THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1910. "POINTS FOR POSTERITY."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10097, 20 September 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1910. "POINTS FOR POSTERITY."

Satire, well pointed and used by those with adequate knowledge, is a most powerful weapon, and pricks those who are tough to other tools. But the satirists to-day are few, and yet there is much work for them to do. The wrong-doers are so very sure of themselves, and the world suffers too many fools gladly. But Mr Hugh Blaker, in a book of about 100 pages, called "Points for Posterity," shows that he is both satirist and scourger;, He is an artist, he incidentally tells us, and his book shows that his favourite colour is black. There arc few whites in it. "Supposing," he says, "future historians were to tell the truth, and if chroniclers applied the highest conceivable ideas of their period to a ruthless dissection rather than more or less picturesque laudation." Fearing that future historians may do no such thing about the story of our own times, Mr Blaker turns historian, and a very sombre canvas he paints of To-Day. He sees shadow everywhere, and his "Points for Posterity" have very ugly points for those who care to come to close qtiarters with them. S'ome points he over-exaggerates, and too often argues from the particular to the general; but the fight for the progress of the race would not be worth while if there was not at the heart of things a prospect that the day will come when men, as a matter of I course, will accept Mr Blaker's pic- j ture of to-day as in the main a very literal and acute picture of Tilings as They Were at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and will I wonder how humans eoiiltl ever ' have endured them. "Strong men," he says, "are in love with the future and its manifold possibilities. If it were not for the future, life would hardly he worth living. The men who really count are those avlio are wrestling with the sociology, politics, art, literature, i dramaturgy, and science of to-mor-row. In all these divisions of human interests one can point to those who-are generations ahead of their time. We are fast . approximating to a civilisation which shall not be a disgrace to humanity, and there arc already a million persons in England who, if they could be transplanted by a miracle into one community, would speedily, convince.

the world of what health, happi- , ness, true religion, intelligence, morality, and good breeding really consist. But capricious fate scatters these choicer spirits over the whole of society, as if determined that regeneration should take place only in the bulk by a gradual leavening of the whole: hence the general unpopularity of health, happiness, true religion, intelligence, morality, and | eugenics." Mr Blaker points out i that "the heresies of to-day are the gospels of to-morrow. But as man progresses, do not the leading spirits develop a higher instinst, a higher consciousness, carrying with them a higher and unconscious insight whicii is impatient of orthodox codes? Tin; best which is in us is unconscious. When a good or great act is a conscious act it is altogether on a lower plane. The conscious goodness of to-day becomes the more highly. developed, unconscious conduct of to-morrow."