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sive organisation of employers on the one side and employed on the other. There already exists the nucleus of such a body on each side. With prudence and care there might be produced a valuable developement of the Association of Employers and the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress.

Of course there is a danger that a strong combination of employers may be tempted to abuse its strength. And it is a danger of which capitalists would do well to beware. The great combines or trusts which have recently grown up on the other side of the Atlantic have not been wholly free from the imputation of misusing their powers. The influence of Capital in the promotion of industrial peace would be seriously weakened if it were to show signs of tyrannical action. With us the best employers continue to show regard to the welfare and happiness of their workmen. It would be an unmitigated evil if the tendency to do this were checked by any extension of the principle of combination.

We cannot conclude without reference to one aspect of the question of which our statesmen have shown a tendency to fight shy. Freedom to refuse work and to promote, as far as combined action can do so, the establishment of favourable conditions has been successfully and rightly claimed by the working men of this country. But with the same breath they have refused to admit that freedom of others to accept work which is a corollary of their own claim. Not only moral persuasion of extreme kind, but actual physical violence, is still displayed against men who are ready to work on terms which strikers have rejected. And the action of the State in supporting the rights as citizens of men who are opprobriously and unreasonably called 'scabs' and 'blacklegs' has been half-hearted and unenergetic. It is otherwise in the United States, where liberty is as much cherished as in Great Britain. Unless freedom of labour involves freedom to work at will as well as freedom to be idle at will, the operation of economical laws is unduly checked. The State, in our opinion, fails in its duty if it refuses or neglects to afford the necessary protection against illegal exercise of force to men and women desirous of accepting employment on terms satisfactory to themselves, if distasteful to others. And dread of temporary unpopularity ought not to influence those who direct the action of the State in this respect.

The present position of the relations between Labour and

Capital are by no means unsatisfactory, if comprehensively regarded. There is a growing tendency to rely on industrial diplomacy rather than on industrial war. Great as has been the mischief done by the hardly-fought conflicts of the past, we are far from thinking that they have been wholly without advantageous effect. They have cleared the ground from many ill growths. They have enforced the recognition of mutual obligations as well as of mutual rights. It behoves not only statesmen but all who are concerned in our commercial prosperity to foster the inclination of peaceful settlement of differences, and to perfect the machinery available for its promotion. When the evils of war are terribly apparent, and the state of trade conduces to industrial peace, an opportunity exists which should not be lost.

ART. II.-1. Society of Psychical Research: Report of Proceedings. June 1889-December 1892.

2. William Lilly: History of his Life and Times. 1681. From original MS. London: 1715. London: 1822.

A.D. 1602Reprinted,

3. Simon Forman: Autobiography and Diary. A.D. 15521602. Edited by J. HALLIWELL. London: 1849.

4. John Dee: a True Relation of his Action with Spirits. 1583-1607. Edited by MERIC CASAUBON.

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*

5. John Dee: Private Diary. Edited by HALLIWELL. 1842. AM MONGST the literary phenomena of the last decade of the nineteenth century a group of publications, broadly classified as the literature of occultism, while they appeal to the sympathy of a limited audience, undoubtedly command a wider interest viewed in their relation to past phases of thought and practice. Whatever may chance to be the mind of the reader with regard to facts narrated, or theories propounded, in the Reports of the Society of Psychical Research, in the Studies in Psychical Research' of Mr. Podmore, or again in the record of supernatural experiences of which Lord Bute appears as joint editor, such volumes afford explicit evidence of the revival amongst men of intelligence, culture, and good faith of beliefs and practices we have been accustomed to associate, perhaps too arbitrarily, with superstitions of past ages or with ignorance and imposture in the present. Nor can we wholly ignore those kindred, though widely differing, tendencies of thought and practice indicated by M. J. K. Huysmans's prefatory study to the ponderous and unhealthy volume, Le Satanisme et la Magie,' of M. Jules Bois. If we are meant to accept M. Huysmans's statements, it would appear that the cult of the supernatural, either under the form of a deliberate, formularised, and concerted attempt to hold intercourse with l'au-delà du mal,' or under the pretext of an inquiry into 'les forces ignorées de la nature,' is more widely spread amongst men of other nationalities than would seem credible. In the eyes of M. Huysmans, M. Jules Bois is indeed a combatant, his foe la magie noire,' nor are we allowed lightly to imagine that the office is a sinecure. For, again in M. Huysmans's estimation, the study of such developements is of serious utility, ne fût-ce que pour connaître les périls

*The Alleged Haunting of B- House. London: 1899.

auxquels les gens épris de la magie s'exposent. . . . J'en connais qui ont tout essayé.' And whether or not we admit the proffered testimony, whether or not we can accept the actuality of the facts advanced concerning the promulgation of such opinions, the belief implied in the mere asser tion that they exist is sufficient to justify incredulity.

But if some recrudescence of the grosser aspects of supernaturalism in the melodramatic form of black masses and diabolic evocations may possibly be found in other countries, the Proceedings of the Psychical Society in England evidence after another fashion an intellectual revival of a spirit of curiosity, if not of faith, regarding such matters as divination by dreams, by crystal-gazing, by hazel rods, and other like methods for the abnormal acquisition of knowledge. Under the auspices of men of scholarship and science investigations have been carried on in the heart of London civilisation dealing with the possibilities of the intercommunion of spirits, of the intercourse of the living with the dead, and with all the various phases of phenomena popularly ascribed to spiritualistic or occult influences. Nor is it an unimportant, though easily exaggerated, incident in the history of thought that such investigations are eagerly initiated and patiently pursued amidst modern conditions of existence, of opinion, and of science which, at this epoch of the world's education, might have seemed prohibitory.

Yet, looking backwards, we may well take it to represent but a fainter manifestation of that thirst and passion for the unattainable in knowledge which, on this little sphere of earth where physical energies and practical sense dominate the events of daily life, has, notwithstanding hindrance and obstruction, asserted its empire with recurrent tenacity over the minds and imaginations of mankind. To that craving after the unknowable the religions of elder days responded with their doctrines of divine revelations. They did more than respond. They went so far as to accredit faith with the security of experience. But if they allayed human curiosity in one direction, they stimulated it in another. An epigrammatic critic defined the result. 'Magic and witchcraft,' he said, are instincts of religion, 'first inverted, then polluted and impregnated with germs of corrupt vitality,' and M. Huysmans echoes the sentiment, if not its wording, when he epitomises the doctrines of one phase of supernaturalism as 'le christianisme retourné, 'le catholicisme à rebours.'

6

In the secular world of intellect, where cruder embodiments of necromancy were subordinated to magic in its more occult semblance, the inversion gave birth to the Ishmaels of science and reason, the alchemist and the astrologer. From the period of the Renaissance, when, according to Maury,* the resuscitation of platonic or neoplatonic philosophy brought with it 'le vieil héritage de l'alchimie égyptienne,' and the ancient beliefs in the elemental spirits of air, and fire, and water re-wrote themselves in the degenerate receipts of mediæval magic-the successors of the soothsayer and diviner meet us at every page of history. Clad in motley garb they confront us in many an unexpected place. Keenvisaged old men of dignified aspect, with flowing robes and long pointed beards the philosophers and prelates of the fraternity; younger professors, with the vigilant and unscrupulous countenance befitting men who trade on the credulity of their fellows, mental jugglers whose gains in Alexandria were of old taxed as the tribute of fools; '† they were affiliated from all ranks and classes, from men of learning and from men of ignorance. In the fourteenth century Ceccus Asculanus, philosopher, astrologer, mathematician, physician to Pope John XXII., was committed to the flames for his dealings with spirits.§ Raymond Lully was charged with similar offences. Jerome Cardan, founder of the higher algebra,'¶ is reported to have starved himself to death to fulfil his own predictions.** Tycho Brahe was as much renowned for his skill in casting horoscopes as for his astronomical studies. Matius Galeotti is less familiar to most as the heterodox philosopher than as astrologer to Louis XI., whom Cattho, prelate and physician, served in a like capacity. Pontiffs did not escape suspicion. Sylvester II. and Gregory VII. are included with Orpheus, Democritus, Pythagoras, and others in the list of great men defended against the charge of 'magic' by Naudé.ff

* La Magie et l'Astrologie. Alfred Maury, Paris, 1860. Grey's Notes to 'Hudibras.'

Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy') states magic was publicly professed at Salamanca, though censured by the Universities of Oxford and Paris. This, however, Naudé denies-'ce qui toujours n'est pas si vray semblable que l'on y doive ajoûter plus de foy qu'il n'est raisonnable.'

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! Ibid.

**Bayle's Dict., art. Cardan,' and H. Morley's 'Life of Cardan.' Naudé, Grands Hommes accusés de Magie.'

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