On
Possession – A. G. Gardiner
According to A G Gardiner
‘Possession’ is a kind of itch to own something for the mere pride. Possession
is a disease of the petty and vulgar minds. Once Gardiner had come across a
woman, who talked very vivaciously about her experiences of places, acquaintances
of persons, books she read and other rare things she possessed. He noticed that
she was only interested in them as long as they were her exclusive
property. She felt unhappy and changes
her topic on some other topic in a moment when she came to know that someone
had already seen the place or possessed same thing that she had possessed or
met a person with whom she had acquaintance. Similarly, her enthusiasm
disappeared about the Hon’ble Ulik De Tompkins when she found that Gardiner
himself had the honour of meeting that eminent person. Thus, she had the itch
of possession. The value of a thing of somebody’s possession ceases when some
other person also possess the same kind of thing. She ceases to enjoy either
the person or the place. She could not have Tangier (an international tourist
place in Morocco) all to herself but she felt it as is it is her own. So also,
many people have the mania or madness of owning things that really do not need
to be owned in order to enjoy.
In general, his or her
experiences must be exclusive or they have no pleasure in them. The man
countermanded his order with a designer who produce a design on metal or glass
with chemical action for taking a same order from some other person. Hence,
Gardiner said that it was a petty and childish notion to possess something that
no one had got it.
Thus, he goes on quoting
several examples of exclusive possessions. Here an another person who hangs in his
house a picture of Ghirlandaio, a Florentine Painter, though it is duplicate
copy but it gave him unexplainable pleasure. Though Ghirlandaio painted portraits
of many of his contemporaries though he did not possess any picture of his but
bottle nosed old man looking at his grandchild. This portrait is rarest of the
rare kind that was hung in his room gave him more pleasure as it was an
imponderable treasure stored in the galleries of the mind with memorable
sunsets he had seen and the books he had read and beautiful actions or faces
that he remembered. He could enjoy more pleasure whenever he recalled all the
tenderness of humanity was seen in the face of the bottle nosed old man by the
painter long centuries ago. In case of, William Wordsworth was not exceptional.
He did not feel happy when De Quincy wrote poem, adoring nature, because he
believed that he was the high priest of the Nature.
A. G. Gardiner concludes
by stating that he cannot conceive a society in which private property will not
be a necessary condition of life though he may be wrong since the war has
poured human society into melting pot. Hence, he said that he would be a daring
person who could venture to forecast the shape in which it will emerge after a
generation or two. According to Decalogue,
the private property is only a human arrangement. The remedy is not abolishing
private property altogether, but the idea of equal justice for the purpose of
community. The idea of private property
is not to be permitted to override with its selfishness to the common good of
humanity. The private property is in the words of a great preacher, our hands
are full but our souls are empty. Empty souls make empty world.
*****
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