move. . . . It is impossible to read the paper in last week's Lancet without distress. Of the eighteen adults to whom Drs. Ringer and Murrell administered the drug in ten-grain doses all but one averred that they would expect to drop down dead if they ever took another dose. One woman fell to the ground and lay with throbbing head and nausea for three hours. The next series of experiments was with five-grain doses. The same results followed in ten out of sixteen cases. . . . Whatever credit may be given to Drs. Ringer and Murrell for scientific enthusiasm, it is impossible to acquit them of grave indiscretion. There will be a howl throughout the country if it comes out that officers of a public charity are in the habit of trying such useless and cruel experiments on the patients committed to their care."

"Useless and cruel experiments on patients"-that is the charge made against Dr. Ringer by a leading medical journal of his own city. I did not stigmatize these experiments in any way; that was done by his own countrymen.

In bringing forward the fact that the Royal Commission declined to permit Dr. Klein to substitute his amended remarks for his actual statements, I cannot see that Mr. Myers renders any great service to his physiological friend. A writer takes accepted testimony, not rejected and discredited inventions. The inquiring reader should procure a copy of Dr. Klein's testimony, so far as it related to his personal practices, and see if in Dr. Klein's replies to the questions asked him, he can discern the slightest evidence of inadequate comprehension.

If Mr. Myers thinks that reference to some army surgeon's experience during the Boer War supplies the statistics of a country, for which I asked; if he does not know that vaccination was carried on for nearly seventy years, independently of calf-lymph, and that the vivisection of animals contributed nothing to Jenner's discovery; if he fancies that the freedom of Havana from yellow fever, by no means so assured as when he wrote,-may be attributed to experiments on birds; if he believes that reference to certain alleged cures of snake-bite by antivenene furnish me with evidence of decreased mortality in a nation like that of India, where 20,000 deaths from this cause annually occur,-then I fear that no amount of reasoning, within space available here, would convince him of errors,-which indeed are quite excusable in one neither a physician nor a vivisector.

If this discussion must close here, let it be on my part with an

appreciation. Of Mr. Myers' sincerity and intellectual honesty I can have no doubt. Concerning vivisection, he writes from what he has been told; I write from what I have personally seen. Thirty five years ago, I should have written as he writes to-day, inspired by the delusion that science can make ethical laws for herself. And yet it is possible that were ours the opportunity of an extended contrast of views, we should find not a few points of agreement. He would certainly discover that I am not an anti-vivisectionist; and that everything in the way of painless experimentation seems to me as unobjectionable as to himself. On the other hand, I think I should be able to point out to him lines of vivisection, the cruelty and wickedness of which are so manifest, that, convinced of their existence, he could not fail to condemn them as severely as did the Editors of the British Medical Journal and the Lancet forty years ago.

AURORA, NEW YORK.

ALBERT LEFFINGWELL.

BOOK REVIEWS.

London:

DEMOCRACY AND REACTION. By L. T. Hobhouse. Fisher Unwin, 1904. Pp. 244. Mr. Hobhouse's most recent book opens with a sentence that announces the standpoint adopted in the pages that follow and at the same time offers a direct challenge to a school of thought that has lately been dominant and is still exceedingly powerful. "During some twenty or thirty years a wave of reaction has spread over the civilized world and invaded one department after another of thought and action." Those who, like the present reviewer, are convinced of the truth of these words will be eager to learn Mr. Hobhouse's opinion as to the causes of this reaction and to discover in which direction to look for remedies. Those who deny that a reaction has taken place will make acquaintance with the reasons which this earnest and eloquent advocate advances in proof of his contention. Both classes alike will find not only a singularly incisive criticism of current ideas but also a substantial contribution to sociological discussion. The work arrests attention both as a prononuncement on the outstanding controversies of the time and as an analysis of the complex ethical and scientific problems which lie at the back of all serious political thinking. Its place is with Maine's "Essays on Popular

Government" and Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty" rather than with the more theoretical dissertations of Green, Sidgwick, and Bosanquet; but it rebukes democracy for other reasons than those which aroused their suspicion and indignation, and holds out a prospect of ultimate deliverance by a loyal return to principles in which they had little faith.

The opening chapter recapitulates the teaching of Cobden, and points out how its component parts,-peace, arbitration, reduction of armaments, free trade, colonial self-government, democratic reform,-formed an organic and interdependent whole, connected with one another by the principle of liberty which is common to them all. Though a later chapter explains the manner in which it has been supplemented by the best liberal thought of our day, Mr. Hobhouse is deeply convinced of the general soundness of this system. It is in the discarding of these principles one after the other by great masses of men in recent years and the adoption of diametrically opposite views that he finds the reaction referred to in the words quoted above. These rival ideals, no less than those of Cobden, form an organic and interconnected whole and may be conveniently designated by the word Imperialism. Mr. Hobhouse shows how the success of the colonial system introduced by the mid-century liberals formed the starting point of a new imperial sentiment; but he points out how the principle of liberty with which the liberals had stamped their work was alloyed and overlaid by base metal. The contrast between the profession and practice of modern imperialism is brought out in pages of sustained irony. With the proud boast of liberty and civilization floating from her banners, England has marched along through war, aggrandizement, lavish expenditure, arbitrary government, class legislation, shelving of domestic reforms, and is now confronted with their natural corollary, Protection, while compulsory service is openly demanded as the coping-stone of the reconstructed edifice of our national life. Here, however, Mr. Hobhouse believes that the rhythmic law of action and reaction will come to our rescue, and that as the nation awakens to the causal connection of these malign phenomena it will discover that imperialism stands "not for the love but for the lust of empire, for the dream of conquest, the vanity of racial domination, the greed of commercial gain."

This ugly transformation is traced to an intellectual reaction, the causes of which are examined in one of the most interesting

chapters in the book. The early half of the nineteenth century was a period when the "ideas of '89" took shape in every kind of reform and when the thought of the time was predominantly humanitarian. Our attitude towards the colored races is typical of the change that has taken place. Mr. Hobhouse contrasts Palmerston's declaration that of all his achievements the forcing of Brazil to give up its slave trade had given him greatest satisfaction, with Sir A. Hardinge's contemptuous references to the "anti-slavery faction" and to the revival of servile labor in the mines of the Transvaal under the British flag. This blunting of the moral sensibility of the nation is in part due to the very success with which liberalism has done its work. It is notorious that a class which itself suffers under serious disabilities is more alive to the existence of injustice elsewhere than if it already possesses all or nearly all that it demands. Our middle class is no longer outside the charmed circle, and recent years have in consequence witnessed an enormous transfer of material interests from the reforming to the conservative ranks. Satisfied in the main with its situation at home, it has naturally yielded to the allurements of imperialism. "We applaud it in its capacity of respectable parent with sons to put out into the world, of merchant with trade to develop, of missionary with religion to push, above all, of investor with capital to seek higher interest than can be gained at home." This shifting of interest from domestic to foreign affairs, unaccompanied by a disposition to study the complex problems they present, has immensely increased the power of press, and called into existence the popular sheet, the shouting newsboy, and the sensational headline. The days when Horace Walpole found it necessary to ask every morning where the latest victory had been won are revived when the man in the street daily scans the posters for some new tale of slaughter and aggrandizement.

Mr. Hobhouse is of course fully aware that the love of domination and the instinct of pugnacity are as old as human nature, and that these manifestations during the Boer war simply reproduced the evil passions of the Crimean struggle; but he believes that the general adoption of the conception of the struggle for existence has been the chief factor in discrediting the ideals of right and wrong in international affairs which at least tended to keep the bellicose instincts of the natural man in check. The late Professor Ritchie wrote an interesting essay to establish the resemblance of Darwin and Hegel; and Mr. Hobhouse finds in the

Hegelian deification of the state the political counterpart of the Darwinian notion of the survival of the fittest. It is perfectly true that the Hegelian influence may be traced not only in Bismarck but also in the school of Prussian historians of whom Bismarck was the hero; but I think Mr. Hobhouse exaggerates the influence of this department of Hegelian thought in England, where its revival has been almost exclusively witnessed in the more theoretical branches of thought, and where some of its most distinguished representatives have throughout opposed imperialism both in theory and practice. On the other hand he has done valuable service in calling attention to the disastrous effect of the application of the crudest Darwinian biology to the science of society and the life of nations. Readers of Prince Kropotkin will not have forgotten his proof that mutual aid is a factor in evolution no less important and universal than blind competition, and Mr. Hobhouse resumes and extends the argument of that memorable book. The biologists, he declares, have no standard of value; their test of efficiency is existence, not progress, and existence for them is an end, not a means. The sociologist, on the other hand, applies ethical standards, traces the growing domination of reason, the widening recognition of individual and national right. His concern is with orthogenic evolution, with the development of social justice; his eye is on the intellectual and spiritual possibilities of humanity. To the biologist's objection that the struggle for existence is the sole law of life and method of progress we reply that the struggle is keenest in the lower reaches and steadily diminishes as we ascend to the higher types. History is the record of the gradual transition from instinctive to reflective action, of the progressive adoption of the idea of right as the governing principle of conduct. The conception of right may be somewhat vague, and certainly defies definition; but for Mr. Hobhouse it means the opportunity for full development as a moral being. If the State finds itself driven to courses which involve a suspension of these conditions, it may be sure that it has entered on a wrong path.

After vindicating the conception of right as the fundamental idea of civilization, the author proceeds to discuss the dangers which it runs under a democratic régime. Though it is in the long run correct to say that a self-governing community will not tyrannize over itself, the enjoyment of self-government in no way prevents one people from tyrannizing over another. The greatest disappointment to the well-wishers of democracy has been its