Lords of the need of experimentation as regards the entertainment and recreation of the people? I fail to see how such experimentation either can or ought to be confined to philanthropists. If we look around and notice the vast new restaurants of London, the innumerable glittering railway bars in all parts of the country, the music halls of all ranks and kinds, the dancing and drinking saloons of some provincial towns-such as Nottingham-and the great enterprise with which such places of recreation as the Pomona and Bellevue Gardens at Manchester are conducted, we shall see that social experiments are not confined to the teetotallers. Indeed, it would not be difficult to prove that the nugatory Licensing Laws, as now administered, present the least possible obstacle to the publicans in pushing their experiments, while they do prevent social reformers from interfering, or from establishing counter experiments on an equal footing. It is hardly too much to say that the Licensing Laws are laws to give a license to the publicans and grocers to do what they like to extend the sale of spirituous liquors.

Although the liquor traffic presents the widest and most important sphere for social experiment, there are many other matters to which it must be applied. Consideration in detail must show whether, in each case, the tentative method is or is not the proper method. But it is easy to name several other reforms which ought, in all probability, to be approached in the experimental manner. Thus, peasant proprietorship ought certainly to be tried in Ireland, as it was intended to be tried under the Bright clauses of the Irish Land Act. I am familiar with most of the economic objections to peasant proprietorship in this kingdom, and I have read sufficient of the large literature of the subject to know that evidence in favour of and against such a tenure of land is exceedingly divergent and perplexing. The proper resource then is to try the thing-not by some vast revolution in the land-owning of Ireland, as proposed by the late Mr. Mill, a measure which, in the first place, would never pass Parliament, and, if it did, would cost an enormous sum of money, and probably result in failure-but by a small and progressive experiment. "Earth hunger" is a very potent passion, and I believe it is that from which the Irish people are really suffering. -Bread and bacon are not the only good things an Irish peasant might aspire to; a place to call his own, a share of the air and sunlight of his native isle, and a land-bank in which to save up the strokes of his pick and spade, might work moral wonders. It is not safe to predict the action of human motive; but, at any rate, try it, although the trial cost as much as one or two first-rate ironclads, or a new triumph over a negro monarch. Surely the state of our Irish Poland is the worst possible injury to our " prestige."

Much doubt exists, again, as to whether imprisonment is necessary to enforce the payment of small debts. If needless, it is certainly oppressive. But if the abolition of the power of imprisonment, on the part of County Court judges, would really destroy the credit of the

poorer classes with their tradesmen, a general measure to that effect would be dangerous and difficult to retract. I do not see how the question can be decided, except by trying the effect in a certain number of County Court districts, and watching the results.

It would be well worth the trouble to try the effect upon a certain body of inhabitants of the most perfect sanitary regulation, somewhat in the manner foreshadowed by Dr. B. W. Richardson in his City of Hygeia. This I should like to see tried, as regards the middle classes, in some newly built watering-place, with full and special powers of sanitary regulation to be granted to it by Parliament, avowedly as an experiment. At the same time, a few large blocks of workman's dwellings ought to be built and placed under experimental sanitary laws. I am convinced that legislation must by degrees be carried much further in this direction than is at present the case, but it ought to proceed tentatively.

One of the difficult questions of the present day is-How can London be supplied with water? There would be few engineering difficulties if it were allowable to separate the supply of pure water for drinking and cooking purposes from the much larger quantity required for other purposes. Will people drink the impure water? Who can decide such a question satisfactorily, except by experiment on a moderate scale? What could be more absurd than to spend millions upon procuring a separate supply of pure drinking water for the population of London, and then finding that the population would drink the impure water? Many other like matters must be referred to trial, but it is not the purpose of this article to present a catalogue of experimental reforms, or to follow the argument out into all the possible details.

I am well aware that social experiments must often be subject to various difficulties, such as the migration of inhabitants, or even the intentional frustration of the experiment by interested parties. I have heard it said that the prohibition of liquor traffic could not be tried on a small scale, because the publicans would be sure to combine to send liquor into the area. If they did so, the fact could readily be put in evidence, and if they can defeat the teetotallers in detail, I am quite sure that they will defeat them upon any very great and general measure like the Permissive Bill. As to migration of inhabitants, it must be provided against either by suitably increasing the areas of experimental legislation, or else by collecting information as to the amount and probable effects of the migration. But the main point of my theme is to prove that we cannot really plan out social reforms upon theoretical grounds. General argument and information of all kinds may properly be employed in designing and choosing the best experiments, but specific experience on a limited scale and in closely proximate circumstances is the only sure guide in the complex questions of social science. method must be that of the supremely wise text: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

W. STANLEY JEVONS.

ON THE PEDIGREE OF MAN:

A DIALOGUE.

SCENE.

The Library in a Country Vicarage.

PERSONS.

Clericus, the Vicar of the Parish.

Medicus, a Physician residing near the Vicarage.

CLERICUS. What an unmistakable change for the better in the

mental state of our poor friend at The Retreat. quite himself again.

He seems to be

Medicus. Yes. The delusion that he was directly descended from The Divine Being passed away a few days ago, and there appears to be little or nothing the matter with him now.

C. I am quite at a loss to understand how it was that so clever and clear-headed a man should ever have found his way into an asylum. Are you?

M. Not altogether. He was never what I should call clear-headednever practical. He was always of too dreamy a nature to please me. What was wrong in him was, I suppose, an unbalanced brain, in which the parts subservient to imagination greatly preponderated over the parts which are concerned in the production of reason and volition.

C. I cannot agree with you in thinking that the brain had so much to do in the matter. I have come to look upon my brain as a telegraphic apparatus at which, like a clerk, I sit continually receiving and despatching messages, and I cannot confound myself with my brain any more than I can confound the clerk of the telegraph with his apparatus. The messages from within or from without may be received and dispatched incorrectly, or not at all, because the brain is out of order. Or the fault may rest with the clerk, for he, poor fellow, is too much given to building castles in the air, and to acting as if his present work were altogether beneath him, as if, at the very least, he ought to have a seat in the Board-Room upstairs.

M. What do you mean?

C. I mean simply this-that man ought to regard himself as over nature instead of under nature, as God-like in the true sense of the

VOL. XXXVII.

word, as nothing less than the image of God, and to believe that his habitual dissatisfaction with the present is due, not so much to perversc cerebration, as to the instinctive feeling that his present position is not that to which he is entitled by his birthright.

M. Do you mean that you can justify this statement by an appcal to facts and on logical grounds which I must recognize?

C. Justify the statement? Not exactly. But I can see enough to make me more than doubtful as to the sufficiency of the doctrine of cerebration, and not unready to accept as true what is taught in The Scriptures respecting the lofty nature of man. One lesson which I have gathered from the many microscopic demonstrations which you have been good enough to give me is, that brain-cells and other ganglionic cells are not altogether different from other nucleated and branched cellsbranched cornea-corpuscles, branched pigment cells, the branched cells of connective tissue, migratory cells, and the rest. Another lesson is that the branching of these cells may be due to the same cause as that which obliges the colourless blood corpuscle and the amoeba to push out processes, which in the latter case may become connected with similar processes belonging to other amoebae; and, instead of coming to the conclusion that brain-cells and other ganglionic cells are in any way absolutely peculiar, the fancy has crossed my mind-you will laugh at it, I suppose that these cells may be almost as unimportant, as inconstant, and even as migratory as the migratory cells themselves-that they may be merely sources of the battery-power with which the nervous and muscular systems are charged everywhere, and which you believe to have so all-important a part to play in the action of these systems-that the essential conditions of activity in ganglionic cells and in the cells of a voltaic battery are the same, namely, chemical change of a certain sort and polarization. You know what I mean?

M. I think I do. I even agree with you up to a certain point. I can also see that you have no need of the doctrine of cerebration if you can make it out that there is anything intrinsically God-like in the nature of man. For there must be a better foundation for anything God-like than that which can be found in this doctrine. So go on with what you have to say, and believe that I am ready enough to listen and learn if only you keep to facts and follow sound dialectics in dealing with them.

C. I am as wishful as you can be to keep to facts and to reason rightly about them, but I am in this difficulty-that the facts with which I have mainly to deal are something more subtle than objects of sense. When, for example, I say I am, I give expression to a fact which is not readily realized. Who am I? What? In the exercise of memory and imagination I, I myself, can in an instant go back into the past and forward into the future, and I find it difficult to say I am without at the same time saying I was and I shall be. Without the aid of my senses I cannot draw a sharp line between the past and the present, or

between the present and the future. I feel as if, in relation to time, I partook in some degree of the nature of Him who was, and is, and is to come, or who is rather to be spoken of as the Eternal Now; for, as Plato pointed out in the Timæus long ago, it is right to speak of the Divine Essence as in the present always,-to say "he is," but not to say "he was," or "he shall be." I also feel as if, in relation to space, I was in the same predicament as in regard to time, as if there was that in me to which one of the definitions of God was not altogether inapplicable, namely, that of a circle the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference-nowhere. In the world of sense I find impassable barriers between now and then, between here and there, but not so in the world of spirit; and, in fact, I am almost driven to the conclusion that I say I am because I am, in a measure, superior to time and space in the very same way as that in which The Divine Spirit is superior to time and space. Nor can I allow that the impressions of my senses should be listened to rather than the dictates of my pure reason; for Aristotle was not mistaken when he said that it was wrong to exalt the objects of perception above the great percipient faculty itself.

M. The only conclusion to which I can come is that time and space are very stubborn facts. I am obliged to listen to the dictates of common sense in dealing with these matters.

C. Before coming to an adverse conclusion, consider what is necessarily implied in the action of the faculty of remembering and identifying. This action in myself has plainly to do with things which are mine, and with things which, seemingly, are not mine. If it had only to do with the former things, I might suppose that it had its seat in my brain, or elsewhere in my body; as it has also to do with the latter things, I cannot rest content with this notion. I remember you, for example, and identify you, without any manner of doubt. You yourself, and not merely your image, is, in some mysterious way, comprehended in my own being, for if it were not so, I could never be sure that I was dealing with you yourself. For how could any dead image of you in me convey to my mind all that is involved in the knowledge of your living self? And thus, in remembering you and in identifying you, it seems to be necessary to believe that your being is in some mysterious way embraced by my being, and that I remember and identify you because, after once embracing you, I have never let you go. And, as with you, so also with every other object or subject with which my memory has to do. I remember and identify, in each case, because after once getting hold of that object or subject I have never let it go. Unless I adopt this conclusion I am altogether in the dark. I cannot do all the work which is implied in the action of the faculties of remembering and identifying unless I can escape from my body, unless, to a certain extent, I can be free of time and space. I can do all this work if I can thus escape, if I am thus free, for in that case I remember and identify every object and subject with which I have to do in the same way as that in which