108 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



Fit recompense of a new desert ? What claim 

 Are ye prepared to urge, that niy decrees 

 For you should undergo a sudden change ; 

 And the weak functions of one busy day, 

 Reclaiming and extirpating, perform 

 What all the slowly-moving years of time. 

 With their united force, have left undone ? 

 By Nature's gradual processes be taught ; 

 By story be confounded I Ye aspire 

 Rashly, to fall once more ; and that false fruit. 

 Which, to your over-weening spirits, yields 

 Hope of a flight celestial, will produce 

 Misery and shame. But wisdom of her sons 

 Shall not the less, though late, be justified." 



The generation in which, we are living seems to be 

 fond of poetry of an emotional kind. Let me address 

 to it a few more lines of a type of poetry which is less 

 sentimental, but more truthful : — 



" The Moving Finger writes : and, having wi'it. 

 Moves on : nor all your Piety nor Wit 



Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 

 Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." 



It would be well if we endeavoured to understand 

 the real significance of these lines in relation to the 

 doctrines of modern sentiment. In more than one 

 way it points to us the irrevocable consequences of 

 every attempt that is made to interfere with the 

 beneficent workings of Nature. The " Moving Finger 

 writes," and then " Moves on," is but a poetical way 

 of warning us that for every committed act, social as 

 well as individual, there are both immediate and 

 multiplied remoter consequences, the misery entailed 

 by which cannot save us from their inflexible opera- 

 tion, nor all the tears engendered by them wash out a 

 single punishment which they inflict. 



We all remember as children reading of the 

 traditional King Canute, who, at the instigation of 

 his flattering courtiers, sat on the sea-beach and bade 



