanies that catastrophe, we are certain not to hear it. However, bringing this subject within the limits of sweet reasonableness, it must be conceded that this inability to hear or to utter the last word upon any given topic is a healthy safeguard against an undue enlargement of the ego. While we believe that Marconi said the first word about wireless telegraphy, we can be sure that the last word upon that baffling discovery will never be uttered. And that fact probably accounts for the humble-mindedness of all truly great men. As yet ice have but touched the fringe of human possibilities, although as Philip Gibbs reminds us, “during the past hundred years human life over great areas of the world's surface has been changed more radically in its social habits than in six thousand years, perhaps, of previous history.” Events rush on apace. Most of us are left standing by the wayside, open-mouthed and gaping, while the procession hurries by; yet listen as we may, we shall never hear the last word upon any subject. Such a baffling thought as that helps us to realise that we are still primitive in our thoughts, as also in our words and actions, which thought, in turn helps us to understand why, as yet. we human beings, the world over, kr.oic so little about the “art of living together.” NEXT WEEK: GUM TREES AMD SNAKES.