which aimed at bringing about a return to the older and more rational methods of preparing food. Let us see more of the home-made article than we now see; let us return to more palatable food and to food that will do more good than the machinemade stuffs and the endless series of substitutes. In all the schools throughout the land we would have the children taught the advantages of home-made food, and how that bread, fruit, jam, or even beer and cider, can be made at home. It would encourage a spirit of industry, it would give us palatable and nourishing articles to eat or drink, and might have a very wholesome effect upon those who seem deliberately to attenuate food as much as possible or who pay no regard to its naturally endowed palatability." A POWER IN A POUND OF COAL. POUND of coal can produce power sufficient to pull a large express train a distance of one-sixth of a mile, going at the rate of 50 miles an hour, writes an expert locomotive engineer, who is quoted in The Coal Trade Bulletin. He continues as follows: "You would be surprised at the wonderful amount of work which the energy from this small quantity of coal can do. For the purpose of explaining, take, for instance, a pound of what might becalled average coal, containing about 10,000 heat units. This would be somewhat smaller in size than a man's fist. If this pound of coal could be burned completely and entirely under water and all of its heat should go into the water, at a temperature of 62°, 5 pounds of water could be raised to the height of 1 foot. If this pound of coal could be completely burned in water I foot deep, with a temperature of 64°, and all the heat from this coal be imparted to the water, this water would become 16° hotter, thus being suitable for a comfortable bath. If adapted to mechanical work, the 10,000 heat units in the one pound of coal would be equivalent to 236 horse-power. The 236 horse-power of potential energy contained in the pound of coal is enough to haul a train of eight cars for a period of one-fifth of a minute, or a distance of one-sixth of a mile, going at the rate of 50 miles an hour. It has also been found to be able to draw a cable train, including the grip-car and trailer, for a distance of two miles at the rate of nine miles an hour. It would also be of sufficient power to pull an electric car, well filled with passengers, for two miles and a half, at a rate of ten miles an hour. If the power in this pound of coal is compared with the work of a strong man used to hard labor, it would be found that there is more than sufficient power in the pound of coal to do in one minute the day's work, of eight hours, of five strong men. This is accounted for in this way: The work of a strong man, used to hard work, is estimated as being equal to one-tenth of a horse-power. The eight hours he works is equivalent to 480 minutes. Naturally, while working, a man makes a number of stops, either to rest or change the monotony of his position. These stops, then, would, without difficulty, take up one-tenth of the man's time. Thus, this would reduce the time of actual work down to 432 minutes. This time, at one-tenth of the horse-power, makes the total of his day's labor amount to 43.2 horse-power. At this rate it is shown that it would take 2,600 strong men, working constantly, to do jointly the same amount of work in one minute as can be done by the single pound of coal. Another line of work in which the superiority of a pound of coal is shown beside the labor of man is that of sawing wood. A man may consider himself a swift sawyer, by making sixty strokes a minute, each stroke of the blade having progressed 5 feet a minute; but a circular saw, driven by machinery, may be put through seventy times that distance and saw seventy times as much wood. Still, this little pound of coal has the power to keep in operation 180 such saws." Another Polar Failure.-Under this heading a note regarding the abortive attempt of the Russians to force their way through polar ice with one of their huge ice-breaking steamers is printed in The Public Ledger (Philadelphia, September 3). Says this paper: "Very few of those who have some knowledge of the character of the ice-fields of the polar ocean felt any confidence in the success of the attempt of the Russian Government to have its ice breaking steamer Ermak force a passage to the North Pole. The announcement, therefore, that the enterprise had failed causes no surprise. The news of the failure was brought by the captain of the steamer Frithjof, who escorted the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition to its first base of operations. He reported that he met the Ermak returning from its fruitless errand. Details of the effort are naturally lacking, and they must be waited for until the return of Admiral Marakoff, the commander; but these will be mainly interesting as demonstrating the extent of the power of the famous Russian ice-breaking vessel. The Ermak was constructed for the sole purpose of crushing a pathway for merchant ships through the heavy ice which obstructs most of the Russian harbors for many months in the year. In this work the ship was eminently successful. Of enormous strength, it could resist almost any amount of outside pressure. On account of massive construction and heavy bows, terrific blows can be dealt by 'butting,' and after each assault the bows can be lifted and the whole weight of the vessel used to crush the weakened ice. A vessel of this character could probably keep the ice in the Russian harbors broken sufficiently to permit practically uninterrupted navigation, and it could most likely carve a pathway for many miles through some of the Arctic ice-fields in midsummer, when rot has set in. The interesting point will be to learn to what extent this was done. An ordinary whaler will ‘butt' its way through rotten ice eight or ten feet thick, but the far Northern fields beyond the cruising grounds of these craft are supposed, in many cases, to exceed twenty-five feet, and it is this which certainly has been too much for the Ermak." How Many Will the World Hold?-Figuring on the world's future population is both fascinating and facile. In The Cosmopolitan (July) J. Holt Schooling publishes his esti mate that by the year 2250 there will be an aggregate population in the world of 52,073,000,000, or 1,000 persons to the square mile -nearly double the density of Belgium, the most populous coun try in the world. Commenting on this, the San Francisc Chronicle says (August 25): "No one will dispute Mr. Schooling when he says if the rate of increase that has been witnessed during the century just closed continues, the world will be filled to overflowing in the course of two hundred and fifty years. Indeed much sooner, for it is inconceivable that a population half as dense as that subsisted on the soil of Belgium could be maintained throughout the universe. There are now in the world thirty-one persons to the square mile; three times that number could probably be provided for, but not many more. Ninety-three to the square mile would mean a population as dense as that which inhabits China, and to sustain it the same intensive agriculture which is practised in the Flowery Kingdom, where in many sections two and three crops are taken from the land in a year, would have to be generally resorted to by all peoples." The rate of increase, however, is not to be kept up-we may be reasonably sure of that. This has been the stumbling-block over which all predictions of population have tripped. Concludes The Chronicle: "It is reasonable to assume that Schooling's predictions will be as far out of way as those of Malthus, and that for a long while to come what is called 'overproduction' will engross the human mind much more than the limit of subsistence." Animal Intelligence.-Prof. E. L. Thorndike, of Columbia University, has been making experiments on monkeys, and the results, says Popular Science, "are in degree rather than in kind in favor of the monkey as compared with the dogs and cats, on which he formerly experimented." He announces that "the general result is that they do not profit by tuition, that they did not gain and use ideas of how to open doors, but learned only by a process of selection from their own impulses. Professor Thorndike's careful experiments confirm the truth to which the public is and always will be impervious, namely, that animals (and man to a large extent) are creatures of impulse and association, which simulate reason and can not be distinguished from it by those who have not mastered psychology, in its comparative aspects, as set forth in the writings of some authorities that are not yet very accessible to the public.” THE RELIGIOUS WORLD. THE ANTI-CLERICAL AGITATION THE IN SPAIN. HE humiliation of Spain in the war with the United States has given a basis to various movements for reform in the land of the Don, politically, socially, and ecclesiastically. One of these movements, headed by Don Sigismundo Peyordeix, is attracting considerable attention in church circles, and according to the Frankfurter Zeitung is developing rapidly both in extent and in intensity. The agitation is anti-clerical, but not antiCatholic. According to the same journal, Don Sigismundo sees in the Jesuit order the chief source of the ills that have befallen the church and the people of Spain. Originally a priest in Barcelona, he has now, in conjunction with a number of other dissatisfied ecclesiastics, organized a formal crusade against the status quo in the Spanish church. His official program is announced in these words: "We are Catholic, but not clerical; on the contrary, anti-clerical." The organ of the movement has been a weekly journal called El Urbiore, so named after a famous mountain fastness which neither the Mohammedans nor the French were ever able to subdue. In addition to this journal, Sigismundo has recently published a larger work against the Jesuit, entitled "Crisis de la Compania de Jesus," and is developing great literary activity in non-Spanish periodicals also. The first organ of the movement having been suppressed, a new periodical was called into existence, called El Cosmopolita. In a recent indictment of the Jesuit order the Spanish agitator designated twenty-four points, in which he considers a reform necessary. Among these are the following: Alleged decline of the true worship of God and of the true following of the crucified Savior; exaggerated and idolatrous reverence for the saints; the worship of the Sacred Heart and other objects of adoration; decrease in the practise of Christianvirtues, such as righteousness, wisdom, temperance; and the increase of external religious exercises that appeal only to the senses, such as processions, festivals, and the whole body of ceremonies; decrease in love and care for the poor, and the growth of the desire for riches, power, and influence; neglect of the Gospel and the traditions and an increasing exaggeration of churchly authority and especially of the power of the Vatican; simony and favoritism in the papal and episcopal government; the prominence given to political trickery in the management of church affairs, and the deterioration of love, justice, and holiness in the leaders of the church; tyranny on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities over the lower clergy and the people. The Frankfurter Zeitung quotes Don Sigismundo as saying: "Against all these weaknesses and evils, which indicate a terrible degeneration of Christian spirit in the church, I have determined to raise my voice day and night, with the permission of my superiors or without this permission. These evils spring from the spirit of Antichrist, and to fight this I do not need the permission of Pope or bishop; the call of God and my conscience are sufficient authority." He also makes it a point to attack the enforced celibacy of the priests, declaring that while celibacy is a good thing in itself, it is such only when it is adopted as a matter of free choice and not of compulsion. With reference to the outcome of the agitation and of the present condition of affairs, he writes further as follows: "What will be the consequences as far as the future is concerned? This is hard to say beforehand. In the church there is a schism threatening. The Primate of Toledo and the Archbishop of Saville are the two opposite poles in the Spanish church. The former aims at a reintroduction of the Inquisition, and the latter strives for the same freedom of the clergy that prevails in the United States. In political circles there prevails an opposition to the liberal spirit of the lower classes, and the higher classes are sighing for the Inquisition. In economic affairs suffering is Cor rapidly increasing and immorality is making rapid strides. ruption in official circles caused the catastrophe in Cuba and in the Philippines, and Spaniards, monks, and Free Masons have all acted like robbers. Spain is the most unhappy land on earth because it is ruled by the Jesuit order. The people are without faith or confidence, without manhood, without strength, without law, without science, even without the sense of honor. The highest that this country can do is to hope that the vulture of Jesuitism may soon cease to devour the vitals of this people. However, as it seems, there is the dawn of a new day, when the people will take terrible vengeance on those who have materially and morally ruined their fatherland."— Translation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST. A AN AGNOSTIC VIEW OF PRESBYTERIAN STATEMENT (already quoted in THE LITERARY DIGEST, June 8) made by Dr. Minton, moderator of this year's General Assembly, and chairman of the committee to prepare formulas of creed revision to be submitted to the Assembly next year, is criticized by The Agnostic Journal (August 31), which thinks that the statement "breathes the Jesuitical spirit." It betokens, says The Journal, an attempt to invent a form of expression for a short creed which, "while not contradicting the barbarous old doctrines of infant damnation and predestination, will yet allow very different interpretations to be authoritatively put upon the fuller statement in the Confession itself." That part of Dr. Minton's utterance against which the criticism is directed is as follows: "The statement of the faith of the Presbyterian Church, to be prepared by the committee of twenty-one, is not to be regarded as a new constitutional confessional formula. It is to be an official pronunciamento, to which no one, however, is to declare allegiance in ordination vows. It is to be popularly didactic. If any one wants to know what the Presbyterian Church believes, this statement will answer his inquiry.” Says The Journal: "He [Dr. Minton] is willing to stand by the old creed, and to refuse a victory to those who wish to change it; but he is also willing to sanction the adoption of an ‘official pronunciamento,' which, however, is not to be obligatory on any one! The meaning of this is simply that, to answer the popular objections to the old creed on the ground of its absurdity and barbarity, a new creed is to be adopted for popular use, so that when a humane objector to infant damnation puts forward his difficulty, he may be confronted by the new official pronunciamento, in which the 'love of God,' as we are told, will be emphasized, and His infinite and atrocious cruelty will be ignored. As Dr. Minton says: If any one wants to know what the Presbyterian Church believes, this statement will answer his inquiry.' And it is hoped, no doubt, that the Presbyterian Church will be able, like the Jesuits of to-day, to successfully meet the attacks of those who, bringing history and common knowledge to their assistance, attempt to expose the secret teachings and workings of these ecclesiastical bodies." In the case of the Jesuits, the agnostic editor goes on to say, while one priest is asserting the beneficent character of the order and the oaths taken by its initiates, another flatly denies that any oath was ever taken by its members: "The Presbyterian Church is preparing the way for an exactly similar duality of exoteric and esoteric teaching, following the example given by Ezra, who relates how, having written the Books of the Law, some were to be read publicly and the rest were to be reserved for the inner service of the temple. Such an outcome appears inevitable in every church. What is transpiring in the Presbyterian Church is only a repetition, slightly varied, of what occurred in the Roman Church, what has occurred in the English Church, and is producing its present disorganized condition, and what must occur in every church founded upon any supernatural belief. The priesthood such a belief necessarily originates as its authoritative exponent will inevitably fight to the death to maintain its divinely given prerogatives, and as knowledge and humanity grow among the laity, the outcome must be the same in all cases-tyrannical priestcraft on the one side, with its credulous and conservative following; growing intelligence, skepticism, heresy, schism, and rebellion on the other. The idea that Presbyterianism, any more than Romanism, can maintain its creed or its organization intact is one of those delusions the hollowness of which is proved by the history of every religion in the world, and it will no doubt be fully exemplified when finally decent Presbyterians refuse to put up with such subterfuges as those of Dr. Minton, and demand the formulation of a creed that a civilized man can honestly stand by." ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS. INTEREST in the study of comparative religion has been quickened of late by the reissue in an enlarged form of Mr. J. G. Frazer's "Golden Bough," first published eleven years ago, and by the recent publication of Mr. Andrew Lang's "Magic and Religion." The two authors advance theories widely at variance upon the origin of religion, Mr. Lang's book consisting in part of a criticism of the other. The Newcastle (England) Weekly Chronicle (August 17) outlines Mr. Frazer's theory as follows: "His inquiries and investigations have led him to the view that the movement of main thought has on the whole been from magic, through religion, to science. In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him, and imagines he can manipulate by his own actions for his own ends. When he discovers that he can not control nature as he wishes, he ceases to rely on magic, and ascribes to certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature the far-reaching powers which he at first arrogated to himself. Thus magic is gradually superseded by religion, and natural phenomena are believed to be regulated by beings who are like men in kind, and are swayed by human passions, tho endowed with supernatural powers. As time goes on this explanation in its turn becomes unsatisfactory, and science then steps in to teach and explain the invariable and regular succession of natural events." This theory does not admit the existence of "high gods" (distinguished from local "dæmons" or spirits) among the most backward of savage races. It is to be inferred therefrom that a belief in high gods can not be among the conceptions of primitive man. Mr. Lang, on the other hand, finds in early and modern accounts of savage peoples many traces of belief in high gods. His position (says a reviewer in the New York Sun, September 1) "is that the earliest principal form of religion was relatively high, and that it was inevitably lowered in tone during the process of social evolution." The Sun's review continues: "His view is that the belief in a supreme being came, in some way only to be guessed at, first in order of evolution, and was subsequently obscured and overlaid by belief in ghosts and in a pantheon of lesser divinities. Mr. Lang was led to these conclusions, he tells us, first, by observing the reports of beliefs in a relatively supreme being and maker among tribes which do not worship ancestral spirits (Australians and Andamanese), and, secondly, by remarking the otiose unworshiped supreme being, often credited with the charge of future rewards and punishments, among polytheistic and ancestor-worshiping peoples too numerous for detailed mention. "The supreme being among these latter races, in some instances a mere shadow of a children's tale, Mr. Lang conjectures to be a vague survival of such a thing as the Andamanese 'Puluga' or the Australian Baiame.' The author of this essay submits that this hypothesis colligates the facts. There is a creative being (not a spirit, merely a being) before ghosts are worshiped. Where ghosts are worshiped and the spiritual deities of polytheism have been developed and are adored, there is still the unworshiped maker in various degrees of repose and neglect. That the belief in him "came in some way only to be guessed at," is true enough. But if I am to have an hypothesis, like my neighbors, I have suggested that early man, looking for an origin of things, easily adopted the idea of a maker, usually an unborn man, who was before death, and still exists. Round this being crystallized affection, fear, and sense of duty; he sanctions morality and early man's remarkable resistance to the cosmic tendency-his notion of unselfishness. That man should so early conceive a maker and father seems to me very probable.' . . "The stages through which the Zulu ideas of religion have passed are conceived by Mr. Lang as follows: They once had an idea of a creative being; they reduced him subsequently to a first man; then they neglected him in favor of serviceable ghosts; they now think him extinct, like the ghosts themselves when they cease to be serviceable." Like other investigators, Mr. Frazer traces many of the Christian rites, traditions, and practises to more ancient forms of worship. He finds in the custom of the Babylonians and their Persian conquerors of killing a human god an explanation of the crucifixion of Christ. To quote further from The Sun: "Mr. Frazer conjectures that the reason why they acted thus was that a condemned man served as proxy for the divine King of Babylon, who in an age less civilized had been annually sacrificed. The King had been sacrificed as a being of divine or magi. cal nature, a man-god, and the object, according to Mr. Frazer, was to keep providing the god or the magical influence resident in him with a series of fresh human vehicles. Mr. Frazer seems to think that the King himself was believed to incarnate a known or recognized god of vegetation, a personal principle of vegetable life. In later times the King's proxy, the condemned criminal, was sacrificed in a character at once royal (as representing the King) and divine (since the King incarnated a god). All this occurred, if we accept Mr. Frazer's theory, at about the time of year in which our Easter falls, at a feast called Zakmuk in Babylonia, and Sacæa in Persia: the festal period was one of hard drinking and singular license. . . “Mr. Frazer takes for granted that the Jews had no such feast or custom before they were carried into exile in Babylonia. He thinks that from the Babylonians and Persians they probably derived the festival which they styled Purim, and also borrowed the custom, previously unheard of among them, of crowning, stripping, flogging, and hanging a mock king or condemned criminal in the month of March. The Jews are also conjectured to have borrowed a practise, presumed by Mr. Frazer to have prevailed at Babylon, of keeping a pair of condemned criminals. One of them was hanged, the other was set free for the year. The first died as an incarnation of the god of vegetable life. The second, set free, represented in a pseudo-resurrection the first criminal, and also represented, apparently, the revival of the god of vegetable life. The first man was called Haman, probably in origin Humman, a deity of the vanquished foes of Babylon, the Elamites. The second man, in Hebrew Mordecai, probably represented Merodach, or Marduk, the supreme god of the victorious Babylonians. Each man had a female consort, who in Babylon was probably a sacred harlot. Haman had Vashti, apparently an Elamite goddess; Mordecai had Esther, doubtless Ishtar, the Venus of the Babylonian priests. Now then, since Jesus, by what looks in the New-Testament record like a chapter of accidents, was put to death as one of these mock kings, he inherited their recognized divinity, and his mission, which previously had been mainly that of moral lecturer, was at once surrounded by a halo of divinity. Such, in substance, is Mr. Frazer's theory Mr. Lang acknowledges the ingenuity of this hypothesis, but he submits that, if Mr. Frazer had examined the circumstances of the Persian custom with an intellect unattracted by the hope of throwing new light on the Crucifixion, and uninfluenced by a tendency to find gods of vegetation almost everywhere, he would have found that they admit of being accounted for in a simple manner. There was, so far as we are informed, no sacrifice at the Sacæa, and at that Persian festival nothing religious. The religious element has to be imported by aid of remote inference, daring conjecture, and even some disregard of documentary history." In a review of Mr. Lang's book the London Athenæum (August 10) says: "It is well known that Mr. Frazer has not succeeded in convincing many prominent anthropologists that the last edition of his Golden Bough' can be taken to have proved his points all along the line. There are several important places where we think Mr. Frazer has damaged his general argument by the introduction of doubtful evidence, and of not overstrong arguments upon such evidence. But for all this there is so much left which is wholly sound and valuable that we do not think Mr. Lang will succeed in his crusade against the deities of vegetation as he succeeded against sun myths and dawn myths. He undoubtedly brings important criticism to bear upon Mr. Frazer's theory as to the crucifixion of Jesus-criticism which we fancy it will be hard to meet. He argues strongly, and we hold convincingly, against the evidence for the annual sacrifice of a king; and he brings his acute criticism to bear upon other important parts of Mr. Frazer's famous study." But the article goes on to say: "It is useless to talk about the relative position of magic and religion until we have satisfactorily surveyed the evidence and duly placed each item; and, following the same argument, we think that it is useless for Mr. Lang to discuss the cult of high gods until he has followed out many of the results of his criticism of others. The conclusion as to whether a given tribe of people does or does not believe in high gods can not depend upon the chance phrasing, often loose and careless, of a traveler or a missionary. It must depend upon the whole case, and in particular upon whether the cult of a high god is or is not in due relationship both to the life and the general beliefs of a tribe. If a given tribe has been stated to believe in a high god, and yet the results of such a belief are absolutely nil in all branches of its social, moral, and religious life, the mere statement must be worth nothing, and could with care probably be traced back to its literary source. If such a statement can be proved to be accompanied by some fruitful results, then the measure of these results is important in order to prove to what extent and from what element in the tribe they are due. Another point is that the proof of a belief in high gods must result in a reconsideration of the position of the tribe in the scale of humanity. Such a tribe can not be primitive or among the lowest savages. It has at all events spent its life in the development of a highly intellectual conception, most probably to the exclusion of improvement in material culture, and anthropologists will have to reconsider the relationship of material and intellectual developments in estimating the position of savage peoples. A tribe, in short, may have no pottery, but if it has a faith in high gods instead of using pottery, it may be more highly developed than a pottery-making tribe with no such faith. In all cases the associated ideas are of importance, or the evidence for belief in high gods may be as imaginative as Mr. Lang suggests was Virgil's allusion to the golden bough." THE TH "INTOLERABLE SITUATION" IN ROME. HE peculiar relations and antagonisms that exist between the Government of the young kingdom of Italy and the papacy have brought about a condition of affairs in Rome which Pope Leo has declared to be "an intolerable situation." In The Westminster Review (August) Mr. H. M. Vaughn, who writes himself down as a Protestant well-wisher of United Italy and yet as one who acknowledges the grievances of the Vatican, begins comment upon the situation by saying that it is apparently incapable of improvement through amicable adjustment. His language is: "The present position of the two governments in Rome is not unlike that of the two dogs on their plank-bridge; neither government will budge, yet neither is in an attitude to fight for ultimate supremacy. Now, of these two parties one must retire for the other, and the question is, Which?" Looking at affairs from the sentimental standpoint, and recognizing the resentment of the papal party-"the resentment of the weak robbed by the strong "-Mr. Vaughn asks: "Is such sentiment to be utterly ignored in this case? Is it not rather a reason for treating the aggrieved party all the more delicately, carefully, and generously? But this is exactly what the Italian Government has refused to do in the case of the city of Rome. The feelings of the Pope and the clerical party with regard to the city which has been theirs for so many hundreds of years have been harrowed without stint, so much so that we may fairly conclude it has been the special object and desire of the present régime to humiliate and annoy the Vatican in every possible way. Churches have been torn down on the flimsiest of excuses; papal 'scutcheons, often of fine workmanship and great historical interest, have been purposely destroyed or defaced; a statue of Giordano Bruno has been erected in the Campo de' Fiori, with an insulting inscription on its pedestal for all the country folks from the Campagna and the Hills to read; but of course in the eyes of Protestant Europe all these are trifles, mere pin-pricks of the ruling powers in Rome to vex the overthrown priesthood, and therefore quite fair and excusable." The attitude of the Vatican is further explained to be a result of the enormous loss to the papal treasury owing to its deprivation of Rome and the old states of the church. The promise of the Italian Government to set aside 120,000 francs for the Pope as compensation for his loss of the temporal power has not helped to heal the breach. Compensation of this sort would have been equitable only in case a treaty had been signed between the King of Italy and the pontiff, by which the latter transferred his sovereign rights over Rome for such a sum. "But no such treaty exists it has been simply a case of occupation of a desired property by violence, followed by an offer of compensation to the disturbed original owner." Mr. Vaughan then puts and answers the following question: "But why does the papacy refuse to take up this offer of compensation from the ruling powers of Rome and Italy, since half a loaf is better than no bread when the choice lies between the half or none? . . . Then what is the use or object of this stubborn, passive resistance, which deprives Italy of peace and the Vatican of its necessary and proper income? The answer is a simple one and goes straight to the root, to the origo mali, of the present political situation in Rome. The Vatican can never again agree to a convention with Italian King and parliament alone: it can not trust itself to any agreement with one Power that so frequently in the past has shown itself capricious and untrustworthy in its dealings. A mere whim of the personal ruler of Italy, or a transient wave of anti-clerical feeling in the Chamber, may bring about the revocation of this 'treaty' between the old power and the new at any moment, and propose in its stead a fresh arrangement between the helpless pontiff and the all-powerful military force by which his little island of territory in Trastevere is surrounded. The papal policy of foregoing the uncertain advantages offered and of continually protesting is wiser and more dignified than a policy of surrender, followed by a possible disavowal and change of existing treaties." Perhaps even more repugnant to the Pope than the actual possession of Rome by the civil power, Mr. Vaughan thinks, is the fact that the King of Italy is domiciled at the Quirinal, the favorite private palace of the Popes in Rome! "This surely was at the time an inexcusable act of violence and bad taste on the part of the incoming sovereign, and quite unnecessary into the bargain. Were there not many vast palaces in Rome in 1870 that could have been bought for the occupation of the Sardinian court? Can not the people of Rome today, whose municipality is squandering tens of millions of lire on a useless monument to Victor Emmanuel I. on the Capitol, a true abîme de dépenses in an impoverished city, build a new palace for the sovereigns of their own choice, whose coming they heralded with such joy? You can not treat with a robber who is still living in another man's house!' is the contemptuous answer of the clerical party to the question why the papacy is so adverse to any attempt at reconciliation, or even arrangement, with the present ruling house in Italy; and we can but admit that there is a scintilla of reason and truth in the reply." A suggestion looking to the settlement of the questions involved is made as follows: "What, indeed, does the Roman Church want? We do not know, and it is useless here to speculate as to what might, or what might not, ultimately satisfy the Pope and the Papal Curia; but we may assume that the first thing required to open the way to a friendly and final arrangement between the two governments in Rome is a true guaranty-not by the Italian parliament and King alone, but by all the nations that at present have envoys accredited to the Vatican-that the independence of the Pope shall always be respected, so that, no matter what political changes may occur in Italy, or even in Rome itself, the head of the Roman Church shall forever be permitted to continue in peace his great duties toward all of the Roman faith throughout the world. "The King must look beyond the bounds of Italy to effect a lasting compromise, for the present political parties in Italy itself, under whatever name they hold office, all persist in annoying and humiliating the papacy. He must appeal, as I said before, to the other Christian Powers of the world, who all have an interest in the affairs of the Pope and consequently an interest in his relations with the Power in whose territory he is situated. Whether such an appeal fail or succeed, it is at least worth the trying, and every honest attempt at promoting peace, however unsuccessful, must tend to help the situation." THE DO MEN DESIRE IMMORTALITY? HERE is a general belief that man alone, as distinguished from the other animals, is aware of the doom that ends his earthly existence, and that this stimulates him to live a more spiritual life, to conceive the thought of a life beyond the grave and to ennoble the fear of death by a consoling belief in immortality. This belief, writes Mr. F. C. S. Schiller in The Fortnightly Review (September), is the theme of poets and preachers, and the chief constituent of a literary tradition which we scarcely dare to question. But, he asks, "is the assumption either of a universal consciousness of death or of a universal desire for immortality really so irrefragable?" In answer he asserts that the evidence in favor of this assumption "is far scantier and more ambiguous than we were inclined to suppose, and there are ugly facts which seem to put a different complexion on the matter." He writes: "A visitor from Mars, dispassionately inquiring into human conduct and motive, might find it hard to detect more foreknowledge of death in men than in animals. From the palace to the hovel, from the laboratory to the oratory, he would find men everywhere pursuing ends of the earth, earthly, living for the present, or, if circumstances forced them to take thought for the morrow, concerning themselves only with their immediate future in this world; while of the 'other-worldliness,' so often preached and preached against in the literature, he would hardly find a trace. . . . Of course the fact that men habitually live in the present, hating to think of the future, and detesting anything that reminds them of death, has not, in another connection, escaped the sagacity of moralists and preachers. Many of their happiest efforts are concerned with castigating this particular form of human weakness and exhibiting its insensate folly. And in so doing our teachers have been no doubt abundantly justified. Only it appears to have escaped their notice that this count of their indictment against human nature accords none too well with their doctrine that death and immortality are absorbing objects of meditation. If it be true that we are culpably careless of the future, recklessly bent on suppressing all thought of death, it can hardly be that we live oppressed by the shadow of death, and consumed with desire for the consolations of a future life." The writer suggests an explanation of the phenomenon he discovers-that de facto so little account is taken of the inevitableness of death-as follows: "That this must be the case is a result which follows from the general principle that our attitude toward all the aspects of life must be such as will enable us to act vigorously and efficiently. Applied to the prospect of death this principle renders it certain that the thought of death can not be allowed to paralyze action, that means must be discovered for carrying on the business of life in death's despite. Of such means two are most prominent, the suppression of the thought of death by a resolute and systematic determination not to retain it, and a religious reinterpretation which so transfigures it that it no longer forms an impediment to action. Of these the latter is perhaps the most truly logical and satisfactory, but as a matter of fact men mostly prefer and probably always have preferred the former alternative, and forever strive to thrust the unwelcome thought into the background of consciousness. This is why all but the most inevitable mention of it is tabooed in polite society. This method on the whole is a social success, tho it probably breaks down at least once in the final crisis of every one's life.” Assuming this to be our attitude toward death, Mr. Schiller next inquires how it affects the desire for a future life. He says that altho most religions insist upon the fact of immortality and make it man's great consolation in view of the prospect of death, the majority of men, instead of thinking of death tempered with immortality, prefer not to think of death at all. Hence, he argues, "it is natural that what is associated with the thought of something so distasteful should itself become distasteful. Need we seek further for the reason why the prospect of a future life is, by the generality of men, regarded without enthusiasm, and, as far as may be, ignored?" After discussing the attitude of men toward the various religious doctrines of the time, in which the writer finds confirmation of his conclusions, he continues by saying: "It remains to account for the fact that the literary tradition has taken such a very different view of human psychology. Why has everybody always conspired to write as tho the question of immortality were of tremendous importance and absorbing, if de facto the great majority of men have always avoided it as much as ever they could? I believe the answer to be exceedingly simple. The makers of the literary tradition have expressed what seemed true to them at the time of writing, what was true for them; and yet the mass of men were always indifferent or hostile. Of course, however, the dumb, recalcitrant masses gave no sign of their dissent from a doctrine they were trying to dismiss from their minds, and hence the writers had it all their own way. In other words, the fallacy in the argument that all men naturally crave for immortality is identical with that of the proof of the efficacy of prayer by means of the votive offerings in the temple of Poseidon. Just as those who prayed and perished were not in a position to make offerings, so those who are not interested in a subject do not write books about it." In apparent contradiction to Mr. Schiller's statements regarding the lack of human interest in death and immortality (a contradiction to which he gives considerable space to show that it is more apparent than real), he recalls that the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research has issued a circular, or questionnaire, designed to test and to bring out the feelings with which the prospect of future life is actually regarded at the present day. We quote the questions it asks: "I. Would you prefer (a) to live after 'death' or (b) not? (b) If not, what would have to be its character to make the "III. Can you state why you feel in this way, as regards questions I. and II.? "IV. Do you Now feel the question of a future life to be of urgent importance to your mental comfort? "V. Have your feelings on questions I., II., and VI. undergone change? If so, when and in what ways? "VI. (a) Would you like to know for certain about the future life, or (b) would you prefer to leave it a matter of faith?" The writer thinks "it would too obviously be prejudicial to the scientific value of the inquiry to discuss its probable results while the matter is still sub judice." He refrains therefore from further comment beyond expressing confidence that there will be a variety of sentiment, affected by age, sex, profession, and nationality. |