application to them, so that the meanest and most familiar of words may strangely affect the hearer. It is part of our responsibility, therefore, to consider the effect of our words apart from their absolute meaning. It is easy to propagate falsehood by the cunning statement of truth. Nor need we postulate dishonest intention. The reasoner will often unconsciously enlarge or narrow the content of his most important terms in the course of a single argument. And that which would have been untrue, had the term held its original meaning and no more throughout, is triumphantly demonstrated of a something which has varied with every repetition of its name. It becomes imperative to keep always in mind the reality for which the word stands. We may exhaust dictionaries in our search for the magic syllables, but our mental image of the thing must not waver for an instant.

The important thing is not so much to state a fact with scientific precision as to convey to the mind of the hearer a fact, an emotion, or an idea, completely and in the desired intensity. This is the ultimate justification of the poet, the rhetorician, or the stylist. We falter and are baffled in spite of the precise fluency of our scientific mentor; but the poet finds the immortal phrase which illumines the landscape like a flash of lightning. The thing has been transmitted in an inThe Academy.

stant from his mind to ours; and in its white-hot intensity. It is thus that in the day of battle ten words may stiffen the knees of an army and be worth ten thousand bayonets.

Nor should we insist on the power and importance of words, to the neglect of their wonderful beauty. We may even consider language as an instrument of absolute music. In the greater minds beauty of sound and rhythm are combined with and help to the perfect expression of noble ideas. But it may be permitted to the smaller man to fill his writings with strong-syllabled, clamorous words merely as part of the orchestration-to trumpet the cunning of the craft-proud workman. Indeed, a mere list of words may interest one intensely. We can imagine the word-lover gloating over a dictioǹary as some wealthy jeweller might revel in a basket of beautiful unset stones. Here is the material for all craftsmen: sweet liquid labials; words that shimmer and sparkle; splendid and terrible adjectives, servants of Fury, the trumpets of the wordy orchestra. This was Shelley's treasure-house, the arsenal where Marlowe fashioned his thunder-bolt lines. Out of this work-shop what wonders of inspired art have come! Yet there remains after the riot of pillage, the original treasure, inexhaustible as the impossible hoards of the fabled misers.

sacrificed to the town. Our manufacturing industries have advanced, our centres of population have spread and thickened, but the advantage of this progress has been reaped more and more by the foreign and less and less by the English producer of foodstuffs.

Our country population has steadily poured into the towns, intensifying all those social evils which to-day almost defy remedial measures. During the last few years this process has been quickened by the colonial emigration campaigns in our country districts. A great deal of our best rural manhood is being tempted out to the broader shires of England over the seas, and our island countrysides are being reduced to still deeper desolation. It is very desirable that intending emigrants should be diverted to British from foreign shores, but there is surely a limit to the extent to which this country can afford to part with its people, and especially its all too scanty country populations. England cannot afford to maintain this lopsided policy much longer. It is essential that the heart of the Empire should be sound, and that cannot be if country life and labor are to be practically abolished and our entire population crowded into the towns. The Colonies themselves are determined to develop along the whole line, industrial as well as agricultural. They are not prepared to restrict themselves to the function of providing the United Kingdom with food and raw materials. They will not sacrifice their industries even to British competition. England on her side is perfectly justified in defending her agriculture against unregulated competition even from the Colonies, giving their produce, however, a substantial preference over that of foreign countries.

The people of this country have given no serious thought to these problems of rural life, emigration and so forth. They are drifting along currents which they never intentionally entered to unknown and unchosen destinations. More and more people are beginning to realize that these forces are carrying up to national danger and disaster, and that some very vigorous measures will have to be taken in the

near future if these are to be avoided.

The recently published report of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, giving the agricultural statistics for 1910, is dismal reading. The year 1910 has added the usual tribute to the tale of decay and desolation. Compar ing that year with the preceding, we find that the arable land of Great Britain was reduced by a further area of 61,788 acres, while permanent grass increased by 24,635 acres. The area under wheat, the most essential of all food-staples, fell by 14,644 acres. The Report gives a striking comparison between the first decade of the new and the last of the old century. The same process is illustrated, only on a larger scale. Comparing the average areas for 1901-10 and 1891-1900 we find that arable land in Great Britain has diminished by 932,110 acres, that the wheat area has diminished by 247,990, and the acreage of all crops by 523,609. Permanent grass, on the other hand, has increased by 621,602 acres. Comparing the average at the beginning of the twenty years (1891-93) with that at the end of the period (1908-10) we find that arable land shows the enormous decrease of 1,589,377 acres, and permanent grass the vast increase of 1,020,249 acres. Between the same years wheat has decreased by 388,519 acres, and all corn crops by 801,790 acres. And these tremendous losses are set off by no compensations elsewhere. There can indeed be no compensation for the loss of all this plough-land. Stock has made no attempt to develop in proportion to the increase of population. There are only a few more cattle in this country than there were twenty years ago. The idea that an extension of pasture at the expense of arable land stimulates the increase of stock is, as every student of these subjects knows, an exploded delusion. There is no doubt that a revival in corn cultivation would result in a corre

sponding development of the stock-raising industry. Is it not time that the statesmanship of this country set itself seriously to combat this appalling decline in our most important national interest? The task will never be accomplished by a politician who looks simply to the immediate party advantage. The experience of the last few years has shown how hard it is to induce our electorate to approve the slightest tax on imported food-supplies, however great the inducements of indirect advantage may be. We have to thank Mr. Richard Cobden and his friends not only for the approximate destruction of English agriculture but for the endowment of the industrial classes in the towns with the preponderant political power in the country. Free trade has driven the country folk into the towns. We can now see the terrible results of our one-sided development, but the towns have the majority of the votes and it is almost hopeless to appeal to them in the interests of our stricken agriculture. It is no use pointing out that the towns themselves are losing the nearest and most important outlet for their manufactures in this devastation of the English shires. It is vain to warn the electors against the danger of becoming dependent for almost all our food on imported supplies. Every appeal of this kind is met by the only too successful argu

The Outlook.

It

ment, comprehensible to the most ignorant voter, "Your food will cost you more." Every intelligent person can understand the baseness, as well as the danger, of that effective election-cry, but that scarcely helps matters. looks as though the galloping decline, as illustrated in this new Report, must continue until by some disaster the nation is brought-too late to a sense of the fatal policy it has pursued.

There will of course be many proposals of a safe and discreet nature. Small holdings, credit banks, co-operation and so forth will do duty for a drastic change in the nation's economic policy. But these superficial remedies will never arrest the progress of the disease. Nothing but a complete reversal of the policy which the nation has applied for seventy years will avail. Bismarck effected that reversal for Germany in the seventies of last century. But the two-party system, as existing in this country, seems not to favor the production of men of the Bismarckian thews, and our party leaders have to follow the line of least resistance and shape their policy in accordance with electoral conditions. The prospect is therefore the reverse of cheerful, but it is at least the duty of all patriotic persons to warn the nation of its danger and urge the necessity of reform commensurate with this great and ever-growing evil.

"Learn what is true in order to do what is right." This sentence was not said by an ecclesiastic engaged in defending the theory that dogma is the only firm foundation of morality; it is the "summing up of the whole duty of man" by the late Professor Huxley. The words might be taken as the text

of a book of extracts from Huxley's works chosen by his wife and edited by his son ("Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of Thomas Henry Huxley." Rationalist Press. 6d.). The book is deeply interesting-far more interesting than most books of extracts. As a whole the impression that it

makes upon the reader is one of strength, sincerity and-paradoxical as it may sound-duality. The sympathetic reader, as he seeks to see things from the author's point of view, finds himself rocking always between two opinions. The general impression left upon the mind is of an eloquent exposition of materialism made by a man seriously troubled by doubt of his own theory.

It would be untrue, however, to say that there is any passage in this book in which Huxley dogmatically declares himself a materialist. Indeed, in a very trenchant passage he guards him. self against any such profession of faith. "The man of science who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formule and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism seems to me to place himself upon a level with the mathematician who should mistake the a's and y's with which he works his problems of real entities." A most enlightening comparison! In spite, however, of such a passage as we have quoted, the author often speaks as though he took materialism for granted. He points out, also, that there are more terrible theories-and would seem to defend it by a threat. He speaks of "the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden” the "uglier features" of life, and of "the tragedy of science" which has destroyed a beautiful hypothesis by means of ugly facts. He declares the existence of a God-of a Creator even-an open question, and in one passage doubts if it is possible, even if we grant His existence, to plead His benevolence in the face of a suffering world. "Do we not base our belief in the Divine benevolence upon the intensity of our desire to rely upon it?" -he inquires in effect. "It is not to be forgotten," we read, "that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to

justify our instincts." Take, again, the following passage: “Our sensations, our pleasures, our pains, and the relations of these, make up the sum-total of the elements of positive, unquestionable knowledge. We call a large section of these sensations and their relations matter and motion; the rest we term mind and thinking; and experience shows that there is a certain constant order of succession between some of the former and some of the latter." Immediately after these words Huxley guards his Agnostic position by declaring that materialism cannot be deduced from them for certain, but all through the book he constantly compares the idealist and material positions to the detriment of the former, which he occasionally ridicules, while he always treats the latter with respect. Evidently we are to "learn what is true" by setting aside all conclusions that cannot be proved: "all truth in the long run is only commonsense clarified."

"In

But when we come to the object of all knowledge, which Huxley has declared to be "doing right," the reader cannot but be struck by a change of position: "Whatever practical people may say, this world is after all, absolutely governed by ideas, and very often by the wildest and most hypothetical ideas." In every page we trace the frankness of the man who makes no sacrifice to consistency. whichever way we look at the matter, morality is based on feeling, not on reason," we read, and again "justice is founded on the love of one's neighbor, and goodness is a kind of beauty." Moral feeling is based, he says, on intuition. "If you ask why the moral inner sense is to be (under due limitations) obeyed; why the few who are steered by it move the mass in whom it is weak, I can only reply by putting another question: Why do the few in whom the sense of beauty is strong

Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethovencarry the less endowed multitude away? But they do, and always will. People who overlook that fact attend neither to history nor to what goes on about them." Men of genius do increase knowledge, apparently by other than reasonable methods, and to the upsetting of all calculations,-"genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow!"

"The practice of that which is ethically best-what we call goodness or virtue-involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or heading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence." This passage forms a curious comment on the words, "The meek shall inherit the earth." Such a sentence as "the fitting of as many as possible to survive" has again a Christian ring. "Honesty, energy, and goodwill," he says, alone make "intelligence, knowledge, and skill" of any real use.

The aim of all education which is worth having, he tells us, is to turn out a man "whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience, who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and respect others as himself." But if the prophet of science agrees with the Hebrew poet that "it is by these things men live"-if all that is best worth having in life is founded on intuition and feeling-is it reasonable to dismiss all those intuitions and feelings which have no direct practical out

come as unreasonable and of no account? Professor Huxley has been dead some time. The sense of horror which ran through the world when materialism in its modern garb was first suggested as an explanation of the universe has passed off. Ordinary men are becoming content once more to found their assurance of a spiritual explanation where Huxley founded his moral assurance, and where all men found their assurance of their own free will-upon intuition. But Professor Huxley's threat still makes us wince. What if the Deity were not benevolent? What if man at his highest moral moment does not reflect God? We must be as bold as Professor Huxley and say Religion is based on feeling and intuition, not upon any collection of acts. Why do the men who tell us that God is good carry us away, as Professor Huxley admits that the great moralists and prophets of the beautiful convince and carry us away? We can only reply, as Huxley replied, "They do, and they always will." He speaks of Christ with the deepest respectthough he is not respectful to what may be called Church Christianity. The Galilean, he thinks, did not conquer. A religion with which he would have had little sympathy conquered in his name. His paramount moral genius he appears to grant. When Christ spoke of God as perfectly benevolent, He gave voice to an intuition which is surely as general as the intuition to which the great painters and poets gave expression. The fact that there are plenty of people who have no intuitional perception of beauty is not allowed by the man of science to bear at all upon the reality of beauty any more than a few utterly selfish people are allowed to bear upon the rightness of altruism. "Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of consciousness; and the anato