And not only are Babylonian inscriptions more historical in their character than the Egyptian, but their chronological records are so exact that they enable us to fix dates with precision even for two and three thousand years B.C. For these ancient periods the reigns of the several North Babylonian kings and dynasties can be fixed almost to a year, and the periods of the Southern kings and dynasties to within a century in all cases. Far different is the case with the old Egyptian dynasties, but now, happily, a mass of correspondence between the kings of Egypt and Babylon have been unearthed, which will aid greatly in the fixing of Egyptian chronology. This correspondence was unearthed at Tel-ulAmarina, and was from Palestinian, Syrian, Assyrian, and Babylonian kings and princes to Amenophis III. and Amenophis IV., circa 1400 B.C. This was not written, as might be supposed, on papyrus or stone tablets in the Egyptian language, but in arrow-headed writing on brick tablets resembling those of the Babylonian and Assyrian libraries, of which there are some hundreds, more or less well preserved. These have now been translated, and, thanks to the enterprising publishing house of Spemann, these valuable and epoch-making documents are accessible to every student at a moderate price.

As regards the language of these two great ancient civilizations, the Egyptian language stands isolated, indicating only a connection with the Semitic group of languages so remote as to be of little value for comparative philology; but in the Coptic it has left behind a daughter language which materially facilitates its study. The Babylonia-Assyrian language, on the contrary, is preserved to us in memorials extending over more than three thousand years. We are thus enabled to trace its development, and to recognize it as the leading and oldest sister in the range of Semitic languages. It not only assists us in the comparison of the Hebrew-Phoenician, Aramaic, and Arabic (including the Minao-Sabaic and Ethiopian), but has also thrown an epoch-making light on the structure of the Semitic languages, and their comparative etymology and grammar. But this by no means exhausts the linguistic importance of the arrow-headed script in philology, for not only were the old Semitic languages written in it, but it was the character of a whole series of unrelated languages, and, among others, of the Summerian, destined to play a very important rôle in linguistic science. Before the Semitic-Babylonians, of which we meet traces as long ago as 4000 B.C., another non-Semitic people was in possession of the land, and of its ancient civilization. This was the Summerian people, whose language was nearly related to the Turki group, and who, if they were not the inventors of the arrow-heading writing, were the people who introduced it among the Semitic races. They are the authors of the oldest Babylonian royal inscriptions, and in their language we have a great number of clay tablets, containing magic formula and religious texts, and many of them with interlinear AssyroBabylonian translations. Summerian contracts also of the time of the last kings of Tarsa, in South Babylon, circa 2000 B.C., have been preserved to us; and in the library of Sardanapalus there are numerous tables, constituting a lexicon of the two languages. These were especially numerous after the Summerian ceased to be a spoken language, and was only indifferently understood; the old Summerian version of the hymns was given, with the modern meaning in elucidation of the text. The arrow-headed literature contains the oldest national grammar and national dictionary of the world; older, far older, than those of Alexandria, until recently deemed the birthplace of grammar.

The arrow-headed schrift was very widely adopted by neighboring nations at different periods. Among the correspondence found at Teb-ul-Amarina are some letters from Mesopotamian princes written in the cuneiform character, and in the Mitani language, which appears to be related to the Georgian

family of pre-Indo-Germanic languages, has left many records in the cuneiform character; and, about the eighth century B. C., we find it in use in Elam on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and the old Persian character is only a further development of the syllabic new-Babylonian cuneiform character. If we now, in connection with this manifold application and development of the original Summerian picture writing, turn to Egyptology with the question if there is here anything to resemble it, we meet at most but with a small analogue in the Ethopian inscriptions in Nubia. These are not yet fully deciphered, but an attempt is being made here to restore a nonEgyptian language by means of the ordinary Egyptian hieroglyphs. But even here the scale turns vastly in favor of Assyriology, whose conquests in the department of linguistics are already enormous.

THE SMALL PLANETS AND THE IDEAS OF LE VERRIER.

W. DE FONVIELLE.

La Nature, Paris, October 31.

ANY persons, on learning that Mr. Charlois has dis

them probably new, will be disposed to attach small importance to the discovery of these heavenly bodies, which are so numerous that so many can be discovered within such a brief period. The first of these little planets, Ceres, was discovered by Piazzi on the 1st of January, 1801. Olbers discovered the second, Pallas, on March 28, 1802; Juno, the third, was found by Harding the 1st of September, 1804; Vesta, the fourth and the most brilliant of all, was seen for the first time by Olbers March 29, 1807.

It was not until 1845 that the fifth planet, Astræa, was discovered by Hencke; the sixth, Hebe, was discovered by the same observer, who was postmaster at Driessen. He was a passionate astronomical amateur.

From that time the discovery of these little stars has suffered no interruption and their number has gone on increasing incessantly. Now three hundred and twenty of them are known. Mr. Luther, Director of the Observatory of Bilk, near Dusseldorf, discovered twenty-five of them; Mr. Palisa, astronomer of the Vienna Observatory, eighty-three; and Mr. Charlois, astronomer of the Observatory at Nice, twenty-five. The last four discovered by him, he found between August 28th and September 11th, 1891.

The swarm of little planets is probably composed of several thousand stars, but their discovery will become more and more difficult, on account of the smallness of those which have yet to be discovered.

It is a matter of no slight interest to know what one of the greatest astronomers of the century, Le Verrier, thought about the asteriods.

After the discovery of Pallas, the second of the small planets in chronological order, Le Verrier showed for the first time, in 1845, the power of his analytical genius. He studied a great perturbation produced by Jupiter in the sidereal revolution of the body discovered by Olbers, and proved that seven times its mean movement equals eighteen times that of Jupiter. This shows an astonishing analogy with the relation known for centuries between the march of the two principal planets of our solar system, twice the mean movement of Jupiter equaling five times that of Saturn.

Moreover, Le Verrier had the glory of giving the finishing stroke to the theory of Olbers and Laplace, who affirmed that the little planets are the remains of an old planet destroyed by an explosion. Le Verrier said:

"So far from explaining the existence of the asteroids by an alteration of the primitive system of the universe, we are more and more obliged to believe that they have been formed like the large planets, and by virtue of the same laws. If these

views are just, we should expect the discovery of a prodigious number of small planets, as the zeal of observers increases and instruments become more powerful. The larger the number of planets discovered, the more important their discovery, since we may hope that the knowledge of a large number of small planets will enable us to discover a law in their distribution, and to determine the configuration of their groups."

Successive discoveries have completely justified the foresight of the great astronomer and shown that his anticipations amounted to clairvoyance.

On account of the great inclination of their orbits, Le Verrier thought that the resemblance of their orbits to that of comets would be found to be still greater than appeared when he wrote. He believed that there existed asteroids, of which the eccentricity equals that of periodical comets. He, therefore, saw no impossibility in some asteroids penetrating far forward in the zone which separates us from Mars.

For this great astronomer the little planets contained the secret of the base of positive astronomy, the distance of the sun from the earth, that line of which the exact, positive, indisputable knowledge is the imperious need of definitive science.

Not only did Le Verrier desire that the asteroids be studied individually, and even that their mutual perturbations be observed, but he had the idea of studying them in a mass, of estimating, by a series of calculations, the total weight of all the bodies of the number of which we are ignorant. A study of the movement of the perihelion of Mars caused him to affirm that the weight of all the asteroids, known and unknown combined, spread from the distance 2.2 as far as the distance 4.4 in a zone of which the size, so far as known at present, is 310,685,000 miles, does not exceed the one-fourth of the weight of the planet which we inhabit. It is "one-fourth of the Earth" which he wished to inscribe in the name of the asteroids, in the account of celestial matters which he had opened in the great book of universal science.

Such efforts would seem chimerical were they not made by a man whose victorious equations divined the place of the planet Neptune.

It will be seen from what has been said that it can be declared without exaggeration, that the successes of Mr. Charlois were prepared by the greatest astronomer of the century, and that no one would have appreciated their value more than he. The two hundred little planets discovered since Le Verrier's death in 1877, would have only increased in his eyes the importance of the admirable observations of our country

man.

T

CONQUERING THE NORTH POLE.

A NEW PLAN OF CAMPAIGN,

J. C. JOHNSON.

United Service, Philadelphia, November.

WO things are certain, and one is as certain as the other. The North Pole will be conquered! The Army or Navy will conquer it!

Whatever may be said of the waste of life and money in polar expeditions, the curiosity of the world will not be satisfied until a perfect map of the polar zone is before it. Neither will the science of the world be satisfied until it stands on that quiescent spot-the end of the axis of the earth, where there is no north, no east, no west, but only south in all directions.

And it goes without saying, that the discipline, skill, and energy of the commanders and engineers of the service are absolutely necessary to success.

nicely until it comes to a river which the sledge cannot cross, when it turns round and goes home.

It is not likely-hardly possible—that forlorn hopes will ever succeed.

In planning a North Pole campaign, the object is to place a few scientific men at the objective place, securing the line of advance and retreat.

There must be no penny-wise policy. This is a war of the engineers, since we must fight, not man, nor beast, but cold and snow and darkness, and various natural obstacles. Let inventors unite to invent what is needed: let us work and wait until we have perfected our inventions and proved them.

INVENTION NO. I.-AN AMPHIBIOUS VESSEL.

This, it seems to the writer, we must have, and we can have it.

Construct the hull of a vessel about the shape of the longitudinal section of an egg, the stern wider than the bow, and the angles of the sides, bow, and stern such that the ice would strike the hull at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that it would tend to slide under and lift the boat. No rudder or cutwater, or other projection, but a smooth surface; the steering to be done with a paddle oar, to be unshipped at will as in Nile boats. The rather small steel engine, to rest on a cog wheel railroad, and to be able to advance or retreat twelve feet, the cylinder and piston inclining a little forward from the perpendicular.

Our fuel should be as pure hydro-carbon as possible. Expense should not count.

MODES OF ACTION.

Our modern galley, which we will now christen the "Walrus." is approaching an ice floe. Paddle briskly; let the crew go aft with all portable matter. Let the engine crawl back on the cog-wheel to its end, the shallow bow rises out of water, rides over the yielding ice edge, the engine is run forward, passing the centre of gravity, the crew run forward beyond the bow on a spar, and the Walrus, propelled by the forward "poles" is on the ice.

Let us here stop and hurrah, for when the first Walrus gains the first ice floe the North Pole is already conquered. It is the turning point, the battle of the war.

To cross the ice the vessel is provided with two keels or wrinkles about four feet apart. On these wrinkles the Walrus is poled over the ice.

eight poles sliding easily in sockets, so that one leg or pole may be five or six feet longer or shorter than its opposite. With this appliance three or four men might steer the boat over the roughest surface. It is mentioned only as a possible help,

The next essentials are: I. A perfect cold-proof suit of clothes, with the usual Arctic hood, a compartment in it to heat air for breathing, and a lamp for heating it. II. A coldproof refuge. The writer advocates a The writer advocates a chain of adequate dwellings, indestructible, and within reasonable distance one. of another, and store-houses in the solid rock.

THE ROUTE OF ATTACK.

This must be either the Greenland or the Island route. Establish the grand base of operations as far north as we can be sure of navigation, and bring up all our inventions.

Probably on some portions of the coast we will need our remaining invention,

A ONE-RAIL RAILROAD TO BE TRAVERSED BY A BICYCLE.

Here, friends of the Army and Navy, is a plan of campaign* and description of the war material. The various inventions can be tested near home. If these inventions are not found practicable they are pretty sure to suggest to inventive minds those that can be used. It is intolerable that we should be longer baffled by such simple obstacles as ice and water.

THE APPLICATIONS OF HYPNOTISM.

C. LLOYD TUCKEY, M.D.

Contemporary Review, London, November.

T the present time, when even medical experts hold themselves in an attitude of indecision towards hypnotism, it is not surprising that the laity are at a loss to reconcile the conflicting opinions of the advocates of the practice and its opponents. The consideration of a few salient points may guide thoughtful persons to a correct estimation of a subject which promises to assume great importance in the near future.

There are two leading theories as to the nature of hypnosis, held by the two leading schools of hypnotism. That of the Salpêtrière, enunciated by the eminent physician Charcot, is that hypnotism is pathological, and, in fact, a form of hysteria, and occurs in hysterical subjects only; while the Nancy school contends that hypnosis is a physiological condition analogous to natural sleep, and that nearly all persons of sane mind can be hypnotised.

It is to be regretted that Charcot and his followers, by experimenting mainly on hysterical subjects-for the most part women have forced us to regard their experiments as incomplete, and the arguments based upon them as futile. Prof. Bernheim recently experimented on sixty-nine patients in a general hospital under his charge, and succeeded in hypnotizing the whole of them. As agricultural laborers, sailors, soldiers, and the majority of children, are shown to be exceptionally susceptible to hypnotism, we must, if we accept Charcot's doctrine, greatly enlarge our views as to the prevalence of hysteria.

escence, and by it he is guided in the way of cure. The degree of suggestibility is not necessarily proportioned to the depth of sleep.

Suggestibility, apart from hypnotism, comes within the experience of us all. Every one has some portion of such susceptibility, and in many it is highly developed and may be worked upon for good or ill with signal effcct. The drunkard, converted by a Gough or a Father Mathew, is redeemed through suggestion, and through it the victim of evil example or solicitation falls to his ruin. We are physically benefited by words of hope and cheerful surroundings, and prostrated by prognostications of evil.

Those ills which the hypnotist can cure by suggestion he can also frequently produce by the same method. "Hypnotism," says Prof. Delbœuf, of Liege, “by cutting off the intellectual life from the life of relation, enables the highest centres to assume cognizance of and to look after the working of the organic functions." Disease, according to Liébeault, implies an excess of nervous action in one direction, and its deficiency in another. Through suggestion, hypnotism enables us to restore the nervous equilibrium on which depends the maintenance of health, and the hypnotist combats disease by uťilizing the patient's own forces. "The patient," says Bernheim, "hypnotizes himself." So also he cures himself through forces that are essentially his own; the direction of them only comes from without. Hypnotism does not enable us to create energies, but only to develop and control those which already exist. It cannot impart wisdom to the fool, nor soundness of brain to the idiot, though it will sometimes help us to develop weak faculties, and call latent powers into activity.

It is for this reason that hysterical persons are by no means satisfactory patients. If we cure such persons of a pain or a malady, they are very apt to conjure it back again, or to develop another in its place by morbid auto-suggestion. As it is on the physical, so it is on the psychical side. So far from an individual of weak will being the best subject for the cure of a moral infirmity of drunkenness for example-we find it more easy to reform one of a strong character, whose natural bent is toward the right, but who has been overcome by force of circumstances, such as evil association or mental depression.

The theory that hypnotism, when used in the treatment of moral cases, subverts free will, is erroneous. The originally healthy and well-disposed subject, who has sunk into habits of injurious self-indulgence through temptation from surroundings, exhaustion from overwork, anxiety or some other cause outside himself, has, for the time being, lost his freedom of will, while the victim of hereditary taint, or congenital deficiency who is naturally weak or vicious, or strong only in the direction of vice, may be said never to have possessed it. To the former, hypnotic suggestion may restore his lost willpower; in the latter the treatment may possibly develop it, especially if he is young.

The question of applying hypnotism to children as a means of moral reformation is a very serious one. Many people say they would rather have their children naturally bad than hypnotically good; and I confess to feeling much sympathy with this sentiment, if the badness is within normal limits. But if a child is viciously inclined, absolutely unmanageable, or crossly stupid, I think hypnotic suggestion might fairly be tried, to reinforce other moral treatment.

Already great results have been achieved, but alas! the physician must sorrowfully confess that there are many cases of drunkenness and dipsomania for which there seems no permanent cure, either by hypnotism or any other form of treatBefore moral as before physical disease, he must too often own himself vanquished and helpless. But in a large proportion of cases hypnotism offers a good hope of cure, and we should, I think, do wrong in refusing to give it a fair trial.

ment.

RELIGIOUS.

THE CHRISTIAN HELL.

JAMES MEW.

Nineteenth Century, London, November.

F hell as a place of punishment, the natural history is not

F only interesting, but instructive. As a subject of evolu

tion it comes well within the sphere of scientific inquiry. The chief difficulty about it is the vastness of its literature. The startling bibliography of religious terrorism makes us sigh for the simplicity of the hell of the Japanese, where the only punishment of the wicked is to pass into the body of a fox, or for that of the Talapoas of Surat in which the absence of what Addison calls "the fair sex" is the most excruciating torment of the imagination. In Patagonia it is not regarded as a place of misery. In Mexico it is less a place of punishment than of relative discomfort.

The general conception of hell, a conception primarily based on curiosity and fear, has been elaborated with marvelous ingenuity. For instance, the Hindu hells, or Narakas, are one hundred and thirty-six. The walls of the principal of these are over a hundred miles in thickness, and their firey glare is so fierce that they burst the eyes of those who look at them, even from the distance of four hundred leagues. Yama, the Greek Pluto, the Christian Satan, is two hundred and forty miles high. The hairs of his body are like palm trees. He punishes the damned by putting them in beds of boiling oil, sawing their bodies in two, pouring molten lead into their ears, pulling out their toenails and tongues, and a vast number of other varieties of torture. The mind, says Goldsmith, with much truth, is ever ingenious in making its own distress.

The general conception of hell has for many a fascinating horror, like that of a modern murder and the subsequent hanging which bring so rapturous a relish to our hot rolls at breakfast. It is an early sample of that remarkable human peculiarity, which seems to delight in pain, that morbid tendency to self-torture which, not content with ills of the present, looks forward with quivering horror to other worse ills in the future. And the future, beyond experience, if not beyond reason, offers an ample field to the fancy of the Heautomtimorumenos, The unseen and the unknown have ever presented an attractive arena for the gymnastics of the imagination. But as the bee and the spider, we are told, suck honey and poison from the same flowers, so we may extract pain or pleasure from our something beyond the grave. Generally we prefer to extract pain. The Kaffirs with only thirteen paradises, have more than double that number of hells.

"It was not in this world," says Gibbon, "that the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either agreeable or useful." But Gibbon is perhaps a little hard on the primitive Christians. At all events their hell is probably both as agreeable and as useful as that of other creeds. Though, indeed, it shows less variety of fancy than that of the Hindus, it yet runs a very close race in the arena of agony with that of the Muslims, wherein the lightest punishment is to be shod with shoes of fire, the heat of which causes the skull of the unlucky wight who bears them to boil like a cauldron.

The Pagan hell expounded by Platonism, was continued and intensified by Christianism. Plato's hell endured for one thousand years only. The hell of the Christian burns for ever and ever.

As Christmas succeeded the Saturnalia, so the Furies of the heathen hell became demons, Pluto or Pan, Satan, Avernus, the bottomless pit, and Phlegethon, the lake of fire and brimstone. Moreover, to the Oriental conception of heat was added, as also in the Muslim hell, that of cold, the egregious bugbear of the Scandinavian Edda.

The Holy Fathers have spoken of hell at great length. About its existence, its varied pains, its everlasting duration, its

names, and its place, there are many ponderous tomes of patristic opinion. Nothing, if one may rely upon common consent, ancient origin, and religious authority, is more certain than the existence of hell. It is proved alike by Holy Scripture, the Holy Fathers, and Pagan testimony. It was framed before sin was hatched. The special pains of hell are servitude, weeping, gnashing of teeth, darkness, confusion, despair, war, horror, fear, weakness, the worm, the society of devils, and many more.

It has been proved over and over again by others besides Jerome and Tertullian, that the fire of hell is a terrible reality; that it is corporeal material; that its constituents are probably sulphur and fluid pitch. The fact of the intense heat is proved by the Cacodemon himself, who, though a liar and the father of lies, may in this matter be considered a credible witness.

Passing over Milton, "whose malignity," says the genial Dr. Johnson, “is such that hell grows darker at his frown," and over all the writers of the Middle and later Ages we come to a recently published tract, The Sight of Hell, written for children by the Rev. J. Furniss. This gives a detailed description of many horrible tortures. A girl of sixteen stands with

bare feet upon a red-hot floor. A boy with flames issuing from his ears, is immersed up to his neck in a boiling kettle. A little child utters shrieks of agony in a burning oven.

The place of hell has given rise to very wide divergence of doctrine. The general, and perhaps the orthodox opinion— this assertion is made with considerable doubt-places hell in the earth's centre. To this view has been objected the insufficiency of room. Then rose up one Tobius Swindin, M. A., a rector of Caxton, in Kent, and published in 1797 a book well stuffed with recondite erudition, showing that the local hell is, in all probability, the sun. The spots upon that fiery orb are possibly dotted companies of damned souls.

And what say the skeptics and free-thinkers on this subject of hell?

They say the orthodox doctrine of hell is a traditional abstraction, and refuse to regard it as an evangel. That it is intellectually inconceivable and morally dangerous. That it is alike incredible to the mind, and intolerable to the heart. They say it is the outcome of human cruelty, and revenge, and wrong, and not of divine mercy, charity, and justice. That it is one of the results of the evil influence of priestly ambition, and hierarchic greed upon the sad docility of ignorance and superstition. That it is wholly inconsistent with the gentle character of Christianity's founder. That it debases the character of man, and is a blasphemous representation of that of God. That not even a Nero or a Phalaris could look with complacency upon millions in eternal anguish on account of some ancestral crime or metaphysical mistake. To preach long, loud, and damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us.

Spirit of the Universe, and the acquisition of divine knowledge through that union.

In the Indian Magazine for July, 1887, is a short biography of a quite recent religious reformer named Svami Dayananda Sarasvati, who, having mastered the higher Yoga system, became the leader of a new sect called the Arya-Samaj.

And here we may observe that the expression "higher Yoga" implies that another form of that system was introduced. In point of fact the Yoga system grew, and came to have two objects.

The earlier was the higher Yoga. It aimed only at union with the Spirit of the Universe. The more developed system aimed at something more. It sought to acquire miraculous powers, by bringing the body under the control of the will, and by completely abstracting the spirit from body and mind, and isolating it in its own essence. This condition is called Kaivalya.

In the fifth century B. C., when Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known. In those days, earnest and devout men craved only for absorption into the Supreme Being. Many methods of effecting such union and absorption were contrived; and these may be classed under two chief heads-bodily mortification (tapas) and abstract meditation (dhyana).

By either of these two chief means the devotee was supposed to be able to get rid of all bodily fetters-to be able to bring his bodily organs into such subjection to the spiritual, that he became unconscious of possessing any body at all. It was in this way that his spirit became fit for blending with the Supreme Spirit.

We learn from the Lalita-Vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common in Gautama's time, and passages without number might be quoted from ancient literature to show that such practices were common.

A Mohammedan traveler, whose narrative is quoted by Mr. Mill (“British India” I., 355) Once saw a man standing motionless with his face toward the sun.

The same traveler having occasion to revisit the same spot sixteen years afterwards, found the same man in the very same attitude. He had gazed on the sun's disk till all sense of external vision was extinguished.

I, myself, in the course of my travels, encountered Yogis who had kept their arms uplifted for years, or had wandered about from one place of pilgrimage to another under a perpetual vow of silence, or had no place to lie upon but a bed of spikes.

If we now turn to the second great method of securing mystic union with the Divine Essence, namely, by profound abstract thought, we may observe that it, too, was everywhere prevalent in Buddha's time.

Indeed, one of the names given by Hindu philosophers to the One Universal Spirit is Cit (Thought). By that name, of course, is meant pure abstract thought, or the faculty of thought separated from every concrete object. Hence, in its highest state, the eternal, infinite Spirit, by its very nature thinks of nothing. It is the simple thought-faculty, wholly unconnected with any object about which it thinks. In point of fact, the moment it begins to exercise this faculty it necessarily abandons, for a time, its condition of absolute oneness, abstraction, and isolation, to associate itself with something inferior which is not itself.

It follows, therefore, that intense concentration of the mind on the One Universal Spirit amounts to fixing the thought on a pure abstract essence, which reciprocates no thought in return, and is not conscious of being thought about by its worshipper.

In harmony with this theory we find that the definition of Yoga, in the second aphorism of the Yoga Sutra, is the suppression (nirodha) of the functions or modifications (vritti) of the thinking principle (citta). So that in reality the union of the

human mind with the infinite principle of thought amounts to such complete mental absorption, that thought itself becomes lost in pure thought.

Compliance with the eight requisites of Yoga leads to the acquisition of certain supernatural powers. A Yogi who has acquired these powers can rise aloft to the skies, fly through space, pierce the mysteries of planets and stars, cause storms and earthquakes, understands the language of animals, recollects the events of his own previous lives, discerns the thoughts of others, disappears, reappears, and even enters into another man's body and makes it his own,

In connection with these mystical ideas, I may here allude to the belief that certain modern Eastern sages, skilled in occult science, have the power of throwing their gross bodies into a state of mesmeric trance, and then by a determined effort of will, projecting, or forcing out the ethereal body through the pores of the skin, and making this phantasmal form visible in distant places.

It is worth noticing that many believers in Asiatic occultism hold that a hitherto unsuspected force exists in nature called Odic force (is this to be connected with Psychic force?) and that it is by this that the levitation of entranced persons is effected. Colonel Alcott alleges that he himself, in common with many other observers, has seen a person raised in the air by a mere effort of will.

There may be, of course, latent faculties in humanity, which are capable of development. As Sir James Paget said in his recent address on Scientific Study: "Many things now held to be inconceivable and past man's imagination are profoundly and assuredly true.

But while I express my doubts whether Asiatic occultism will ever stand the light of European scientific investigation, I admit, nevertheless, that it seems to me to be a subject which ought not to be brushed aside by our scientists as unworthy of consideration.

A

MISCELLANEOUS.

IMAGINATION.

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Edinburgh, October. DASH of paradox sometimes contributes the poignancy essential to a good axiom. When D'Israeli affirmed that of all the attributes of a statesman, imagination was the most important, people, perhaps, thought that he was trying to be original or funny. It seems so clear that in the routine of official work, the less rein given to imagination the better. This would be sound sense if imagination were nothing but reverie; but, rightly weighed, what seems at first sight mere glitter of phrase in D'Israeli's aphorism, stands forth as the steady flame of understanding. Imagination is not to be interpreted as mere dreamy reflection. It is an arsenal that cannot be dispensed with in one who aspires to govern his fellow-men. Countless are the occasions in the ordinary work of administration when its presence will enable a ruler to carry his purpose without a blow struck; while without it, one directing all the artillery of authority may lay a country in ruins, and deluge it in blood and tears only to pave the avenue to his own fall.

The Western world soon wearied of its kings, when walled about by ceremony and the exaggerated etiquette copied from Oriental courts. They were made to stand so far apart from their subjects that the tide of intelligent sympathy between them had to meander through artificial channels, so many and so intricate that it grew cold and sluggish. Gibbon has traced the weakness of the Roman Empire to the day when Diocletian, by withdrawing the Imperial Court to Milan from Rome, where the popular assembly held its sittings, dealt a mortal wound to the constitution. The habits of the Court,