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what most professional politicians-being human--want. The more technical, involved, mysterious the process of choosing so-called "representatives" can be made, the more surely will the professional in politics have an advantage over the amateur.

Reformers sometimes flay the "ordinary citizens" for the neglect of their civic duties, and declare that, if these ordinary citizens took as much pains with public affairs as the boss and his henchmen, they could rescue the public business from its despoilers. Exactly, if-. But that "if "is a begging of the whole question. The ordinary citizen can become as skilled as the boss only at the price which the boss paysthe abandonment of private business in order to make public business his vocation. The more complicated the machinery, the more necessary it is for the man who runs it to be a skilled mechanic. So long as the process of selecting the representatives of the people is kept involved and complicated, so long will that process be left in charge of the few who can afford to become professional politicians.

There are thus only two ways of securing improvement in public business. One is by improving the breed of professional politicians that is the method of benevolent despotism. The other is by simplifying the process of selecting representatives, through direct elections, direct primaries, and the short ballot, so that the ordinary citizens can take their part-that is the method of free government.

MR. MORGAN'S RELIGIOUS

FAITH

The declaration of his religious faith with which Mr. Morgan began his will has made a wide and profound impression by its simplicity, directness, and forcefulness of expression.

No one has ever accused Mr. Morgan of indulging in formal and perfunctory language. His declaration of faith has not excited, as far as we have seen, any theological or philosophical discussion, although it has excited unusual comment. It has been accepted everywhere as a perfectly natural expression of a deep-seated conviction on the part of a man who all through his life was accustomed to express freely his deep-seated convictions in temporal matters. It is an interesting confirmation of a statement made in these pages

two weeks ago by a friend of Mr. Morgan's. This friend is Robert Bacon, formerly one of Mr. Morgan's partners, and later Secretary of State and Ambassador to France. Mr. Bacon said in his tribute to Mr. Morgan: "I should say that he was more actuated by spontaneous inherent qualities, by optimism, by a faith so basic that it was unconscious or sub-conscious; but underlying all this he was a man of very real and deep religious convictions. He rarely spoke of religion, but no one who knew him intimately could fail to realize what an ever-present force it was in his character." The impression that the declaration of faith in Mr. Morgan's will has made upon men of affairs has been so well expressed by Mr. Theodore H. Price, the editor of "Cotton and Finance," in a recent editorial in his excellent weekly, that we reprint it here as a comment worth the attention of every active man of affairs:

"Immaterial rather than material influences must occupy the first place in any consideration of that portion of the world's history which has been in the making during the past week. For those that believe (and who does not?) that things which are seen are temporal, but things which are not seen are eternal,' there is profound significance in two facts chronicled by the newspapers within a day or two.

One is that the new Chinese Government has officially appealed to all the Christian Missions in China to set aside Sunday, April 27, as a day of prayer that China may be guided to a wise solution of her problems.

The other is the opening declaration in the will of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, which reads:

"I commit my soul into the hands of my Saviour, in full confidence that, having redeemed it and washed it in His most precious blood, He will present it faultless before my Heavenly Father, and I entreat my children to maintain and defend at all hazards, and at any cost of personal sacrifice, the blessed doctrine of the complete atonement for sin through the blood of Jesus Christ, once offered, and through that alone.

Those who think that an allusion to such subjects is irrelevant in a paper professing to limit itself to the discussion of mundane economics are poor students of the world's history. The science of economics is, in the last analysis, a consideration of the influences which promote or lessen society's material progress. Of such influences none are more important or profound than those which are idealistic or religious."

B

A FRIENDLY DEBATE WITH AN

UNKNOWN FRIEND

BY LYMAN ABBOTT AND B. W. KUNKEL

THE FRIEND

ECAUSE I probably lack the "eye of faith," certain statements in Dr. Abbott's article on Rudolf Eucken in The Outlook for March 1 seem to me to be obscure and in a measure to lead to hazy thinking. In the hope of clearing up my own thoughts, as well as those of other readers, I feel impelled to ask one or two questions.

Can we really draw a hard and fast line between the visible and invisible worlds in which we live? According to the above article the visible world is appreciated by the senses, the invisible by experience. What, I ask in all earnestness, makes up experience besides sensations and the memories of those that have passed? According to the Century Dictionary, experience is the state of having acquired knowledge; the sum of practical wisdom taught by all the events of life; knowledge gained by external and internal perceptions; a fixed mental impression. It seems to me that sense organs are involved entirely even in "internal perception," which I can conceive only as the vague sensations that originate within the body, producing the uneasiness of illness as well as the exuberance of abounding health. Though difficult to locate and to refer to definite sense organs, they are none the less real sensations which leave their impress on us.

As I try to analyze experience I find several factors which begin with sensation and which involve their memory and their sequence. Every stimulus of a sense organ leaves its impress on the memory if it reaches the brain and is converted into a sensation, and, in leaving an impress, colors, as it were, future sensations. For example, the tepid water seems unbearably hot on the hands of the boy who has just been playing in the snow, but the same water may apparently be very cold after washing his hands in hot water. Should the hands never be immersed in tepid water except after the application of snow, our experience with reference to water would be wholly unlike our experience if it were applied only after hot water. What I

would emphasize particularly is that we live in a world of sensations and that the closest we can ever become acquainted with our environment and the only experience we can ever have is through the sense organs. Experience in the last analysis must be in terms of sensations.

Our experience also depends on the order in which the stimuli are received. I remember well my work in the chemical laboratory in which a mixture of various chemical compounds was subjected to a series of reagents which when used in the proper order allowed the various elements in the mixture to be determined in a characteristic way. If the reagents were used in a different order, different results would be obtained and the constituent elements could not be recognized in the same way. The original mixture to be analyzed may represent my mind, each reagent a sensation, the array of precipitates separated by the reagents my experience. My experience, then, depends upon the action of certain sensations in a certain order on my mind; alter any one of the factors, mind, sensation, or sequence, and the experience will be altered.

To quote from the article once more: "The invisible world of joy and sorrow, love and hate, conscience and greed, contentment and disappointment, hope and despair, selfgratulation and remorse" is distinct from the world of sensation. When I think of contentment, my memory goes back to an old friend of mine at a city mission who embodied most perfectly my ideas of contentment. He praised God for the very scraps of meat which a hotel gave him from the plates of its guests and which he carried home for his invalid wife to make stew of. He knew contentment, and I envy him for it, and I would be the last one to undervalue contentment simply because it can be referred to sensation. But, as I have thought about this old fellow, who had been a prize-fighter in his youth, had spent many months in prison for a variety of offenses, and had "got religion," and at the time I knew him was a respectable and happy old man of seventy, I have become

more and more impressed with the idea that sensations of a certain kind were at the bottom of his contentment, and that contentment or any other state of being cannot be separated from sensations. He would not have been contented in his younger days with the food I used to see him carrying home, I know from what he told me time and again of his early life. He had had an experience, a group of sensations which had reacted upon his mind to produce a state which we call contentment. He had seen and heard words accompanied by other sensory impressions at a certain time in his life and with a certain force that affected him as I have never been affected. He reacted to these stimuli in a fashion we describe as "being converted." The conviction came to him through the sound of words and memories of past sensations that the quality of his food and in fact of all material things were utterly valueless in comparison with the mental picture he had stored in his mind of a Redeemer, and the memory that he must be obedient to the desires of Christ. Far be it from me to deny the reality of the invisible world and the precious conceptions of the Christian religion; all I would emphasize is that sensations, either objective or subjective, are the background of all experience, so that we cannot make the hard and fast line between the material and the invisible world.

Joy, contentment, love, all the ways of looking at life, seem to me to be referable to sensations, in spite of the fact that they abound even in a blind and deaf Helen Keller, who lacks the most important avenues of approach to the material world. To be sure, the number of sensations she receives a day is less than that of a normal individual with all the sense organs functional, but still the sensations she does receive are probably more vivid than those we normal individuals ordinarily receive; and because of her extraordinary memory her recollections of past sensations is unquestionably more perfect than ours, so that the total experience of Helen Keller is undoubtedly richer than yours or mine.

What is meant by "We know the material world by examining it, we know life only by living"? We know the material world only through the activity of our sense organs, but it would seem to me that we know life only by recalling sensations we have received in the past. Life is activity of a very special kind, and activity I appreciate only through

the sense organs. seeing, quite as much as we know life only by living.

We know sight only by

Do I know love myself? Yes, both subjective and objective love; but I am not at all certain that love is not a product of sensations and memories of impressions stored up from the past.

I know a father's love for his infant child. I see my little one's utter helplessness and dependence, her responsive smile to my ministrations and play. I recall the pictures of my own infancy in the words of my parents; I recall the descriptions of and allusions to paternal love in spoken and written word. I recall the results of a lack of love; so I love my child. Were I devoid of sight and hearing and touch and memory, I cannot conceive a love for my child. Possibly the deceased parent continues to love the child. I don't know. I do know that the evidences of love cease with breathing, and that, whether I want to believe love to be eternal or not, the fact remains that we have no evidence of love apart from life. Beloit, Wisconsin.

B. W. KUNKEL.

THE REPLY

My correspondent has put here very clearly his view of human life. I will endeavor to put my view with equal clearness and with equal brevity. I put it largely in quotations. from others, in order that my readers may know that this view is not peculiar to myself; it is entertained by a large number of careful students, of life, and has been from the days of Plato to the present day.

The contrast between the two views is very clearly put by Herbert Spencer in the following sentences: "Unlike the ordinary consciousness, the religious cousciousness is concerned with that which lies beyond the sphere of sense. A brute thinks only of things which can be touched, seen, tasted, heard, etc., and the like is true of the young child, the untaught deaf mute, and the lowest savage. But the developing man has thoughts about existences which he regards as usually intangible, inaudible, invisible; and yet which he regards as operative upon him."

I agree with the opinion of the developing man. I believe that there are existences which are intangible, inaudible, invisible, and yet which are operative upon us. This view I share with an overwhelming majority of the plain people, of all races and all conditions, of all religions and all epochs-peasants and kings, poets and practical workers,

philosophers and statesmen, men and women. That it is the general view of developing man does not prove it to be true. But I am so much of a democrat that I have more faith in the general experience of mankind than I have in the refined theories of a limited number of special students.

Says Tennyson,

"Speak to Him, thou, for He hears,

And Spirit with Spirit can meet."

I agree with Tennyson. I believe that I can speak to One who is unseen and unheard, but not unknown. And I believe that He can and does speak to me; that we talk with one another; that He inspires my fainting heart with courage and my troubled heart with peace; that He guides me with His counsel in perplexity and comforts me with His presence in sorrow.

Says Forbes Robinson: "When I get quite quiet, and my mind is sane, and my conscience at rest, when I almost stop thinking and listen, I am quite sure that a Personal Being comes to me, and as he comes brings some of his own life to flow into my life." Of that I also am quite sure. I do not believe that this experience of communion with an invisible Person is explained by the statement that we know life only by recalling sensations we have received in the past."

Hear and thy soul shall live," cries Isaiah. I believe that there is a divine voice which we can hear and which brings to the soul that listens for it newness of life, even though the soul knows not whence nor how that life comes.

God breathed into men the breath of his own life, says the Hebrew poet in his portrayal of man's creation. The poet in this statement interprets a perpetually renewed process of divine life-giving. God is always breathing into man the breath of his own divine life, illuminating, inspiring, encouraging, strengthening, comforting, truly creating. This life of God in the soul of man is the common experience of devout souls-pagan, Jewish, and Christian. It is broader and more human than any creed; it is deeper and more vital than any opinion. Philosophy has not given this experience and philosophy cannot take it away. But though philosophy has not given it and philosophy cannot take it away, philosophy confirms it.

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of Professor James's philosophy, but a report which evidently implies Professor Boutroux's approval: "The productions of genius are like revelations of a world other than our own. In a general way man's aspirations are disproportionate to his actual condition.. These facts are explained if we admit that, on the side of his being which transcends his conscious self, man is related to another world than that which comes within the reach of his senses to beings whom for this reason we may call spiritual."

The article which my correspondent criticises was based on Professor Eucken and was little more than an attempt to interpret his philosophy in terms of onr common experiences. That he believes with Tennyson that "Spirit with Spirit can meet" underlies his whole philosophy. For example: "Spiritual life is definitely raised above human existence. Man does not originate spiritual life, but he is capable of attaining to participation in it." "Man appears great in his relationship to spiritual life, but small as an isolated individual; his life becomes an incessant search after his own being, and in this sense alone can it give rise to true history." The corner-stone of all philosophical thought and the axiom of axioms is the fact of a worldembracing spiritual life.”

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The italics are Eucken's. I repeat them because to me the sentence gives the true clue to the interpretation of life.

I believe that I am a spiritual being, temporarily dwelling in a material body, living in a world of spiritual beings, who are also temporarily dwelling in material bodies. If my correspondent asks me, What is spirit? I reply, I do not know; I only know its experiences: love and hate, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, aspiration and endeavor, and above all power to see an unseen ideal and freedom to form the resolve and devote my life to the endeavor to realize that ideal for myself and for my fellow-men. These spiritual forces are not characteristic of the material universe; they are not analogous to the material forces, such as light, heat, and electricity. The senses do not create this spiritual life. They are instruments through which the material world and its forces can act upon the spirit; they are instruments through which the spirit can act on the material world and its forces. But the spirit is superior to these material forces, masters them, uses them.

If my friend affirms that the invisible Spirit which holds communion with men does

so by producing an impression on the brain and through the brain on the soul of man, I reply, Possibly. I can neither affirm nor deny his hypothesis. But it seems to me a pure hypothesis, and does nothing to affect my conviction that I am more than the sum of all my bodily organs and my life is something more than the sum of all their sensations.

And I believe that the fountain and source of this spiritual life is the Infinite Spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being. He is interpreted to us, not by nature and its forces, but by the spirit of man and his aspirations. Prayer is not an endeavor to make this Infi

nite Spirit do our bidding and fulfill our will. It is an endeavor to ascertain the will of this Infinite Spirit and fulfill his purpose. History is what Hegel has called it, "the carrying out of God's plan." To work with this Infinite Spirit and have some small share in His design, to co-operate with Him in completing the creation which He has begun and which will not be completed until the world and its forces, including the body and all its organs, have become the perfectly obedient servant of the purified and perfect spirit which dwells within the body, is my ambition.

LYMAN ABBOTT.

Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.

Τ

THE JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA

A POLL OF THE PRESS

HAT the question in California is not local but National and international in character is shown by the press comments in all parts of the country.

As to existing land conditions the current report of John P. McLaughlin, Labor Commissioner of California, 66 himself violently anti-Japanese," according to the New York" World" (Dem.), indicates, as reported in that paper, that the Japanese own 12,726 acres of land, an increase since 1909 of 1,935 acres. A different estimate made by Dr. Teusler is referred to on another page. There are about 12,000,000 acres of agricultural land in the State. In Mr. McLaughlin's report it is said that Japanese lease 17,596 acres, a decrease since 1909 of 2,698 acres. The Oakland “Tribune" (Rep.) says: "The landholdings of the Japanese in this State [California] are inconsiderable. George Shima is the only large Japanese landowner in California, and the only offense he has committed is making potatoes more abundant and cheaper."

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the Japanese population among us is not increasing, or likely to increase," affirms the San Francisco "Chronicle " (Ind.), and adds:

The number now here is not large enough to seriously affect any interest. There is no doubt of the existence of all necessary legal power in the Nation to deal with the Japanese question as it sees fit. It will be best for us not to invoke the exercise of that power. We are not suffering in any way which justifies the risk." The Pasadena "News" (Rep.) concludes:

Chinese exclusion has not benefited California. If we permitted a limited influx of the race our horticultural interests would not have to depend so completely on..the Japanese, and our housekeeping burdens would be immeasurably lightened. Drat this racial prejudice, this narrow, bigoted point of view, anyway!

The treaty of 1911 with Japan says that the Japanese may own or lease or occupy houses, manufactories, and warehouses and shops," and may "lease land for residential and commercial purposes." In return, in deference to American wishes, the Japanese Government agreed to restrict the emigration of Japanese laborers to the United States. "Japan has kept faith," avers the New York 'Globe" (Rep.). "Since 1908 the entry of Japanese at San Francisco has almost ceased, and there has been an actual diminution of the number of Japanese. As Japan has kept faith, so must this country. Faith is not kept when new legislation, practically discriminating against the Japanese as the proposed California legislation would do, is enacted."

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