Empire and its overthrow by the barbarians is analogous to the decay of a planet from loss of internal heat and its dissipation into matter capable of fresh evolution, by the shock of a comet. The ever-increasing gulf between wealth and poverty, science and superstition resembles the process by which the one-toed horse became gradually differentiated more and more from the common five-toed type of its remote ancestor.

These speculations of Spencer, pursued with vast acuteness and research through all branches of social science, though they have not founded a new religion or established a new sect, have undoubtedly exercised a great influence on modern thought, especially among the rising generation.

Another "ism" which, although it has exercised a much narrower influence than the philosophy of Spencer, has founded a sect and put forward more definite claims to give the world a new religion, is that which is known as "Positivism," or "Comtism," from the name of its founder, Auguste Comte. It is not easy to understand, but its essence seems to be this.

Admitting that science has killed theology, and that the old forms of supernatural religion, inevitable in the childhood of the world, have become incredible, Comte cast about for some idea which should be at the same time "positive," or based on ascertained fact, and fervid enough to satisfy the cravings of religious sentiment. He thought he found it in "Humanity;" that is, in love and veneration for the abstract idea of the human race, taken collectively, and considered in its past, present, and future relations. As patriotism, a very ardent feeling, is the love of a limited section of the human race; and as it has been gradually enlarged from the limits of a tribe to those of a city, and from those of a city to those of a country or nationality, he conceived that it might be still further enlarged so as to embrace all mankind. So far it may be admitted that there is a germ of truth in Comte's idea, and that elevated minds may enlarge their view beyond the narrow bounds of a particular country at a particular period, and may derive fresh incentives to action, and fresh subjects for ennobling thought, from a contemplation of the past progress, present condition, and future possibilities of the collective human race. But there is a homely proverb that "charity begins at home," and as we widen the sphere of patriotism or philanthropy we are very apt to diminish their intensity and find them evaporate in a mist of high-sounding phrases. The "friend of man" is very apt to be the friend of no one man in particular, and to make universal philanthropy an excuse for neglecting individual charity.

Apart, however, from this objection, and granting that with increased intercourse and increased culture "Humanity" might become a more practical idea, we should be still a long way from making it the basis of a new religion. It is here that Comte has laid himself open to the scoffs of unbelievers, who have gone so far as to call his religion "Catholicism without Christianity," and himself a "grotesque old Frenchman." With the narrow systematizing logic so characteristic of the French intellect he has worked out a complete scheme of ritual, hierarchy, and all the apparatus of an old religion. A supreme pontiff at its head, associated with a supreme priestess to represent the female element; for saints the distinguished men who have advanced the different branches of human art and science; for days of worship,

fête days of these saints and meetings of believers to commemorate their merits.

All this savors too much of the "Goddess of Liberty," and the theo-philanthropy of the French Revolution, when the disciples of Rousseau cut off heads in the name of universal benevolence, to find much acceptance in a sceptical age and among a practical people. Robuster intellects, like George Eliot, even where they incline to accept Humanity as an ennobling idea, and to recognize Comte as an original thinker, reject all the constructive part of his new religion as unworthy of notice; while to the mass of mankind the whole thing appears utterly unreal and incomprehensible.

One more "ism"-Pessimism, the gospel of feebleness and failure -has had a considerable effect on the Continent, though little in this country. It is based on the fact that, in accordance with the universal law of polarity, progress is not an unmixed good, but develops a corresponding negative of failure. In simple forms of society the distinctions between wealth and poverty, capital and labor, culture and ignorance, are not so sharply defined, and the lot of those who fail in the battle of life is not so hard as when men are congregated in crowded cities, exposed to temptations, and tantalized by the sight of wealth and luxury before their eyes and yet beyond their reach. A mass of misery and discontent is thus created, which in lower natures translates itself into anarchism and fanatical hatred of all above them, while in higher ones it takes the form of theories for the regeneration of the world by levelling everything that exists, and building anew on fresh foundations. Still higher minds see the futility of these theories, and take refuge in a philosophy which pronounces the world a mistake, life an evil, and the only possible solution to be, to put an end to what is radically bad by an act of universal suicide. This is in substance the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the school of Continental Pessimists. It has considerable analogy with that of Buddhism, which considers all personal existence to be a painful dream or illusion, and places supreme happiness in Nirvana, or escape from it by annihilation of individuality.

To understand how such a doctrine can have found acceptance, we must remember that the tendency of modern civilization is to throw more and more work on the brain and nervous system and less on other organs. This of itself tends to produce more ill-health both of mind and body, especially of those digestive organs upon which the sensation of health and well-being so mainly depends. A dyspeptic man is of necessity an unhappy and desponding man. Moreover, in ruder states of society such weaklings were got rid of by the summary process of being killed off, while with the more humane and refined arrangements of modern times they live on and "weary deaf heaven with their fruitless cries."

It is among such men, with cultivated intellects, sensitive nerves, and bad digestion, that we find the prophets and disciples of the gospel of Pessimism. They feel, and feel truly, that as far as they are concerned life is an evil, the pains of which far outweigh its pleasures, and having lost the medieval faith in a future life where the balance will be redressed, they see no remedy for the miseries of the world but that of ceasing to be, or annihilation.

This affords another illustration of the extent to which religions and philosophies are, like the spectre of the Brocken, reflections of

our own selves on dissolving mists, clothed with our own clothes and repeating our own gestures. To a healthy man or to a strong man the pessimist view of the universe is simply impossible. If he has experienced a fair average of happiness and success in life, he instinctively rejects a creed which tells him that there are no lights as well as shadows. If he has a mind of average strength he feels that suffering is a thing to be avoided prudently, borne stoically, or grappled with courageously, and not to be run away from by moral or physical suicide.

Accordingly Pessimism is not a creed which is ever likely to exert much influence on the strong, practical Anglo-Saxon race, and we can only discern some faint traces of it in the tendency of certain very limited cliques of so-called Estheticism to admire morbid and selfconscious ideals, both in poetry and painting.

It is a very curious and remarkable fact, that while so many highly intellectual attempts have been made in vain in modern times to found new sects and religions, the only one which has had any real success is that which is based on the most gross and vulgar imposture -Mormonism. Mormonism is a fact which, without the vestige of a reasonable argument to show for itself, originating in the vulgar ravings and forgeries of a vulgar Yankee, violating the first instincts of the family and of society by polygamy, still exists in spite of persecutions, and to a certain extent progresses and flourishes. The reason seems to be that instead of being a theory in the air or over the heads of the masses, it is, with all its faults, a practical system in contact with the actual realities of life. Its success is mainly owing to its being an organized system of emigration, and a faith which places its Paradise here on earth and not in the skies. A poor ignorant laborer in Wales or Norway, who becomes a convert to Mormonism, is taken in hand at once, forwarded to his destination, and when he arrives there looked after and put in a way of earning an honest livelihood and probably becoming a landed proprietor. The ideal set before him is not a very high one, that of becoming a sober, industrious, respectable, narrow-minded citizen of the State of Utah, and a creditable

member of the community of Latter Day Saints. But to a poor laborer from the slums of Liverpool, to lead such a life, in the pure mountain air in the valley of the Salt Lake, and see his flocks and herds increasing and his family growing up, without care for the future, is indeed the realization of an earthly Paradise. The moral to draw from this is, that the success of a religion, under the conditions of modern society, does not depend so much on its theory as on the way in which it takes hold of the practical problems of life and shows an aptitude for grappling with them.

Another wide-spread modern delusion, that of Spiritualism, is akin to Mormonism, as showing how little reason has to do with the beliefs which are most readily propagated among large classes of the community. Nothing but the most morbid appetite for the supernatural, combined with the most absolute ignorance of the laws of evidence, could induce sane people to believe that, if a corner of that mysterious and awful veil were lifted which separates the living from the dead, we shall discover what?-spirits whose vocation it is to turn tables and talk twaddle.

In vain medium after medium is detected, and the machinery by which ghosts are manufactured exposed in police-courts; in vain the

manifestations of the so-called spirits are repeated by professional conjurers like Maskelyne and Cooke, who disclaim any assistance from the unseen world. People are still found to believe the unbelievable because it gratifies their taste for the marvellous, and enables them to fancy themselves the favored recipients of supernatural communications. If Spiritualism has found a certain amount of acceptance from men of a very different order, who, like Crookes and Wallace, understand what scientific evidence really is, it is because the phenomena associated with it, such as mesmerism and clairvoyance, really have a certain basis of fact, and open up interesting fields for scientific investigation. The working of the brain and nerves in certain abnormal conditions, and the physical effects of imagination, are subjects imperfectly understood, but which well deserve accurate inquiry.

Take, for instance, dreams, which afford the first certain startingpoint towards the theory of visions and apparitions. It is as certain that we dream as that we sleep, and that in our sleeping state we often live a sort of second life, which is different from our ordinary waking life. Dreams seem to be made up of impressions which have been photographed on the brain in its waking state, and which are revived and worked up into new combinations and imaginary scenes, when consciousness is suspended. Vivid impressions are thus often worked up into a succession of dreams so vivid as to be scarcely distinguishable from reality. It happened to me, about the middle period of my life, to be sent, almost at a day's notice, to India, where for more than two years I had a period of intensely hard work and great responsibility, as Finance Minister. This naturally left a number of strong impressions on my brain, which for years afterwards kept reviving in a series of connected dreams, in which I fancied myself back in India. I had thus a dream life as well as a real life of Indian experiences, and the former was so vivid that, if I were writing reminiscences, I should sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between the two.

This enables me to realize how dreams may readily pass into visions. If I had dozed off in an arm-chair after dinner, and fallen into one of my Indian dreams, I might have seen Lord Canning, who had been dead for years, walk into the room as distinctly as if he had been present in person. In a less critical age, and with a less sceptical turn of mind, I might readily have been convinced that I had seen his ghost.

There can be no doubt that in this way dreams must often, in pre-scientific ages, have originated a bona fide belief in spirits. Herbert Spencer traces to this cause the origin of all religious belief. Perhaps this may be carrying it too far, but doubtless it was one of the main causes, especially of that portion of religion which took the form of offerings to the dead and ancestor-worship.

But a still further step may be taken from the ordinary dream to the waking dream or vision. It is a well-established fact that under peculiar and rare circumstances the brain may dream, that is, revive impressions where there is no corresponding reality, without losing its consciousness. There was a celebrated case of a Berlin bookseller in the last century, who, having fallen into bad health, lived for more than a year in the company of ghosts-that is, he constantly saw men and women, with every appearance of being alive, enter the room and come and go as if they had been ordinary visitors. Being a man of a

scientific turn of mind he never supposed these were really ghosts, but reasoned on them and recorded his experiences. Instead of sending for a priest and resorting to exorcisms he called in a physician and took a course of medicine, with the result that after a considerable time the ghostly visitors gradually became dim and finally disappeared. Numerous other cases are recorded in which there is no doubt that visions have been seen, especially under the influence of religious excitement, and a large number of so-called miraculous appearances and ghost stories are probably owing to this cause rather than to conscious imposture.

When we consider the enormous number of dreams, and probably considerable number of visions, which occur, instead of being surprised at occasional coincidences, the wonder rather is that they are not more frequent. If only one per cent. of the 30,000,000 inhabitants of the British Isles dream every night, that would give 109,500,000 dreams per annum, a large proportion of which are made up of vivid impressions of actual persons and events. It is impossible that some of the combinations of these impressions should not form pictures which are subsequently realized, and we may be sure that the successes only will be noted, and the failures forgotten. It is strange, therefore, that the researches of the Psychical Society should not have brought to light more instances of death-warnings and other remarkable coincidences. To take the vulgar instance of horse-racing. A number of minds are greatly exercised over the problem of picking out winners, and doubtless a vast number of dreams show colors flashing past winning-posts, and numbers hoisted on the telegraph board. And yet I only remember two tolerably well-authenticated instances in the last half-century, in which any one is said to have backed a winner on the faith of a dream. The only positive result of dreams and visions is that they frequently occur under circumstances where they are almost certain to be mistaken, by unscientific persons in unscientific ages, for actual supernatural appearances.

Another field for inquiry is opened out by the effects which are undoubtedly produced under certain abnormal. conditions of the brain and nervous system, as in epilepsy, somnambulism, and mesmerism.

In the simplest case, that of epilepsy, the effect is mainly shown by a more intense action of nerve-currents, causing convulsive motions and an unnatural increase of muscular strength and rigidity, so that two strong men may be scarcely able to hold one weak woman. In somnambulism, the effects are more complex. The reception of outward impressions seems to be limited, so that the whole consciousness and vital energy are concentrated on particular actions, which are thus performed safely, while in the ordinary waking state they would be impossible. Thus a somnambulist walks securely along a plank spanning an abyss, because the impressions of surrounding space do not reach the brain and confuse it with a sense of danger. In this state also past impressions photographed on the brain, which in the ordinary waking state are obscured by other impressions, seem to come out occasionally as in dreams, enabling the somnambulist to do and remember things which would otherwise be beyond his faculties.

Mesmerism is closely akin to somnambulism. Apart from delusion and charlatanism the fact seems to be established that it is possible, by artificial means, to induce a state resembling somnambulism in persons of a peculiar nervous temperament. As regards the