Idleness Any Remark on Idleness M Ust Sooner Or Later

Idleness Any remark on idleness m ust sooner or later call out the saying of Claude Tillier, “Le temps le mieux employé est celui qu’on perd”; so that I m ay acknowledge my debt to its suggestiveness from the outset. Som eone m ay, and no doubt will, argue that idleness cannot exist at all, for som e part of our ne rvous system that is connected with neutral activity must always be at work during our waking hours; but conceiving that point as belonging more to the subtleties of psychol ogical discussion that to the chitchat of a semi-dilettante club, one can very well consider that form of idleness corresponding in some degree and sort to the French désoeuvrement, that may be productive of fruit. Now, the aphorism just quoted does undoubtedly like most paradoxes of its kind contain a germ of truth, which of course the author h as expressed in its strongest and most indisputable for m. In the attem pt to bring out this germ from its enclosing of husk of falsity, three pictures have presented them selves to my mind; the first two shewing what possibilities lie in moments of idleness. The others may serve as a contrast. Imagine a warm corner on a tiny island in th e Aegean sea, where between hot red rocks and under a canopy of wild vines there is a sm all stretch of yellow sparkling sand, the resting place for these few moments of idleness of an Ionian Greek with the forehead of a Titan. To him, as he lies there in the sunny s pot, arise from every side figures of various shapes, grouping themselves into the fabled and the real characters in the oldest of epics. Out there far off in that m atchless blue are the sails of Meneleas making for Troy. Close at hand in the little bay below a farm w hose dozing to “the drea ry m elody of bedded reeds” has been disturbed by the laughter of a group of sea nym phs, is in hot pursuit. In another moment the horses of Phoebus Apollon will drag th e fiery chariot into sight; and as the watcher gazes w ith rapt eyes, his ears deaf to all tha t till jus t now had absor bed him, he can see before h im what was, and is, the world’s delight. Aphrodite with n aked limbs gleaming through the blue and on the cushioning foam. In the contemplation, let us have Homer, for it is then that a m an likes to be alone. On a warm summer afternoon an English youth is still reclining at the foot of a n huge oak in an English park, w here, indeed, though a trespasser with perhaps some thoughts of poaching he has already wiled away the best part of his day of idleness. The place is peo pled for him. Between the trunks of the Stratford woods peeps Rosalind, urging him to dance with her on that green turf and not lie there meditating more of his enigmatical sonnets; while in the background stalks gloomy Jacques wondering what thos e fools from W indsor can be doing in disguise and why that m erry crowd from th e forest of Ar den cannot m ake less noise. Ophelia is lying down in yonder bend of the m oon; just where the great willow tree over hangs it, and from her chaplet of flowers ther e floats one down the slo w stream to the poet who keeps it for years afte rwards, although it is whitened and most of its petals are gone. As night falls, the floor of heaven is th ick inlaid with patinas of br ight gold, under this canopy Shakspere m akes his way after a da y of idleness, to th e cottage at Shotover where Anne Hathaway has given him a rendez-vous – not for the first time. Contrast with these tw o pictures, which repr esent th e glo rious id leness of genius in meditation, free, wilful and strong, the cold grey cells whose terror even Kleinnian’s somewhat sensational descriptions cannot ex aggerate. The haggard wretch’s eyes that have that look one can never forget – the look that passes from t he despair at the realisation of his fate and the em pty stare of idiocy on the face of m adness. Silence – nothing but silence. Idleness enforced; the brain working, working over the same endless, ever torturing thought. The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months; The months will add themselves and make the years; The years might roll into the centuries And still the sam e silence, still the same unchanged horror of idleness would make each moment a new eternity of pain. W hen I think what this last picture m eans, I wonder that the very stones that enclosed it are not roused by its hideousness arise and mutiny. Paul Lafleur The Sea Serpent As I have little doubt th at other members of the club will treat this sub ject from the two points of view which afford the m ost interest in connection with the Sea Serpent, namely the imaginative and the ludic rous, my intent ion of considering the m atter in the serious , perhaps logically dry, relations of credibility and incredibility, may possibly not be ta ken amiss. The historical discu ssion of tradition and testim ony concerning the existence of deep sea monsters so enormous as the Sea Serpent is commonly reported to be, and as we fancy him in our day dreams or really see him in our nightmares. “Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lamen ademptum” cannot by reason of its extensiv eness be entered upon in so s hort a paper as this must necessarily be. Probably the best résumé of it is to be found in the article entitled “Sea Serpent” in Cham bers Encyclopae dia whic h beginning with the statem ents of Olaus Magnus and Pontoppidan in 1555 and 1755 res pectively, comes down to the depos itions of Captain M’Quhae and his lieutenant of HMS Daedalus in 1848, this last being with one exception perhaps the m ost straightforw ard and careful testim ony of eyewitnesses ever given on the subject. The one exception is the statem ent contained in an article published by The Atlantic Monthly a few years ago, in wh ich the f acts ob served by several peo ple sim ultaneously and with no more divergence than m ight reasonably readily be expected, seem a first glance to impose belief; but this article is unfortunately not really to be got at in Montreal. Suffice it to say, then, that, of the amount of testimony there can be no question , all depend upon its qua lity. Scores of people have testified and would no doubt not only swear that the Sea Se rpent exists, but even give heavy odds in its favour. They have see him, say they: “With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian or Earth-born that warred on Jove, Briareus or Typhon, whom the den By ancient Tarsus held, on that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream”. Now, that human testimony, unimpeachable on the score of good faith, will not suffice to establish certain facts is alm ost too great a tourism to call for em phasis. W hen the concurrent statement of any number of hum an beings cont radict what we m ay call for convenience’s sake a L aw of Na ture, that is a uniform ity se ttled as invariable through inductions so often repeated that there is no possibility of mistake, the alleged facts are to be unhesitatingly rejected. The law and the st atements cannot subsist together. Thus, no amount of testim ony will induce a m an of scien tific training to b elieve, on logical grounds, that two straight lines can under any circumstances enclose a space, that an unsupported body can rem ain suspended in mid- air, that energy of any kind can be absolutely annihilated, or that an anim al from whose body the vital spark has departed, a once living being now in an advanced state of decom position, can be brought back to physical life. But propositions we are inclined to disbel ieve are often different from those just mentioned; they run counter not to com plete inductions, but to what Niell, Bain, and Spencer aptly call Approxim ate Generalizations, and that is propositions not absolutely universal, but so nearly so as to ne gate much of what m ay be adva nced contradictory to them. The basis for that approxim ation is experience. Man’s experience has established a certain proposition as true, the tendency to reject anyth ing that con tradicts it beco mes very strong, increasing with the growth and repetition of that experience. This precisely fits the case of the Sea Serpent, the experience here being a mere negation, most people, even of th ose familiar with the sea at all tim es and in all places h ave never seen it. No one has, so f ar as I know, ever proved that the ex istence of the Sea Serpent is a physical im possibility.

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