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just the same kind as Professor Janet's, on over 170 young men, mainly medical graduates and undergraduates, specially selected as healthy subjects from the tolerably wide field of mental and bodily sanity which our University offers. With less than 10 per cent. of the number tried has he been unsuccessful. And he has elicited automatic writing from ten healthy men,—all those with whom he has as yet attempted it,-by mere command in the waking state.

I cannot here give further detail; but I must repeat that there seems to be nothing in psychology, nothing in physiology, to compel us to assume that the automatic manifestations of the energy within us must necessarily rank as lower than the manifestations determined by what we term our conscious will. The question is a momentous one; for on the conception which we come to form of the subconscious mind within us may depend the shape which science shall ultimately give to the old notion of a transcendental Self or Soul-that pre-existent and perdurable Unity which we must not hastily resolve away into this faction-fight of improvised personalities, which jostle for a momentary predominance amid the shifting elements of man.

FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.

7.

WILLIAM GEORGE WARD.'

NO ONE who has had the privilege of knowing William George Ward can fail to be grateful to his son for a portrait, living as only a portrait drawn by an appreciative, loving, and reverent hand can be, of a man much to be loved and reverenced. Few, however, can fail to be deeply pained by his surroundings-the strife of religious parties, intensified by the earnestness and enthusiasm of the combatants. So much the more honour due to those who, like Mr. Ward, emerged from the conflict heart-whole; full of love to God and man, as they who were his friends can testify, a man whose presence inspired feelings of peace and unity, even in those not of his camp; witness the noble tributes to his worth, as a friend, by Dr. Jowett, Dean Lake, and the Dean of St. Paul's.

But it is by no means only to Mr. Ward's acquaintance that this book has proved and will, no doubt, continue to prove, interesting. The able delineation of the origin of the Oxford movement and of its

1 William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, by Wilfrid Ward. London: Macmillan & Co.

progress; the graphic representation of the principal actors, and of the manner of life at the time, will, I think, make a lasting page in the history of England.

And Mr. Ward himself, with his great metaphysical and logical power, his utter truthfulness, his stern self-discipline, his geniality, his fun, his snatches of song, his passionate earnestness of religious conviction, his tenderness for others when a sense of duty permitted, is so conspicuous and influential a figure in the Oxford group that he must always be a subject for respectful study. What can be a more beautiful exemplification of his tenderness-perhaps at that time the least prominent feature of his character-than his letter on the death of Arthur Hugh Clough to Mrs. Clough?

'I fear that, from my point of view, I must account it the great calamity of his life that he was brought into contact with myself. My whole interest at that time (as now) was concentrated on questions which to me seem the most important and interesting that can occupy the mind. Nor was there any reason why they should not occupy my mind, considering my age and position. It was a very different thing to force them prematurely on the attention of a young man just coming up to college, and to drive him, as it were, peremptorily into a decision upon them; to aim at making him as hot a partisan as I was myself. My own influence by itself might not have done much, but it was powerfully seconded by the general spirit of Oxford society at that time, and by the power which Mr. Newman then wielded throughout the University. The result was not surprising. I had been prematurely forcing Clough's mind, and there came a reaction. His intellectual perplexity for some time preyed heavily upon his spirits; it grievously interfered with his studies; and I take for granted it must have very seriously disturbed his religious practices and habits. I cannot, to this day, think of all this without a bitter pang of self-reproach. But I am most glad of any opportunity for showing the deep affection which I retained for your husband while he lived, and with which I now cherish his memory.'

How Mr. Ward, being what he was, and beginning as he did, should have ended as he did, will be matter of speculation to many. How a man with such justifiable confidence in his own intellectual power and professing, moreover, to trust so largely in the Shechinah of his individual conscience that image of God in the soul, that witness to God and to the law of God in man'—should have been the servant of so many successive masters, and at last, wearied out, should have submitted himself unreservedly to the one whom he had learnt to regard as Infallible, has the puzzle of an apparent contradiction. How, delighting as he did, with exceeding delight, in dramatic literature and performances, a man of so much geniality and so humorous should have resolutely closed his eyes to the everchanging drama of life throughout the centuries, is not easy to understand; yet perhaps therein partly lay the explanation of his life. Man, the whole man, with all his powers, must dedicate himself to the service of life, if he would avoid error and attain his highest.

But to whatever conclusion men of different minds and of different shades of opinion and faith may come as to the life of Mr. Ward,

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there is one lesson which, not only by his life but by the history of the movement itself, ought to be branded on the heart of the English Church-the difficulty of some of her Articles, their possible snare to the conscience, as being little in accord with her Liturgy. Mr. Ward at twenty-nine denounced the framers of the Articles as 'perjurers; at sixty his view was that they were mistaken men.' 'Bless me!' he would add, 'I believe that all good Anglicans, and all good Christians of all denominations, must be saved.' But I think Mr. Ward would still have said in later years, as he said in his youth, that the majority of the English clergy now-a-days do subscribe in a 'nonnatural sense.' The question is not unfrequently asked why, in this time of comparative quiet within her borders, does the English Church not bethink herself of this, and remember that the plea for her existence as a distinct branch of the Christian Church, and its justification, consists in her stand on the immutable word of God' as her sole rule of faith; that word which she believes comes to her from the mouth of Christ and of His Apostles, like Himself ‘the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever;' that word which, with divine. infinitude of power, speaks to every individual man, to every age, in whatever stage of growth, under whatever changing circumstances of life. And why she does not then courageously say, 'In the very words of my Lord and His apostles shall my creed be given; and none but this yoke, easy if rightly understood, shall be imposed upon my children? No vain attempt, by whomsoever or whenever made, of the finite to define the Infinite, to reconcile apparent contradictions of eternal truth, shall henceforward be allowed by me as a divine rule of faith, an error to be avoided as carefully as the Romish "doctrine of development," which I deprecate lest it should entice me to that other Gospel' against which mankind is warned.' On the other hand, indeed, there is a counter-view that, even though subscription in a general sense' might be abolished, the fulness of time must come, and the great leader, or the great leaders, must arise, before the articles of belief themselves can be rendered simpler, freer, and clearer.

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Nor can we disregard the chance confronting us in the near distance, as it seems, of the severance of Church and State, not unfrequently glanced at in this volume. Against disestablishment Mr. Ward used to cry aloud after this fashion: Has our Christian England fallen so low that she must regard herself "as a kingdom divided against itself"? Has she forgotten her claim to the divine privilege, the highest possible gift to man, that of being a member of that great ecclesia, the collective Christian Church? Dean Stanley's dictum pleased him: Disestablishment would mean a terrible relapse into narrowing bigotries.'

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But it would need more than a mere book-notice to consider the deep questions mooted in these pages. The two most interesting

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chapters are The Consequences of the Ideal Church' with their weighty extracts from Archbishop Tait, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Maurice, and 'The Condemnation of Mr. Ward.' Mr. Wilfrid Ward's least good chapter is that on 'Modern Religious Thought,' and from some of the inferences drawn by him, most of those who have watched the Oxford movement will express, I imagine, unqualified dissent. Moreover he entirely passes over the moderating influence which the Church of England of this day has exercised here on Roman Catholicism. Mr. Wilfrid Ward is strongest when discussing the relations of Cardinal Newman and his father. Mr. Ward used to tell a dream that he had long after his separation from Newman.' 'I was at a dinner party, and sat next to a veiled lady; her talk was full of tact, fascinating, subtle, and pathetic. I said to her, at the close of dinner, "I never knew anyone talk like you, except-yes— one-John Henry Newman." Said the veiled lady, withdrawing her veil, "I am John Henry Newman." That was always the attitude of Mr. Ward to the Cardinal. He was dominated by a fascination and a mystery. A striking passage describes Mr. Ward's final progress from Arnoldism to Newmanism.

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'The change which seemed so fundamental was really logical, and was the carrying out of principles rather than the change of principles. His earnest and constant cry was, in spiritual matters, 'Give me a guide!' 'A deep cry,' he writes, 'is heard from human nature. "Teach us the truth, for we cannot find it ourselves; yet we need it more than aught else on earth." Again and again he quoted Carlyle's saying, ‘True guidance, in return for loving obedience, did he but know it, is man's prime need.' The great note which attracted him towards a religious teacher was personal sanctity. The moral faculty,' he wrote, 'is not left to its own unaided powers; for one of the very earliest lessons it teaches us is the perception of superior goodness; and the duty of reposing an ardent and loving trust in the dietates of that goodness. And again,' Holy men are the great fountains from which moral and religious truth flows to the world. If a revelation be given, they are the authorised interpreters; if there be a living authoritative tribunal, then spiritual experience. furnishes materials for the decrees of that tribunal; if no special revelation, on them must the task be imposed of collecting and discriminating the various scattered traditions which are afloat in the current of human speculation? On these principles an ethical system or a spiritual authority which, as such, seemed higher and more thorough than Arnold's, had a primâ facie claim on his allegiance; and such a system he eventually found in Mr. Newman's teaching.' In every way Mr. Wilfrid Ward's book is memorable, and an excellent summary of contents delights the heart of the analytical reader; but where is the index?

HALLAM TENNYSON.

THE APPEAL AGAINST

FEMALE SUFFRAGE: A REJOINDER.

THE appeal against female suffrage has fulfilled its object. It has called attention to the fact that the question is not ripe for practical decision. Its signatories expected that it would be the beginning of a new discussion, and hoped that that discussion might be on broader lines than heretofore. The appeal itself put forth a body of doctrine, a conception of society and of the relations of its various parts, a view of woman's work in the community, and a consideration of the effect which female suffrage was likely to have on these large fields. It was natural to look for a corresponding exposition of principles from the other side. But the three answers which have appeared are chiefly remarkable for shirking any consideration of principles, for attempts to minimise the importance of the question. itself, for a restriction of the discussion to points of present expediency, and finally for a somewhat unworthy irritation against the presumption of a handful of women who have dared to be false to the noblest aspirations of their sex.

Mrs. Fawcett will have learnt by this time that the hundred and four, to whom she refers with a persistence which suggests that she had in her mind a parallel between their attack and the charge of the five hundred,' have grown into many hundreds. As regards their personal insignificance it would ill become me to say anything. It was the very consciousness of our obscurity that moved us at last to speak. Everyone has known for a long while that Mrs. Fawcett, and Mrs. Ashton Dilke, and a large number of other women eminent in various ways, were in favour of female suffrage. We thought that the time had come when it was well that it should be understood that there were still some women who were not convinced that such a measure was desirable. We were not concerned to take a plébiscite or marshal our forces in imposing array. It is surely hard that we should be twitted with our insignificance. It is natural that all movements should be headed by superior persons, and we never thought of challenging the claims to distinction of the leaders of the movement for female suffrage. We only wished to make it clear that there are some women, obscure enough it may be, who are still unconvinced by the rain of pamphlets and the storm of platform harangues. Surely it is the duty of leaders to persuade the rank and file. If a hundred and four signatures collected privately in ten days.

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