IN PRAISE OF TWO CRIMES.

BY THE SURGEON-GENERAL AND MR. IVES. THE license that is accorded to writers in periodicals to discuss all things and to advocate all manner of evils has seldom been carried to a greater extreme than in the current number of the Humanitarian, in which we have two papers well calculated to scandalise even the most indifferent moralist. Of the two the first is the dullest and most objectionable. It is by Surgeon-General William Moore, who rehashes all the old nonsense about the need for the C. D. Acts, and who juggles with figures to such an extent as to assert that because fifty per cent. of the British garrison in India was treated for venereal disease in 1890, therefore one-half of the total European army was unfit to take the field on account of that complaint. As this wonderful Surgeon-General goes on to say that the proportion has been increasing, it seems reasonable to assume that by this time two-thirds of the European troops are unable to take the field, and that by the end of the century the whole of our garrison will be in the hospital. It is to be hoped that the Surgeon-General is more careful in his practice than he is with his figures. As for his morals, they may be judged from such observations as the following: "I have heard it advanced that what Abraham and David did in the most open manner can scarcely be treated as a grave moral offence, and I feel quite sure that the great majority who die in the odour of sanctity do so because they have been spared the temptation. The fact remains that men will be immoral. Ancient, modern, present and even divine history proves it. Nature lays a demand on men to exercise all their physiological functions, yet a certain order of society would oppose," and so forth and so forth. It is quite obvious that if Surgeon-General William Moore dies in the odour of sanctity the fragrance will not result from his contributions to periodical literature.

This article, which Mrs. Martin has probably published for the purpose of showing how little the advocates of the odious system of state patronage of vice have learned by their defeat, is maliciously bracketed with a dissertation in praise of unnatural vice by Mr. George Ives. Mr. Ives' heart sang for joy when Mr. Grant Allen's first paper on "The New Hedonism" appeared in the Fortnightly; but who can picture his despair and disgust when he found in the last number of the Humanitarian that Mr. Grant Allen drew the line at unnatural vice? Mr. Ives says:

With what pain and disappointment did many who are working and waiting hopefully for the New Heaven and the New Earth discover that Mr. Grant Allen, who had written, and they thought nobly written, that "chastity means a profound disinclination to give the body where the heart is not given in unison," the Hedonist, the thinker, the reformer, was only "a social purity man" after all.

If this be so, says Mr. Ives plaintively, why then did he write "The New Hedonism"? Tried by the standard which the Hedonist lays down, whether or not anything tends towards earthly happiness, Mr. Ives asks, can these hateful vices be proved to cause sorrow and misery to those who indulge in them? Can they be proved to be destructive to health, and is Mr. Grant Allen any better than a Puritan after all? As for Mr. Ives, he has at least the courage of his convictions:-

We must indeed be cautious in viewing ideals through the glasses of those who do not see them, and of blindly accepting as true those accounts of the passion, devotion, and heroism of the past which have reached us through the corrupt alembic of current grundyism. And when people wildly denounce the sensuality of ancient Greece and Rome, and yet say nothing as to those acts which they condemn, the New Morality can afford to wait until they shall be sufficiently rational to argue

by reason and not by abuse. But if they ask our judgment upon acts, I say all logical Hedonists can have but one reply: If they add to the sorrow of living things, then those acts are evil, but if they conduce to the world's happiness they must be accounted good.

The New Morality which is seeking for a new heaven and a new earth might, I should have thought, gone elsewhere for its ideal than to Sodom and Gomorrah; but Mr. Ives has at least more to say for his thesis than the Surgeon-General has for the C. D. Acts. It is to be hoped, however, that we shall be mercifully spared a renewal of the controversy as to the C. D. Acts-that is ended once for all. As to the other discussion, that depends whether Mr. Grant Allen feels disposed to reply to Mr. Ives' criticism, and whether, which is doubtful, any periodical in the English language will deliberately make its pages the arena for discussing the ethics of unnatural vice.

100 MILES AN HOUR THROUGH THE AIR!
WHAT WE ARE COMING TO.,

MAN as a flying animal is a popular subject of prophecy with the exponents of modern science. Cassier's for September has two articles on it. Mr. C. E. Duryea finds the key to "practical flight" in the plaything of every boy-the kite. By an adroit use of the undulatory movement of the air, the flying man will rise and soar with but slight exertion :

The pioneer machine will, in all probability, be a large kitelike affair, with ample surface and even more ample power in the shape of a gasoline motor and screw propeller. It will be provided with a means of guiding both up and down, and sideways. It will carry but one operator, who must feel that the machine is almost part of himself. Its speed will be small, probably from fifteen to twenty-five miles per hour, and its angle will be great because of increased stability. Its cost need not be more than that of a small steam launch, while its greater speed and ability to go anywhere will commend it to enthusiastic athletes everywhere.

AT THE COST OF A GOOD CYCLE.

The art of balancing once learned, and fear allayed by usage, improvements will follow. The angle will be decreased and the speed increased. Superposed planes, compactly arranged, will permit and require higher speeds. Increased experience and our superior intelligence will enable us to surpass the birds in their own element. Professor Langley thinks ninety or one hundred miles per hour not improbable. The increased skill, due to a regular use, would probably enable a flyer to manage a machine without the aid of a motor or, at most, with such assistance as his own muscles afford. Such a machine need not cost greatly more than a first-class cycle. Fifteen years marks the history of the bicycle as it grew from an athlete's means of amusement to the busy man's vehicle. Half that time has seen the electric street car displace the horse. Is it unreasonable to think that before many years, the flying machine will have placed itself by their side as a means of transit?

NOTHING LIKE STEEL.

Mr. R. H. Thurston discusses the various "aeronautic engineering materials," and concludes that there is "nothing in nature that can compete for present purposes with the finest steels in the form of the finest wire and thinnest ribbon or sheet."

We are able to say that even with known materials and known methods of construction of familiar designs, the problem of motive machinery is practically solved, and that we can to-day build motors of steel that excel those of nature, whether of fish, beast or bird, in their combined lightness, power and compactness. The problem of aviation to-day is no longer one of weight. [It] is now, for aeronaut and aviator alike, that of the construction, and especially of the management of the hull and of the propelling wings or screws of the floating or the self-supported air-ship.

A HERO OF THE CRIMEA : CAPTAIN WILLIAM PEEL. BY SIR EVELYN WOOD. THE first article in the Fortnightly Review is a somewhat desultory paper of reminiscences entitled "The Crimea in 1854 and 1894," by General Sir Evelyn Wood. Sir Evelyn, it seems, has recently visited the Crimea and revived the remembrance of his adventures, when as a midshipman he had his first experience of the realities of war before Sebastopol. The most interesting part of his paper, however, is that which he devotes to the memory of Captain William Peel of the Diamond.

THE YOUNGEST POST-CAPTAIN.

Sir Evelyn then describes the first sight he had of the man who was afterwards going to be his intimate friend. He says:

All our officers were anxious to see one who had already a Service reputation as not only our youngest post-captain, but as one of the best. William Peel, the third son of the great Minister who died from a fall on Constitution Hill, was then thirty years of age. He had been promoted, having seen service on the Syrian coast and in the China War, to be lieutenant in 1844, immediately on passing the six years' examination with such brilliant success as to elicit a public eulogium from Sir Thomas Hastings, who commanded H.M.S. Excellent, gunnery ship, in which Peel was then serving; two years later he became a Commander. We had heard of him that when in command of his first ship he was reading in the stern cabin, and hearing the shout, "Man overboard," rushed to the window in time to see a bluejacket pass underneath him. With one spring Peel was in the water, and supported the man till both were picked up; and when the officer of the watch ran down to report, "Man overboard-boat lowered," the cabin being empty, it was not known what had happened until both were brought on board.

THE BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE.

In August, 1854, I had no idea I was to spend months with this man of highly-strung nervous temperament, whom I learnt daily to love and esteem more and more as "the bravest of the brave," till we were both wounded and invalided to England: I was evidently much impressed, however, for I recorded, "Captain Peel-very intelligent, sharp as a needle, never saw a more perfect gentleman." His looks and bearing were greatly in his favour, for he had a singularly striking appearance, showing both in fare and figure what is termed, in describing well-bred horses, as quality." His height was above medium, head gracefully set on broad, well-turned shoulders, light in lower body, with dignified yet easy deportment. His dark and curling hair was parted on the right side and carefully brushed back, disclosing a perfectly oval face, a high, square forehead, and deep blue-grey eyes, which flashed when he was talking eagerly, as he often did. He had a somewhat austere face, smooth and chiselled in outline, with a firm set mouth, which was the more noticeable from his being clean-shaved.

treacherously slain in 1884), Peel dismounted from his camel to give water from his store to a small dying bird! To this tender-hearted man it appeared our bluejackets should be encouraged to stand up to their guns like men, and he asked four of us, two Diamond's and two Queen's, to set the example in the battery by always walking erect, and without undue haste.

THE EPISODE OF THE SHELL.

Next day he, to my knowledge, although I did not see it, gave us a grand example. A shell weighing forty-two pounds came through the parapet and rolled into the centre of a small group of men, who threw themselves flat on the ground, which would not, however, have saved those nearest, for there were several boxes of powder on the ground, then being passed into the magazine. Peel, stooping down, lifted the shell, and resting it on his chest, carried it back to the parapet, and stepping on to the banquette, rolled the shell over the superior crest, on which it immediately burst.

SUMMING UP AGAINST THE BIMETALLISTS.
BY LORD FARRER.

IN the National Review Lord Farrer asks the question, Why debase our currency? in a paper in which he replies at length to the bimetallists' contentions. From the popular point of view the strongest argument in his article is that in which he points out that an appreciation in gold means an increase in wages, inasmuch as it raises the purchasing power of money by lowering the price of all commodities. Lord Farrer is an uncompromising logician, and it will be seen he advocates an universal gold standard throughout the world. The following is his own summary of his own article:

On the whole, we must conclude that the proposals of the bimetallists are in the present state of the world impracticable, and would probably be unjust. Though their case has some plausibility, and is not to be disposed of à priori by the mere repetition of economic formulae, yet on examination it breaks down; and in matters of currency, as well as in other matters. it remains true that laws cannot tie together in a fixed and permanent relation of value what natural conditions and human interests and habits have placed asunder.

To resume, the bimetallists, as we said at the beginning, have to prove their case. How much of it have they proved? They have proved that there has been a fall in the wholesale gold prices of certain commodities.

But they have not proved that this fall is due to the divergence in the values of gold and silver.

Nor have they proved that this fall is due to any failure in the supply of gold or to any defect in our gold standard.

Nor have they proved that this fall is on the whole mischievous.

Further; they have proved that the divergence in value of gold and silver, the two great standards of the world, has worked and is working mischief.

They have proved that under certain circumstances no longer existing, human laws by selecting one or other of these metals as materials for currency, and making them legal tender, have helped to give them a certain steadiness in relation to each other.

But they have not proved that under existing circumstances it would be possible by any legislation or international agreement to tie the two metals together again, or to maintain the tie when made.

They have therefore failed both in establishing the case for a change of our gold standard, and in establishing a case for the remedy which they propose.

Here my argument might end. But I cannot conclude without expressing a strong personal opinion that the remedy for this divergence of the standards is to be sought in another direction-viz., in the adoption of a single gold standard by the world. The tendency of past history seems to me to point in this direction. The immense convenience of one single standard of value, dependent on simple, natural conditions, is obvious.

A THEOSOPHICAL TRIBUTE TO TRUTH.

MRS. BESANT'S LAST MANIFESTO. BEFORE Mrs. Besant left for Australia she sent to the press for publication in Lucifer a remarkable but characteristic declaration directed against the practice of paltering with truth which had found a lodgment in some of the Theosophical lodges. The manifesto is signed by Colonel Olcott and five other leading members of the Theosophical Society, and it is almost admittedly prompted by the result of the inquiry into the charges made against Mr. W. Q. Judge, who was at one time regarded as the President Elect of the society.

MR. JUDGE JUDGED.

Mr. Judge was accused of passing off communications written by himself as if they had been directly written or precipitated by the Mahatmas. Mrs. Besant in her summing up of the matter, says:—

I regard Mr. Judge as an Occultist, possessed of considerable knowledge and animated by a deep and unswerving devotion to the Theosophical Society. I believe that he has often received direct messages from the Masters and from Their chelas, guiding and helping him in his work. I believe that he has sometimes received messages for other people in one or other of the ways that I will mention in a moment, but not by direct writing by the Master nor by His direct precipitation; and that Mr. Judge has then believed himself to be justified in writing down in the script adopted by H. P. B. for communications from the Master, the message psychically received, and in giving it to the person for whom it was intended, leaving that person to wrongly assume that it was a direct precipitation or writing by the Master Himself—that is, that it was done through Mr. Judge, but done by the Master. Now personally I hold that this method is illegitimate and that no one should simulate a recognised writing which is regarded as authoritative when it is authentic. And by authentic I mean directly written or precipitated by the Master Himself.

It is obvious, therefore, how this bears upon the manifesto which is given the place of honour in Lucifer, and entitled "Truth Before and in all Things," which, by the way, is not signed by Mr. Judge. The ostensible cause for its publication is the necessity for correcting an opinion gaining ground among would-be "Occultists of an untrained type "- -a phrase which can hardly be applied to Mr. Judge. This damnable heresy is defined as assertion that

an

what is falsehood on the material plane may in some "Occult" way be truth on a higher plane, and that the plea of " Occultism excuses conduct inconsistent with a high standard of righteous living. The spread of such views, says Mrs. Besant, would demoralise the Society, and would tend to degrade the lofty ideal of Truth and Purity which it has been the effort of every great religious teacher to uphold and to enforce by example.

Hence this manifesto, from which I extract the salient passages.

TO STUDENTS OF OCCULTISM.

The inevitable mystery which surrounds Occultism and the Occultist has given rise in the minds of many to a strange confusion between the duty of silence and the error of untruthfulness. There are many things that the Occultist may not divulge; but equally binding is the law that he may never speak untruth. And this obligation to Truth is not confined to speech; he may never think untruth, nor act untruth. spurious Occultism dallies with truth and falsehood, and argues that deception on the illusory physical plane is consistent with purity on the loftier planes on which the Occultist has his true life; it speaks contemptuously of "mere worldly morality"'-a contempt that might be justified if it raised a

A

higher standard, but which is out of place when the phrase is used to condone acts which the "mere worldly morality" would disdain to practise. The doctrine that the end justifies the means has proved in the past fruitful of all evil; no means that are impure can bring about an end that is good, else were the Good Law a dream and Karma a mere delusion. From these errors flows an influence mischievous to the whole Theosophical Society, undermining the stern and rigid morality necessary as a foundation for Occultism of the Right Hand Path.

Finding that this false view of Occultism is spreading in the Theosophical Society, we desire to place on record our profound aversion to it, and our conviction that morality of the loftiest type must be striven after by every one who would tread in safety the difficult ways of the Occult World. Only by rigid truthfulness in thought, speech and act on the planes on which works our waking consciousness, can the student hope to evolve the intuition which unerringly discerns between the true and the false in the super-sensuous worlds, which recognises truth at sight and so preserves him from fatal risks in those at first confusing regions. To cloud the delicate sense of truth here, is to keep it blind there; hence every Teacher of Occultism has laid stress on truthfulness as the most necessary equipment of the would-be Disciple.

PAINTERS AS INVENTORS.

THE artist and the "practical man" usually strike the matter-of-fact mind as types that are widely different if not completely opposed. The matter-of-fact mind will be proportionately surprised to learn from Mr. Leicester Allen's interesting paper in the Engineering Magazine for August, that the types are often and signally coincident:

We find that the profession of painting has contributed a larger proportional number of the great inventors of the current era than any other pursuit. Notwithstanding the comparatively small number of professional painters extant, we find, indeed, that they have contributed, either directly or indirectly, nearly all the inventions that have given distinctive features to modern civilisation. Robert Fulton, the first person to make a commercial success of the various devices for steam navigation that had been conceived, was a portraitUnabridged painter, and, as the frontispiece to Webster's " Dictionary" testifies, a very good one, too. But his invention not only covered the oceans, rivers, and lakes with steamvessels, but it suggested the locomotive, and covered the continents with railways. Morse, the inventor, who sent the first telegraphic message over a long line of wire, was a landscape-painter, and was elected and re-elected president of the National Academy of Design during the entire twenty years while he was incubating his idea, mainly to strengthen his resources. But Morse, again, was the parent of still other inventions. The telephone is the direct offspring of the telegraph, and even the electric light, when we consider its appliances for distribution, seems remarkably like a first cousin. Daguerre, the magician who set the sun at work as a journeyman and opened the way for all the refinements of photography, was another landscape-painter, and the man . . . compelling the great luminary to work on metallic sun faces in photo-lithography was still a fourth man among the painters who have been making a mechanical and almost a social revolution. We see, therefore, that there seems to be a very intimate relation between invention and the fine arts.

The purport of the article is to show that "the early life of great inventors" is "not always an indication of later successes,"-" to prove that inventors are not made by commercial requirements for invention, by education, or the position of wealth." They are born, not made. Mr. Allen runs full tilt against the idea that young men choose their callings with an eye chiefly to pecuniary profit. What they look for, he says, is not the lucrative so much as the congenial pursuit.

NIAGARA IN HARNESS. UNTIL We "hitch our wagon" to the moon, by deriving our motor power from the tides, perhaps the most stupendous utilisation of the waste energy of nature will be "the Diversion of Niagara" now beginning, which is agreeably described by Mr. Curtis Brown in the September Cosmopolitan. Three main forms of diversion are projected. The first was begun in October, 1890, and already the work has cost four million dollars and twentyeight lives.

A broad, deep inlet leads from the river, at a point a mile and a half above the American Fall, two thousand feet back in a north-easterly direction. The heavy masonry with which it is lined at the upper end is pierced by a score of gateways, through which the inflowing water will be admitted, by short canals, to pits, pouring down through huge steel pipes-the engineers call them "penstocks "-into the bronze turbine wheels at the bottom, and then whirling on through subterranean passageways that connect each pit with the main tunnel.

This tunnel carries the water underneath the heart of the city to the portal, just below what is known as the new suspension bridge. Only two of the score or more of wheelpits have been dug at this time; but one of these is of more interest than all of the others can be, for it is there that power is to be created for electrical distribution.

The tunnel, which possesses 100,000 horse-power capacity, is described as "the largest hydraulic tunnel ever built." The three dynamos "are far and away the most powerful ever constructed, each being expected to transform the 5,000 horse-power received from its turbine shaft into an equivalent of electrical force."

THE HIDING OF ITS POWER.

Before a second similar tunnel is begun on the American side, a greater plant is expected to be in operation on the Canadian side, which will eventually generate 250,000 horse-power. One of the plans

provides for a huge subterranean chamber extending out beneath the bed of the river, just back of the Horseshoe Falls, where they begin to thin out toward the Canadian shore. The chamber would contain all the turbines and dynamos, and all the other machinery for the development of water and electrical power, and there would be no sign, above ground, of the stupendous work going on below. It would form a vast laboratory for the manufacture of electrical power deep within the earth itself.

By these means it is hoped to transmit economically to the cities of New York State, and perhaps to nearly all New England and Chicago and Montreal, force for lighting, heating, cooking, and driving all forms of machinery.

The two tunnels on the American side, and the powerplant on the Canadian side of the Falls, will have a total capacity of four hundred and fifty thousand horse-power, an amount equal to the whole power employed for manufacturing purposes in the State of New York in 1880. Besides these "diversions" there are several thousands of horse-power tapped by the hydraulic canal.

Yet these works when finished will present no outward or visible sign to the beholder; nor will their enormous demands perceptibly reduce the volume of the Falls:

The half a million horse-power called for by present plans of both companies will take about nine inches from the Niagara, reducing the average depth of water at the edge of the precipice from six and one-quarter feet to five and onehalf feet, certainly not enough to make any noticeable difference in the appearance of the cataract.

MR. C. B. ROYLANCE-KENT gives a rather detailed description of the New Japanese Constitution in Macmillan.

BY PANAMA OR NICARAGUA

SHALL THE OCEANS MEET?

THE present condition of the Panama Canal is described by Mr. Oscar A. F. Saabye in the Engineering Magazine for September. 157,200,000 cubic yards would, according to the French engineers, have to be excavated.

Of this total excavation I judged that about from threeeighths to one-half-or about 70,000,000 cubic yards-has been done. Of the total length of the canal, about one-half, including about fifteen miles on the Atlantic side, has been finished or very nearly so, and there is water in this portion The on both sides, its depth varying from 18 to 23 feet. finished part is in comparatively good condition. Besides the work already done, the canal company has on hand, distributed at both terminals and at convenient points along the canal route, an immense stock of machinery, tools, dredgers, barges, steamers, tugboats, and materials for continued construction. At Panama, La Boca, and Colon, as well as along the canal, are numerous buildings, large and small, for offices, workshops, storehouses, and warehouses, and for lodging and boarding the men who were employed on the work. finished work, as well as all the machinery, tools, materials, buildings, etc., are well taken care of and looked after. The canal company employs 100 uniformed policemen, besides. numerous watchmen, machinists, and others, whose sole duty consists in watching the canal and looking after needed repairs of plant and care of materials. In fact, the work and the whole plant is in such a condition, so far as I could ascertain, that renewed construction could be taken up and carried to a finish at any time it is desired to do so, after the company's finances will permit.

The

Of the French trouble in regard to labourers, the chief cause was that the French contractors picked up many of their labourers from the slums of all countries, unaccustomed to this kind of work, and also to the climate. If the work were to be taken up to-day, any number of native labourers, mostly negroes, strong, healthy, and good-natured men, could easily be had, if not from the isthmus itself, from the surrounding South and Central American republics, and from Jamaica, etc., accustomed to work in the tropics. Mr. Saabye thus contrasts the rival route:

At Nicaragua the inland connection between oceans, according to the surveys made, would be 170 miles long, of which there are 40.3 miles of new work to be constructed. The remainder is through the Rio San Juan and Lake Nicaragua, in both of which considerable work would also have to be done in order to make them safely navigable. There is no harbour of consequence at either terminus. The country is barren and without means of transportation for supplies. There is no construction-plant, and no buildings worth consideration. The difference of mean level between the two oceans is here greater than at Panama. The Nicaragua canal is to be constructed with locks, and the passage between oceans would be much longer.

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