Chapter XXXVIII (7)

It will perhaps render our thinking more accurate if we attempt to get a clear idea just here as to what consciousness is and what it is not. Various definitions of the term have been given, but the simplest and truest seems to be that it is a knowledge of the present existence of self, and perhaps also of surrounding objects, although it is conceivable that a conscious person might be shut off from all contact with the external world by abolition of the senses. Consciousness is certainly not what the philosopher and the theologian call the Ego, or the personality of the individual. A blow on the head puts an end for the time being to consciousness, but not to the man's personality. Neither is consciousness the same as the sense of personal identity, although it is closely connected with it. The conviction of a man that he is the same person through the manifold changes which occur in him as the successive years go on is evidently based on consciousness and memory. This is well illustrated by some very curious cases in which the sense or knowledge of personal identity has been completely lost. Not long ago an instance of such complete loss was recorded by Doctor Hewater (_Hospital Gazette_, November, 1879). The gentleman who was the subject of this loss found himself standing upon the dépôt-platform in Belaire City, Ohio, utterly ignorant of who he was or where he came from or where he was going to. He had a little money in his pocket, and in his hand a small port-manteau which contained a pair of scissors and a change of linen. He was well dressed, and on stating at the nearest hotel his strange condition and asking for a bed, was received as a guest. In the evening he went out and attended a temperance lecture. Excited by the eloquence of the speaker, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse, rushed from the room and began to smash with a club the windows of a neighboring tavern. The roughs ran out of the saloon and beat him very badly, breaking his arm: this brought him to the police-station, and thence to the hospital. For months every effort was made to identify him, but at the date of reporting without avail. He was known in the hospital as "Ralph," that name having been found on his underclothing. His knowledge upon all subjects unconnected with his identity is correct: his mental powers are good, and he has shown himself expert at figures and with a pen. For a long time it was thought that he was feigning, but every one about him was finally convinced that he is what he says he is--namely, a man without knowledge of his personal identity. This curious case, which is by no means unparalleled in the annals of psychological medicine, shows how distinct memory is from consciousness. Memory of the past was in Ralph entirely abolished so far as concerned his own personality, but consciousness was perfect, and the results of previous mental training remained, as is shown by his use of figures. It was as though there was a dislocation between consciousness and the memory of self.

The distinctness of consciousness from memory is also shown by dreams. Events which have passed are often recalled during the unconsciousness of sleep. The curious although common carrying of the memory of a dream over from the unconsciousness of sleep to the consciousness of waking movements further illustrates the complete distinction between the two cerebral functions.

If memory, then, be not part of consciousness, what is its nature? There is a law governing nervous actions both in health and disease which is known as that of habitual action. The curious reflex movements made by the frog when acid is put upon its foot, as detailed in my last paper, were explained by this law. The spinal cord, after having frequently performed a certain act under the stimulus of conscious sensation, becomes so accustomed to perform that act that it does it when the oft-felt peripheral impulse comes again to it, although the cerebral functions and consciousness are suspended. A nerve-centre, even of the lowest kind, once moulded by repeated acts, retains their impression--i.e. remembers them. Learning to walk is, as was shown in the last paper, training the memory of the lower nerve-centres at the base of the brain until at last they direct the movements of walking without aid from consciousness. The musician studies a piece of music. At first the notes are struck in obedience to a conscious act of the will founded upon a conscious recognition of the printed type. By and by the piece is so well known that it is played even when the attention is directed to some other subject; that is, the act of playing has been repeated until the lower nerve-centres, which preside over the movements of the fingers during the playing, have been so impressed that when once the impulses are started they flow on uninterruptedly until the whole set has been gone through and the piece of music is finished. This is the result of memory of the lower nerve-centres. At first, the child reads only by a distinct conscious effort of memory, recalling painfully each word. After a time the words become so impressed upon the lower nerve-centres that we may read on when our attention is directed to some other thing. Thus, often we read aloud and are unconscious of what we have read, precisely as the compositor habitually sets up pages of manuscript without the faintest idea of what it is all about. This law of habitual action applies not only to the lower nerve-centres in their healthy condition, but with equal force in disease. It is notorious that one of the great difficulties in the cure of epilepsy is the habit which is acquired by the nerve-centres of having at intervals attacks of convulsive discharge of nerve-force. Some years since I saw in consultation a case which well illustrates this point. A boy was struck in the head with a brick, and dropped unconscious. On coming to be was seized with an epileptic convulsion. These convulsions continually recurred for many months before I saw him. He never went two hours without them, and had usually from thirty to forty a day--some, it is true, very slight, but others very severe. Medicines had no influence over him, and with the idea that there might be a point of irritation in the wound itself causing the epilepsy, the scar was taken out. The result was that the seizures were the same day reduced very much in frequency, and in a short time became amenable to treatment, so that finally complete recovery occurred. He had, however, probably fifty convulsions in all after the removal of the scar before this result was achieved. Undoubtedly, in this case the point of irritation was removed by the operation. The cause of the convulsions having been taken away, they should have stopped at once. But here the law of habitual action asserted itself, and it was necessary to overcome the remembrance of the disease by the nerve-centres. It is plain that the higher nerve-centre remembers the idea or fact because it is impressed by ideas and facts, precisely as the lower spinal nerve-centres in the frog remember irritations and movements which have impressed them. The faculty of memory resides in all nerve-centres: the nature of that which is remembered depends upon the function of the individual centre. A nerve-cell which thinks remembers thought--a nerve-cell which causes motion remembers motion.

The so-called cases of double consciousness are perfectly simple in their explanation when the true nature of memory is borne in mind. In these cases the subject seems to lead a double life. The attacks usually come on suddenly. In the first attack all memory of the past is lost. The person is as an untaught child, and is forced to begin re-education. In some of these cases this second education has gone on for weeks, and advanced perhaps beyond the stage of reading, when suddenly the patient passes back to his original condition, losing now all memory of events which had occurred and all the knowledge acquired in what may be called his second state, but regaining all that he had originally possessed. Weeks or months afterward the second state reoccurs, the individual now forgetting all memory of the first or natural condition. It is usually found that events happening and knowledge acquired during the first attack of what we have called the second state are remembered in subsequent returns, so that the second education can be taken up at the point at which it was lost, and progress be made. This alternation of conditions has in some instances gone on for years, the patient living, as it were, two lives at broken intervals. This condition, usually called double consciousness, is not double consciousness at all, but, if the term may be allowed, double memory. It is evidently allied in its nature to the loss of the sense of personal identity. Certain phenomena of remembrance seen frequently in exhausting diseases, and especially in old age, show the permanence of impressions made upon the higher nerve-centres, and are also very similar in their nature to this so-called double consciousness. Not long since a very aged lady of Philadelphia, who was at the point of death, began to talk in an unknown tongue, soon losing entirely her power of expressing herself in English. No one could for a time make out the language she was speaking, but it was finally found to be Portuguese; and in tracing the history of the octogenarian it was discovered that until four or five years of age she had been brought up in Rio Janeiro, where Portuguese is spoken. There is little difference between the nature of such a case and that of the so-called double consciousness, both involving the forgetting of that which has been known for years.

There is a curious mental condition sometimes produced by large doses of hasheesh which might be termed double consciousness more correctly than the state to which the name is usually applied. I once took an enormous dose of this substance. After suffering from a series of symptoms which it is not necessary here to detail, I was seized with a horrible undefined fear, as of impending death, and began at the same time to have marked periods when all connection seemed to be severed between the external world and myself. During these periods I was unconscious in so far that I was oblivious of all external objects, but on coming out of one it was not a blank, dreamless void upon which I looked back, a mere empty space, but rather a period of active but aimless life, full, not of connected thought, but of disjointed images. The mind, freed from the ordinary laws of association, passed, as it were, with lightning-like rapidity from one idea to another. The duration of these attacks was but a few seconds, but to me they seemed endless. Although I was perfectly conscious during the intermissions between the paroxysms, all power of measuring time was lost: seconds appeared to be hours--minutes grew to days--hours stretched out to infinity. I would look at my watch, and then after an hour or two, as I thought, would look again and find that scarcely a minute had elapsed. The minute-hand appeared motionless, as though graven in the face itself: the laggard second-hand moved so slowly that it seemed a hopeless task to watch it during its whole infinite round of a minute, and I always gave up in despair before the sixty seconds had elapsed. When my mind was most lucid there was a distinct duplex action in regard to the duration of time. I would think to myself, "It has been so long since a certain event!"--an hour, for example, since the doctor was summoned--but Reason would say, "No, it has been only a few minutes: your thoughts and feelings are caused by the hasheesh." Nevertheless, I was not able to shake off, even for a moment, this sense of the almost indefinite prolongation of time. Gradually the periods of unconsciousness became longer and more frequent, and the oppressive feeling of impending death more intense. It was like a horrible nightmare: each successive paroxysm was felt to be the longest I had suffered. As I came out of it a voice seemed constantly saying, "You are getting worse; your paroxysms are growing longer and deeper; they will overmaster you; you will die." A sense of personal antagonism between my will-power and myself, as affected by the drug, grew very strong. I felt as though my only chance was to struggle against these paroxysms--that I must constantly arouse myself by an effort of will; and that effort was made with infinite toil and pain. It seemed to me as if some evil spirit had the control of the whole of me except the will, and was in determined conflict with that, the last citadel of my being. Once or twice during a paroxysm I felt myself mounting upward, expanding, dilating, dissolving into the wide confines of space, overwhelmed by a horrible, unutterable despair. Then by a tremendous effort I seemed to break loose and to start up with the shuddering thought, "Next time you will not be able to throw this off; and what then?" The sense of double consciousness which I had to some extent is often, under the action of hasheesh, much more distinct. I have known patients to whom it seemed that they themselves sitting upon the chair were in continual conversation with a second self standing in front of them. The explanation of this curious condition is a difficult one. It is possible that the two sides of the brain, which are accustomed in health to work as one organ, are disjoined by the poison, so that one half of the brain thinks and acts in opposition to the other half.

From what has already been said it is plain that memory is entirely distinct from consciousness, and that it is in a certain sense automatic, or at least an attribute of all nerve-centres. If this be so, it would seem probable, _a priori_, that other intellectual acts are also distinct from consciousness. For present purposes the activities of the cerebrum may be divided into the emotional and the more strictly-speaking intellectual acts. A little thought will, I think, convince any of my readers that emotions are as purely automatic as the movements of the frog's hind leg. The Irishman who said that he was really a brave man, although he had a cowardly pair of legs which always ran away with him, was far from speaking absurdly. It is plain that passion is something entirely beyond the conscious will, because it is continually excited from without, and because we are unable to produce it by a mere effort of the will without some external cause. The common phrase, "He is working himself up into a passion," indicates a perception of the fact that consciousness sometimes employs memories, thoughts, associations, etc. to arouse the lower nerve-centres that are connected with the emotion of anger. It is so also with various other emotions. The soldier who habitually faces death in the foremost rank of the battle, and yet shrinks in mortal fear or antipathy from a mouse, is not an unknown spectacle. It is clear that his fear of the little animal is based not upon reason, but upon an uncontrollable sensitiveness in his nervous system acquired by inheritance or otherwise. It does not follow from this that conscious will is not able to affect emotion. As already pointed out, it can arouse emotion by using the proper means, and it undoubtedly can, to a greater or less extent, directly subdue emotion. The law of inhibition, as it is called by the physiologist, dominates the whole nervous system. Almost every nerve-centre has above it a higher centre whose function it is directly to repress or subdue the activity of the lower centre. A familiar instance of this is seen in the action of the heart: there are certain nerve-centres which when excited lessen the rate of the heart's beat, and are even able to stop it altogether. The relation of the will-power to the emotions is directly inhibitory. The will is able to repress the activity of those centres which preside over anger. In the man with red hair these centres may be very active and the will-power weak; hence the inhibitory influence of the will is slight and the man gets angry easily. In the phlegmatic temperament the anger-centres are slow to action, the will-power strong, and the man is thrown off his balance with difficulty. It is well known that power grows with exercise, and when we habitually use the will in controlling the emotional centres its power continually increases. The man learning self-control is simply drilling the lower emotional centres into obedience to the repressive action of the higher will. Without further demonstration, it is clear that emotion is distinct from conscious will, and is automatic in the sense in which the term has been used in this article.

Imagination also is plainly distinct from consciousness. It acts during sleep. Often, indeed, it runs riot during the slumbers of the night, but at times it works with an automatic regularity exceeding its powers during the waking moments. It is also true that judgment is exercised in sleep, and that reason sometimes exerts its best efforts in that state. But not only do the intellectual nets go on without consciousness during sleep, but also while we are awake. Some years since I was engaged in working upon a book requiring a good deal of thought. Very frequently I would be unable to solve certain problems, but leaving them would find a day or two afterward, on taking pen in hand, that the solution traced itself without effort on the paper clearly and logically. During the sleeping hours, or during the waking hours of a busy professional life, the brain had, without my consciousness, been solving the difficulties. This experience is by no means a peculiar one. Many scientific workers have borne testimony to a similar habit of the cerebrum. The late Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, the discoverer of the mathematical method known as that of the quaternions, states that his mind suddenly solved that problem after long work when he was thinking of something else. He says in one place: "Tomorrow will be the fifteenth birthday of the quaternions. They started into life or light full grown on the 16th of October, 1843, as I was walking with Lady Hamilton to Dublin and came up to Brougham Bridge; that is to say, I then and there felt the galvanic circle of thought closed, and the sparks which fell from it were the fundamental equations between _I, F_ and _K_ exactly as I have used them ever since. I felt the problem to have been at that moment solved--an intellectual want relieved which had haunted me for at least fifteen years before." Mr. Appolo, a distinguished scientific inventor, stated in the Proceedings of the Royal Society that it was his habit to get the bearings and facts of a case during the day and go to bed, and wake the next morning with the problem solved. If the problem was a difficult one he always passed a restless night. Examples might be multiplied. Sir Benjamin Brodie, speaking of his own mental action, states that when he was unable to proceed further in some investigation he was accustomed to let the matter drop. Then "after an interval of time, without any addition to my stock of knowledge, I have found the obscurity and confusion in which the subject was originally enveloped to have cleared away. The facts have seemed all to settle themselves in their right places, and their mutual relations to have become apparent, although I have not been sensible of having made any distinct effort for that purpose."

Not only is there such a thing, then, as unconscious thought, but it is probable that the best thinking is rarely, if ever, done under the influence of consciousness. The poet creates his work when the inspiration is on him and he is forgetful of himself and the world. Consciousness may aid in pruning and polishing, but in creating it often interferes with, rather than helps, the cerebral action. I think any one of my readers who has done any literary or scientific writing will agree that his or her best work is performed when self and surrounding objects have disappeared from thought and consciousness scarcely exists more than it does in a dream. Sometimes the individual is conscious of the flow of an undercurrent of mental action, although this does not rise to the level of distinct recognition. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of a business-man of Boston who, whilst considering a very important question, was conscious of an action going on in his brain so unusual and painful as to excite his apprehension that he was threatened with palsy; but after some hours his perplexity was all at once cleared up by the natural solution of the problem which was troubling him, worked out, as he believed, in the obscure and restless interval. "Jumping to a conclusion," a process to which the female sex is said to be especially prone, is often due to unconscious cerebration, the reasoning being so rapid that the consciousness cannot follow the successive steps. It is related that Lord Mansfield once gave the advice to a younger friend newly appointed to a colonial judgeship, "Never give reasons for your decisions. Your judgments will very probably be right, but your reasons will almost certainly be wrong." The brain of the young judge evidently worked unconsciously with accuracy, but was unable to trace the steps along which it really travelled.

We are not left to the unaided study of our mental processes for proof that the human brain is a mechanism. In the laboratory of Professor Goltz in Strasburg I saw a terrier from which he had removed, by repeated experiments, all the surface of the brain, thereby reducing the animal to a simple automaton. Looked at while lying in his stall, he seemed at first in no wise different from other dogs: he took food when offered to him, was fat, sleek and very quiet. When I approached him he took no notice of me, but when the assistant caught him by the tail he instantly became the embodiment of fury. He had not sufficient perceptive power to recognize the point of assault, so that his keeper, standing behind him, was not in danger. With flashing eyes and hair all erect the dog howled and barked furiously, incessantly snapping and biting, first on this side and then on that, tearing with his fore legs and in every way manifesting rage. When his tail was dropped by the attendant and his head touched, the storm at once subsided, the fury was turned into calm, and the animal, a few seconds before so rageful, was purring like a cat and stretching out its head for caresses. This curious process could be repeated indefinitely. Take hold of his tail, and instantly the storm broke out afresh: pat his head, and all was tenderness. It was possible to play at will with the passions of the animal by the slightest touches.

During the Franco-German contest a French soldier was struck in the head with a bullet and left on the field for dead, but subsequently showed sufficient life to cause him to be carried to the hospital, where he finally recovered his general health, but remained in a mental state very similar to that of Professor Goltz's dog. As he walked about the rooms and corridors of the soldiers' home in Paris he appeared to the stranger like an ordinary man, unless it were in his apathetic manner. When his comrades were called to the dinner-table he followed, sat down with them, and, the food being placed upon his plate and a knife and fork in his hands, would commence to eat. That this was not done in obedience to thought or knowledge was shown by the fact that his dinner could be at once interrupted by awakening a new train of feeling by a new external impulse. Put a crooked stick resembling a gun into his hand, and at once the man was seized with a rage comparable to that produced in the Strasburg dog by taking hold of his tail. The fury of conflict was on him: with a loud yell he would recommence the skirmish in which he had been wounded, and, crying to his comrades, would make a rush at the supposed assailant. Take the stick out of his hand, and at once his apathy would settle upon him; give him a knife and fork, and, whether at the table or elsewhere, he would make the motions of eating; hand him a spade, and he would begin to dig. It is plain that the impulse produced by seeing his comrades move to the dining-room started the chain of automatic movements which resulted in his seating himself at the table. The weapon called into new life the well-known acts of the battle-field. The spade brought back the day when, innocent of blood, he cultivated the vineyards of sunny France.

In both the dog and the man just spoken of the control of the will over the emotions and mental acts was evidently lost, and the mental functions were performed only in obedience to impulses from without--i.e. were automatic. The human brain is a complex and very delicate mechanism, so uniform in its actions, so marvellous in its creation, that it is able to measure the rapidity of its own processes. There are scarcely two brains which work exactly with the same rapidity and ease. One man thinks faster than another man for reasons as purely physical as those which give to one man a faster gait than that of another. Those who move quickly are apt to think quickly, the whole nervous system performing its processes with rapidity. This is not, however, always the case, as it is possible for the brain to be differently constructed, so far as concerns its rapidity of action, from the spinal cord of the same individual. Our power of measuring time without instruments is probably based upon the cerebral system of each individual being accustomed to move at a uniform rate. Experience has taught the brain that it thinks so many thoughts or does so much work in such a length of time, and it judges that so much time has elapsed when it has done so much work. The extraordinary sense of prolongation of time which occurs in the intoxication produced by hasheesh is probably due to the fact that under the influence of the drug the brain works very much faster than it habitually does. Having produced a multitude of images or thoughts in a moment, the organ judges that a corresponding amount of time has elapsed. Persons are occasionally seen who have the power of waking at any desired time: going to bed at ten o'clock, they will rouse themselves at four, five or six in the morning, as they have made up their minds to do the previous night. The explanation of this curious faculty seems to be that in these persons the brain-functions go on with so much regularity during sleep that the brain is enabled to judge, though unconsciously, when the time fixed upon has arrived, and by an unconscious effort to recall consciousness.

Of course the subject of automatism might have been discussed at far greater length than is allowable in the limits of two magazine articles, but sufficient has probably been said to show the strong current of modern physiological psychology toward proving that all ordinary mental actions, except the exercise of the conscious will, are purely physical, produced by an instrument which works in a method not different from that in which the glands of the mouth secrete saliva and the tubules of the stomach gastric juice. Some of my readers may say this is pure materialism, or at least leads to materialism. No inquirer who pauses to think how his investigation is going to affect his religious belief is worthy to be called scientific. The scientist, rightly so called, is a searcher after truth, whatever may be the results of the discovery of the truth. Modern science, however, has not proved the truth of materialism. It has shown that the human organism is a wonderful machine, but when we come to the further question as to whether this machine is inhabited by an immortal principle which rules it and directs it, or whether it simply runs itself, science has not, and probably cannot, give a definite answer. It has reached its limit of inquiry, and is unable to cross the chasm that lies beyond. There are men who believe that there is nothing in the body save the body itself, and that when that dies all perishes: there are others, like the writer, who believe that they feel in their mental processes a something which they call "will," which governs and directs the actions of the machine, and which, although very largely influenced by external surroundings, is capable of rising above the impulses from without, leading them to believe in the existence of more than flesh--of soul and God. The materialist, so far as natural science is concerned, stands upon logical ground, but no less logical is the foundation of him who believes in human free-will and immortality. The decision as to the correctness of the beliefs of the materialist or of the theist must be reached by other data than those of natural science.

H.C. WOOD, M.D.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM AND DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.

A movement which appeals not to the emotions, but to the intellect--whose advocates aim at enlightening-the public mind and convincing it of the truth of some new or disregarded principle, and the necessity of enforcing it--needs above all things open and active opposition, both as a stimulant to its supporters and as a means of arousing general attention. It has been very unfortunate for our Civil-Service Reformers that they have never been able to provoke discussion. They have had the field of argument all to themselves. Their repeated challenges have been received only with silent respect, scornful indifference, or expressions of encouragement still more depressing. Those whose hostility they were prepared to encounter have been the readiest to acknowledge the truth of their propositions-- considered as pure abstractions--and have even invited them to apply their system--in conjunction with that which it seeks to supplant. Meanwhile, the popular interest has been kept busily absorbed by issues of a different nature; and the Reformers, snubbed in quarters where they had confidently counted on aid, and hustled from the arena in which they had fondly imagined they were to play a prominent part and exert a decisive influence, are now, it is announced, about to devote their energies to the quiet propagation of their views by means of tracts and other publications, abstaining from any appearance in the domain of actual politics either as a distinct party or as an organized body of independent voters appealing to the hopes and fears of existing parties, and ready to co-operate with one or the other according to the inducements offered for their support.

We heartily wish them success in this new enterprise, and it is as a contribution to their efforts that we publish in this number of the Magazine an article which, so far as our observation extends, is the first direct argumentative attack upon their doctrines and open defence of the system they have assailed. We shall not undertake to anticipate their reply, but I shall content ourselves with pointing out, on the principle of _fas est ab hoste doceri,_ what they may learn from this attack, and especially what hints may be derived from it in regard to the proper objective point of their proposed operations. Hitherto, if we mistake not, they have been led to suppose that the only obstacles in their way are the interested antagonism of the "politicians" and the ignorant apathy of the great mass of the people, and it is because they have found themselves powerless to make head against the tactics of the former class that they intend to confine themselves henceforth to the work of awaking and enlightening the latter. There is always danger, however, when we are expounding our pet theories to a group of silent listeners, of ignoring their state of mind in regard to the subject-matter and mistaking the impression produced by our eloquence. George Borrow tells us that when preaching in Rommany to a congregation of Gypsies he felt highly flattered by the patient attention of his hearers, till he happened to notice that they all had their eyes fixed in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our present system sufficiently deep and general to demand its overthrow. Civil-service reform had a far easier task in England than it has here, and forces at its back which are here actively or inertly opposed to it. There the system of patronage was intimately connected with oligarchical rule; official positions were not so much monopolized by a victorious party as by a privileged class; the government of the day had little interest in maintaining the system, the bulk of the nation had a direct interest in upsetting it, and its downfall was a natural result of the growth of popular power and the decline of aristocracy. Our system, however similar in its character and effects, had no such origin; it does not belong to some peculiar institution which we are seeking to get rid of: on the contrary, it has its roots in certain conceptions of the nature of government and popular freedom--of the relations between a people and those who administer its affairs--which are all but universally current among us.

It is this last point which is clearly and forcibly presented in the article of our contributor, and which it will behoove the Reformers not to overlook. Nothing is more characteristic of the American mind, in reference to political ideas, than its strong conservatism. This fact, which has often puzzled foreign observers accustomed to connect democracy with innovating tendencies and violent fluctuations, is yet easily explained. Though ours is a new country, its system of government is really older than that of almost any other civilized country. In the century during which it has existed intact and without any material modification the institutions of most other nations have undergone a complete change, in some cases of form and structure, in others of theory and essence. Even England, which boasts of the stability of its government and its immunity from the storms that have overturned so many thrones and disorganized so many states, has experienced a fundamental, though gradual and peaceable, revolution. There, as elsewhere, the centre of power has changed, the chain of tradition has been broken, and new conceptions of the functions of government and its relations to the governed have taken the place of the old ones. But in America nothing of this kind has occurred: the "old order" has not passed away, nor have its foundations undergone the least change; the municipal and colonial institutions under which we first exercised the right of self-government, and the Constitution which gave us our national baptism, are still the fountain of all our political ideas; and our party struggles are not waged about new principles or animated by new watch words, but are fenced and guided by the maxims transmitted by the founders of the republic. This is our strength and our safeguard against wild experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism. We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, and of phrases that have lost their original significance. Because George III. distributed offices at his pleasure as rewards, and bound the holders to party services in conformity with his will, the sovereign people is to do the same. "Rotation in office" having been the means in the eighteenth century of dispelling political stagnation and checking jobbery and corruption, it is still the only process for correcting abuses and getting the public service properly performed. The prime duty of all good citizens is to emulate the incessant political activity of their patriotic forefathers, and it is owing solely to a too general neglect of this duty that ballot-stuffing and machine-running, and all the other evils unknown in early days and in primitive communities, have come into existence and gained sway throughout the land. These and similar views, according to our observation, characterize what we may without disrespect, and without confining the remark to the rural districts, term the provincial mind, and wherever they exist the ideas of the Civil-Service Reformers are not only not understood or treated as visionary, but are regarded with aversion and distrust as foreign, monstrous and inconsistent with popular freedom and republican government.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY.

I can easily understand why educated Americans cross the Atlantic every year in shoals in search of the picturesque; and I can understand, too, all that they say of the relief which ivied ruins and cathedrals and galleries, or any other reminders of past ages, give to their eyes, oppressed so long by our interminable rows of store-box houses, our pasteboard villas, the magnificence of our railway accommodations for Ladies and Gents, and all the general gaseous glitter which betrays how young and how rich we are. But I cannot understand why it is that their eyes, thus trained, should fail to see the exceptional picturesqueness of human life in this country. The live man is surely always more dramatic and suggestive than a house or a costume, provided we have eyes to interpret him; and this people, as no other, are made up of the moving, active deposits and results of world-old civilizations and experiments in living.

Outwardly, if you choose, the country is like one of the pretentious houses of its rich citizens--new, smug, complacently commonplace--but within, like the house again, it is filled with rare bits gathered out of every age and country and jumbled together in utter confusion. If you ride down Seventh street in a horse-car, you are in a psychological curio-shop. On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box. Nowhere do all the elements of Tragedy and Comedy play so strange a part as on the dead-level of this American stage. It is because it is so dead a level that we fail to see the part they play--because "furious Goth and fiery Hun" meet, not on the battle-field, but in the horse-car, dropping their cents together in a Slawson box.

For example, as to the tragedy.

I met at dinner not long ago a lady who was introduced to me under a French name, but whose clear olive complexion, erect carriage and singular repose of manner would indicate her rather to be a Spaniard. She wore a red rose in the coils of her jetty hair, and another fastened the black lace of her corsage. Her eyes, which were slow, dark and brilliant, always rested on you an instant before she spoke with that fearless candor which is not found in the eyes of a member of any race that has ever been enslaved. I was told that her rank was high among her own people, and in her movements and voice there were that quiet simplicity and total lack of self-consciousness which always belong either to a man or woman of the highest breeding, or to one whose purpose in life is so noble as to lift him above all considerations of self. Although a foreigner, she spoke English with more purity than most of the Americans at the table, but with a marked and frequent recurrence of forcible but half-forgotten old idioms; which was due, as! learned afterward, to her having had no book of English literature to study for several years but Shakespeare. I observed that she spoke but seldom, and to but one person at a time; but when she did, her casual talk was the brimming over of a mind of great original force as yet full and unspent. She was, besides, a keen observer who had studied much, but seen more.

This lady, in a word, was one who would deserve recognition by the best men and women in any country; and she received it here, as many of the readers of _Lippincott_, who will recognize my description, will remember. She was caressed and feted by literary and social celebrities in Washington and New York; Boston made much of her; Longfellow and Holmes made verses in her honor; prying reporters gave accounts of her singular charm and beauty to the public in the daily papers.

She was accompanied by two of the men of her family. They did not speak English, but they were men of strong practical sense and business capacity, with the odd combination in their character of that exaggerated perception of honorable dealing which we are accustomed to call chivalric. They had, too, a grave dignity and composure of bearing which would have befitted Spanish hidalgos, and beside which our pert, sociable American manner and slangy talk were sadly belittled. These men (for I had a reason in making particular inquiries concerning them) were in private life loyal friends, good citizens, affectionate husbands and fathers--in a word, Christian men, honest from the marrow to the outside.

Now to the strange part of my story, revolting enough to our republican ears. This lady and her people, in the country to which they belong, are held in a subjection to which that of the Russian serf was comparative freedom. They are held legally as the slaves not of individuals, but of the government, which has absolute power over their persons, lives and property. Its manner of exercising that power is, however, peculiar. They are compelled to live within certain enclosures. Each enclosure is ruled by a man of the dominant race, usually of the lower class, who, as a rule, gains the place by bribing the officer of government who has charge of these people. The authority of this man within the limits of the enclosure is literally as autocratic as that of the Russian czar. He distributes the rations intended by the government for the support of these people, or such part of them as he thinks fit, retaining whatever amount he chooses for himself. There is nothing to restrain him in these robberies. In consequence, the funds set aside by the government for the support of its wretched dependants are stolen so constantly by the officers at the capital and the petty tyrants of the separate enclosures that the miserable creatures almost yearly starve and freeze to death from want. Their resource would be, of course, as they are in a civilized country, to work at trades, to farm, etc. But this is not permitted to them. Another petty officer is appointed in each enclosure to barter goods for the game or peltry which they bring in or crops that they manage to raise. He fixes his own price for both his goods and theirs, and cheats them by wholesale at his leisure. There is no appeal: they are absolutely forbidden to trade with any other person. The men of my friend's family--educated men and shrewd in business as any merchant of Philadelphia--when at home were liable to imprisonment and a fine of five hundred dollars if they bought from or sold to any other person than this one man. They are, too, taught no trade or profession. Each enclosure has its appointed blacksmith, carpenter, etc. of the dominant class, who, naturally, will not share their profits by teaching their trade to the others.

Within the enclosures my friend and her people, no matter how enlightened or refined they may be, are herded, and under the same rules, as so many animals. They cannot leave the enclosure without passes, such as were granted to our slaves before the war when they wished to go outside of the plantation. This woman, when seated at President Hayes's table, the equal in mind and breeding of any of her companions, was, by the laws of her country, a runaway, legally liable to be haled by the police back to her enclosure, and shot if she resisted. She and her people are absolutely unprotected by any law. It is indeed the only case, so far as I know, in any Christian country, in which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings. They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of civilization and the wife and children to which the poorest negro, the most barbarous savage, has a right, any man of the dominant class can, without violating any law, take possession of the house, ravage the wife and thrust the children out to starve. The wrong-doer is subject to no penalty. The victim has no right of appeal to the courts. Hence such outrages are naturally of daily occurrence. Not only are they perpetrated on individuals, but frequently there is a raid made upon the whole of the inmates of one enclosure--whenever, in fact, the people in the neighborhood fancy they would like to take possession of their land. The kinsmen of my friend, with their clan numbering some seven hundred souls--a peaceable, industrious Christian community, living on land which had belonged to their ancestors for centuries--were swept off of it a few years ago at the whim of two of their rulers: their houses and poor little belongings were all left behind, and they were driven a thousand miles into a sterile, malarious region where nearly half of their number died. The story of their sufferings, their homesickness and their despair on the outward journey, and of how still later some thirty of them returned on foot, carrying the bones of those who had died to lay them in their old homes, is one of the most dramatic pages in history. De Quincey's "Flight of a Tartar Clan" does not equal it in pathos or as a story of heroism and endurance. At the end of their homeward journey, when almost within sight of their homes, the heroic little band were seized by order of the ruler of their enclosure and committed to prison. The tribe are still in the malarious swamps to which they were exiled. Strangers hold their farms and the houses which they built with their own hands.

The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they are criminally the aggressors. When they steal or kill they cannot be tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law. The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to punish at his discretion. He is judge, jury, and often executioner. He has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of any Christian monarch over his subjects. If he thinks proper to shoot the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to sustain him. If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.

My readers understand my little fable by this time. It is no fable, but a disgraceful truth.

The government under which a people--many of whom are educated, enlightened Christian gentlemen--are denied the legal rights of human beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself the refuge for the oppressed of all nations--the one spot on earth where every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of the country.

The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.

R.H.D.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA.

The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in one of the suburbs of New York. What we call "characters" were to be found in every cottage--the commonplace was the exception. Indeed, I do not remember that it existed at all in "The Lane," as this locality was called.

Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet. It was usually on the occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise. Very quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, "Danger, lay by thim intintions;" and the pipe was used as an indicator for the next movement--namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground.

Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her.

Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek his delights by stealth at a village a mile away. Mike was an elderly and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred. He was the owner of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move usually remembered to employ poor Mike. But it was on foot, as a more inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in her hand. Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master: she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied. She wore short petticoats and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle. Half an hour later she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.