CHAPTER XVIII.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
Retrospective: Looking Backward at a Lifetime's Changes.
Looking back one is startled at the changes that have taken place in a single lifetime.
We came to New Zealand to mingle with a race which had not learned the use of metals. Their weapons of war and their implements of peace, their tools and their ornaments were all fashioned out of stone, hardwood or bone. They had no written language. Their spoken language was musical and expansive. Such natural knowledge or poetical composition as they had could only be transmitted orally. Think of the extent and variety of that knowledge. It would be hard to find a spot from end to end of their country without a name, and the name had nearly always some reference to a natural feature, or to some incident, trivial or otherwise, which had happened in its vicinity. They had national and family and mythological traditions of uncertain antiquity. They were acquainted with the medicinal properties of various plants, or their value in making articles of clothing or ornament. Every tree and plant and shrub had its name. All this varied and multitudinous information had to be handed on from one generation to another by oral teaching.
I have already quoted the adverse opinion of Mr. Colenso as to the effect of the contact of European and Maori. This was written sixty years ago. To-day we have a better perspective. Does the same view hold good? We have given the Maoris equal political rights with ourselves. They have entered Parliament and are responsible for laws controlling the actions of both races. One of their race is a Cabinet Minister. Some have entered the learned professions--law, medicine and the Church. They are still owners of large tracts of country, some of which they have im-
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proved on our own methods and are utilising as sheep and dairy farms. Other portions of their landed estates are leased to and worked by Englishmen. Would Mr. Colenzo, had he written his essay in the light of modern conditions, still have expressed the opinion I have quoted? I venture to think he would.
Great as have been the changes in regard to the Maori race, the advance in knowledge of our own civilisation causes the former to fade into insignificance. Could we summon from the past of eighty years ago a man whose knowledge had remained stagnant he would not have seen the electric light, except as a scientific experiment. He would regard electric telegraphy as a new and expensive luxury. The telephone would be a mystery to him. The incandescent gas mantle would be unknown to him. His knowledge of airships would be limited to balloons dependent on the caprice of wind and weather. Street tramways he would look upon as a dangerous and impracticable interference with horse traffic. He would smile incredulously at the idea of a motor car, driven by an engine so small as to appear like a toy, at 100 miles or more per hour. What would he say when told that he on one side of the globe could hold instantaneous discourse, by means of an unseen medium, with persons on the other side? He would hear with amazement that the heavens were being mapped out by means of photography; that Newton's law of gravitation was not free from qualification, and that there was believed to be latent energy in a pebble which, could it be released, would supply an unknown reserve of power.
In every department of human investigation one is bewildered at the advance made in a couple of generations, and the question suggests itself whether man can ever reach the limits of his penetration with the secrets of Nature.
In surgery, mechanics, implements of war and peace, electricity, wireless telegraphy and telephony; in the domain of thought, a wider and more benevolent aspect of
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theology; a general license to discuss problems of sex; a wider humanitarianism; the emancipation of women; the triumph of democracy: these and many other advances have been made within my own memory.
I recall a successful surgical operation in Auckland fifty years ago which was considered so great an achievement that a description of it appeared in the Transactions of the N.Z. Institute. It was, at the time, one of the most dangerous feats of surgery. It is related that in 1863 ten women in succession were similarly operated upon in Paris, in a house specially selected for its healthy surroundings. A short time afterwards the neighbours saw their ten coffins taken away. The operation is now not an uncommon one and the chances are about nineteen to one in favour of the patient.
The discoveries of the great investigator M. Pasteur applied to surgery by Lister and improved by later research have taken away much of the dread of the surgeon's knife and operations have almost become fashionable.
In the period of which I have set down these recollections, the old-fashioned method of lighting by crude gas has been superseded, first by the Argand burner, and later by the incandescent mantle. The latter was introduced into England about the year 1879, and I remember the interest and surprise with which I saw the new invention exhibited in London during that year. It gave many times the light of the original gas burner, and enabled a cheaper gas to be used, since great heating power only is required to produce incandescence.
The telephone has become a necessity of business and social life. We were astounded at the power it gave of instantaneous communication of the human voice over limited distances, at its first introduction. This, however, becomes almost commonplace when aerial waves seem destined to enable the human voice to be heard over the length and breadth of our planet.
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The great reserve of energy in the numerous rivers and lakes of New Zealand is being utilised in the production of power for manufactures, for lighting and heating, and notably to reduce the drudgery inseparable from dairy farming. It will almost certainly be employed in the near future in the production from the air of the fertilising material so necessary to prevent exhaustion of the soil. We shall thus be enabled to conserve our coal supply, the consumption of which can only be regarded as an expenditure of a capital resource which can never be replaced.
The privileges of governing families have been swept away. Peer and ploughman have equal political rights. The manual workers have shown that they can produce men of ability and clarity of vision and can rally to their cause supporters from the former governing class. The thirteenth Duke of Norfolk is said, in 1845, to have advised his distressed tenants to try a pinch of curry powder in hot water to allay their hunger. Where is the man who would venture, or wish, to give the same advice to-day?
In the domain of thought the advance has been no less remarkable than in that of physics. I am not competent to discuss the achievements of science or the bewildering change the investigations of Darwin and Wallace have made in Anthropology and in men's outlook on religious belief. I remember the horror and "wild excitement" with which Bishop Colenso's book on the Pentateuch was received. His Metropolitan (Bishop Gray, of Capetown), claimed the right of trying him in the ecclesiastical courts, and if necessary of excommunicating him. The famous "Essays and Reviews" appeared shortly afterwards, and caused scarcely less turmoil. One or more of the essayists was prosecuted for heresy. To-day high dignitaries of the Church acknowledge opinions quite as far removed from the orthodoxy of sixty years ago as any of those in the works referred to.
