Chapter V: By A. J. Warner (2)

The attempt to introduce a system which should give effect to the principle underlying the economic theory of Henry George in New Zealand was not hastily made, nor was it attempted on a scale that could be fairly open to the charge of being revolutionary in its incidence. The first step taken by the legislature was in the direction of so dealing with the public estate of the country as to encourage settlers to lease rather than to purchase the freehold. With this in view a system of leases in perpetuity was established, and areas of the best and most accessible of the land still unsold were set apart to be dealt with under the new plan. Any person, not already the holder of land in freehold, which, together with the land applied for under perpetual lease, would make an area of more than six hundred and forty acres, or one square mile, could apply for a lease of not more than three hundred and forty acres on perpetual lease. Five dollars per acre was fixed as the price of the land, such being the average price of first-class freehold land unimproved in the country, and the applicant was entitled to a lease for 999 years of the land applied for, subject to the conditions that he resided upon the land during the first ten years of the tenancy; that he improved it to the extent of thirty per cent of its upset value within six years; and that he paid as annual rental interest at the rate of five per cent on the price or value of the land.

Each lease contained clauses rendering the land subject to revaluation at the end of each period of twenty-one years, on which the rental would be calculated. If the new valuation, which it was provided should rigidly exclude all improvements on the land, was assented to by the tenant, the matter was settled for another twenty-one years; but if he objected to the new valuation as excessive, it was provided that he could demand that it should be offered by public auction (subject to payment of the value of his improvements), and that the amount bid for it either by himself or by anybody else at the sale should be esteemed the value on which the rental was to be calculated during the twenty-one years next following the sale. In case the present holder of the lease was the highest bidder, this was the only result of the sale; but in case he was outbid he was bound to transfer the lease to the best bidder, on receiving from the government the amount at which his improvements had been valued. This payment might be made in government bonds, bearing interest at four per cent, at the option of the government, and the new holder of the lease was charged as rent the interest on the value of the land as bid by himself and also interest at five per cent upon the former leaseholder's improvements. By this means it was proposed to retain for the community at large the increased value of the lands of the country which was not due to the improvements made from time to time by the leaseholder. The inducement held out to the public to accept such leases in preference to a freehold was the saving of capital involved in not paying for the land when taken up, but only interest on the amount. This, it was hoped, would suffice to render it popular with a considerable class of actual working settlers as distinguished from speculative buyers.

It is only fair to say that in spite of every effort that could be made by the government, the system did not commend itself to the judgment or the prejudices of the persons interested to any very great extent. What they wanted--what it may be taken for granted is wanted by nearly everybody in dealing with land--was a fixed tenure. It was not enough to know that they had a lease for 999 years; they wanted to know what they were to pay for it, not only during the first twenty-one years, but at any time during the 999. Eventually this had to be conceded, and as the land law of New Zealand now stands the holder of a perpetual lease gets it for a rental of four per cent upon the original price fixed by government on the land, subject still, however, to the conditions as to residence and improvements on the land during the first ten years.

Having abandoned this promising and theoretically perfect plan for securing to the state all state-produced increase in the value of the public lands, the New Zealand parliament was still anxious to secure for the country the other advantages held out by the author of the single-tax doctrine. These advantages may be briefly summed up in the words, the discouragement of large holdings and the prevention of speculation in future land values. To obtain these results without laying the community open to the charge of practical confiscation, which has been, and probably will always be, the strongest argument against the practical application of the doctrine of the single tax, as propounded by its author, was felt to be no easy matter. Even in New Zealand there were already some large freehold estates, and these naturally included some of the most desirable and valuable of the land. It was eventually decided to impose a land tax, the incidence of which would tend at least to discourage speculation, while it supplied revenue for the public expenditure.

A uniform tax of one penny in the pound sterling, equivalent to one two-hundred-and-fortieth part of the capital value of all land in the country held in freehold by Europeans, was imposed, the value of improvements being in all cases deducted from such valuation. Each owner of land is, however, allowed an exemption of land to the value of two thousand five hundred dollars, on which no tax is payable, as well as of all mortgage money secured on the freehold. Thus all freehold lands held by any individual are liable to be taxed above the value of $2,500, so far as he is really interested in them; while all money lent on mortgage of land is subject to a tax of five per cent on the annual interest reserved by the terms of the mortgage. New Zealand is mainly a country of small holdings, and the result of this system has been that, out of about 90,000 holders of land in freehold, only about 13,000 actually pay the tax on land. In other words, the settlers of the colony who own land which, apart from improvements and mortgage debts, is worth more than $2,500, are found to be only about one-seventh of the whole number.

To provide for the discouragement of land speculation on a large scale a further provision is made by the enactment of a further tax upon all lands held by individuals or corporations of a value exceeding $25,000 clear of incumbrance. This is called the graduated land tax, and provides for a farther taxation on all such lands, beginning at one-eighth in addition to the original tax, and rising by advances of an additional eighth for each sum of $25,000 at which the land is valued, until a maximum rate of three times the original tax is reached in the case of large estates. To provide for the risk of vexatious opposition to valuations on the part of owners, there is a farther provision that the government may at its option elect to purchase, at an advance of ten per cent over the valuation objected to, any unimproved land held in freehold. It is also a part of the system that the government may compulsorily purchase at a valuation any lands not in actual use in case any association of persons shall apply to have this done, undertaking satisfactorily to take the land upon its purchase under the conditions of perpetual lease, which of course includes subdivision into small areas, with residence and improvement.

By these means the people of New Zealand confidently expect to secure the subdivision of the lands of the country into small areas; to discourage to the utmost the holding of land by capitalists in expectation of greatly increased values at the expense of the less wealthy classes; to render practically impossible the establishment on any extensive scale of private landlordism in respect of agricultural lands; and gradually to substitute, as far as possible, the payment to the state of a yearly interest on value, for the purchase of the freehold in the land of the country.

So far as the experience of the last eight years, during which the system has been in force, may be taken as a reliable guide, the experiment shows many signs of success. It has certainly checked the tendency to speculate in lands with a view to a rise in price, which threatened to become a great, as it certainly was a growing, evil. It has been found that it will not pay to do this in the face of taxation, and particularly of the graduated tax; and owners of large areas of land have developed a strong inclination to subdivide and sell lands which they formerly were disposed to hoard and increase. The power given to the government to purchase lands where the owners have objected to the valuation for taxation purposes has not been widely exercised, but several very important and considerable compulsory purchases of estates have been made in cases where associations of persons wishing to take the land on perpetual lease have applied to the government for that purpose. The chief benefit of such examples, indeed, seems to have been in compelling owners either to use the land themselves or to offer it for sale to persons anxious to use it; but from the New Zealand point of view this would appear to be almost if not quite equally desirable. Finally, the land tax has largely enabled the country to do without other taxes, which would necessarily have fallen more heavily upon the class of workers with small incomes, instead of being levied on the classes best able to bear them.

It yet remains to be seen whether evils may not lurk, as yet unnoticed, in the system, which may impair if not destroy its usefulness. One consequence which was predicted by its opponents, however, has not been found to follow upon the introduction of the system. It was said that capital would be withdrawn from the country, and that poverty and stagnation would result. No such result has followed up to this time. New Zealand, with its less than a million inhabitants, is to-day looked on as one of the soundest dependencies of the British empire; it continues to draw to it from the mother country as much capital as it can profitably use; its exports steadily increase; and its people, if not rich, are well-to-do and comfortable.

It may be said, indeed, that New Zealand has not accepted Henry George's doctrines as they were propounded by their author, and this is literally true. It is, however, also true that they have accepted the essential spirit of those doctrines, and, applying that spirit to the circumstances of their own country, are giving probably the most useful practical illustration of all that is best in them for the world's acceptance. No doctrine in economics yet propounded for the acceptance of humanity has ever been found to be applicable in exactly the same form or to exactly the same extent under all circumstances, and this, it may be safely said, will prove emphatically true of the doctrine of the single tax. The single tax, like all other economic plans, is not an end, but only a means. The end must be the amelioration of the condition of the masses of the people, and the consequent prosperity and happiness of the great majority. In New Zealand the people and their leaders believe this to be secured by taxing wealth rather than comparative poverty; by giving every encouragement to those who will devote themselves to the cultivation of the land; and by throwing every obstacle in the path of those who would fain establish and promote the pernicious system of private landlordism, which everywhere tends to create and perpetuate class distinctions, with their long train of attendant evils.

In these respects New Zealand presents an object-lesson which can hardly fail to be of value to other countries, even if their conditions differ widely from her own. Her successes may be noted with advantage, her mistakes may be criticised with profit, in every free country and by all those who see that existing conditions are far from perfect in any part of the world, and that the safety as well as the advancement of society may depend largely upon the introduction of wise and, it may be, far-reaching reforms.

NATURAL SELECTION, SOCIAL SELECTION, AND HEREDITY.

BY PROFESSOR JOHN R. COMMONS,

_Of Syracuse University, N. Y._

The term "natural selection" is a misnomer, as Darwin himself perceived. It means merely survival. "Selection" proper involves intention, and belongs to human reason. Selection by man we call artificial. Natural selection is the outcome of certain physical facts: 1. Environment: the complex of forces, such as soil, climate, food, and competitors. 2. Heredity: the tendency in offspring to follow the type of the parent. 3. Variation: the tendency to diverge from that type. 4. Over-population: the tendency to multiply offspring beyond the food supply. 5. Struggle for life: the effort to exclude others or to consume others. 6. Consciousness of kind: the tendency to spare and coöperate with offspring and others of like type. 7. Survival of the fittest: the victory of those best fitted to their environment by heredity, variation, numbers, and consciousness of kind.

These biological facts underlie human society, but a new factor enters with novel results. This is self-consciousness. Society is based not merely on consciousness of kind, as worked out by Professor Giddings, but peculiarly on individual self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness is a product of evolution, at first biological as explained by natural selection, and second, sociological. The biological character is the prolongation of infancy, i. e. the prolonged plastic and unfolding state of the brain. This makes possible a new kind of development unknown to the animal, namely, education. Education is preëminently a social activity. I say education instead of environment. In natural selection there is a physical environment which presses upon individuals, and only those survive who are fitted to sustain this pressure. In social selection society enters between the individual and the physical environment, and, while slowly subordinating the latter, transforms its pressure upon the individual, and he alone survives who is fitted to bear the social pressure. This pressure reaches the individual through the educational media of language and social institutions, especially the family, the state, and property. Institutions rest upon ideas and beliefs, and these are epitomized in language. Language in turn, by giving names to things and relations, and by thus transmitting to each individual the accumulated race experience, gradually brings him to the consciousness of himself. This is education.

But self-consciousness is at first only vague, capricious, and unprincipled. It grows by becoming definite, self-controlled, and conscientious; that is, more regardful both of its own higher self and of others. It thus develops into moral character, which we call personality. Personality is the final outcome of social selection. When once liberated it becomes a new selective principle to which all others are subordinated. What, then, are the social conditions which promote or retard the survival of personality?

It is a debated question where we shall place the dividing line between pre-social and social man. In view of what precedes we should look for that line at the point where self-consciousness begins to throw about itself a social covering. This covering is private property. The former view that primitive property was common property is now nearly abandoned. The supposed village communities of free proprietors were really villages of slaves and serfs. The semblance of common property in primitive times belongs to the pre-social or gregarious stage, and differs but little from the common use of a given area by a colony of beavers.

Private property involves two facts: 1. Perception of enduring value in external objects; 2. Exclusive control and enjoyment of those objects. Its psychological basis is therefore self-consciousness, which is the knowledge not of an abstracted and isolated self, but of self as related to external nature and human beings.

The first private property was animals and tools. Artificial selection begins with the domestication of animals. Soon it lays hold on man himself by means of social institutions, all of which originate as private property. The primitive social family was not a state of promiscuity nor even the voluntary pairing of animals and birds, but it was private property in women, beginning as wife-capture and becoming wife-purchase and polygamy. Natural selection, too, is transcended when cannibalism ceases. The self-conscious victor enslaves his enemy and reduces him to property. Next, government arises as private despotism, and with it the land becomes the property of the chief. Thus the family, the state, protracted industry, and the control of social opportunities begin with that artificial selection denoted by private property.

Property in its early forms means the domination of the powerful over the weak. Social institutions develop out of this primitive tyranny, where the caprice of owners crushes the personality of the masses, towards a state of equal rights and opportunities for all. The industrial classes emerge from slavery and serfdom into a wage system, which in turn is modified in the direction of fair wages, short hours, and security of employment--fundamental conditions for personal development.

The family has arisen from the private property of a despot to the mutual coöperation of lovers, and the woman becomes a person instead of a chattel. The legal successor of polygamy--the slavery of women--is not monogamy, but prostitution, which is the wage system of the sexes, grounded on the subordinate position of women and their meagre opportunities for self-support.

Government is passing into democracy, and property in land and capital is being hedged about by the police and taxing powers, or diffused and socialized in the interest of the personal equality of all.

Social evolution is therefore the evolution of freedom and opportunity, on the one hand, and personality, on the other. Without freedom and security there can be no free will and moral character. Without exalted personality there can be no enduring freedom. The educational environment, therefore, which develops personality must itself develop with freedom. The ruling ideas of justice, integrity, morality, must move in advance, else the personality of individuals will not survive the temptations of freedom. To what extent, therefore, can education modify the individual? The answer is to be sought in the problems of heredity and degeneration.

The human degenerate is essentially different from the animal degenerate. The latter is solely a physical product, and by losing certain organs is better fitted for survival, as parasites and snakes.

Human degenerates, however, do not form a new type, but are on the decline to extinction. They are those who lack personality; that is, they are not moulded into harmony with a social environment which unfolds self-consciousness. They are strictly biological only when they are congenital and therefore not educable. They are social degenerates when they are the product of a degraded education. Both factors are radical. A born idiot can never be other than an idiot. On the other hand, the deprivation during childhood and youth of language and education, as shown by Caspar Hauser, or the wolf-boy of Agra, or the experiment of Emperor Akbar, leaves the normal natural endowments as idiotic as though they never existed. The two factors vary independently through all degrees. Education ranges from the slums to the pure firesides. The congenital equipment varies from the idiot to the genius.

The relative weight of these two factors is a matter of statistics. Absolutely speaking, heredity is everything; relatively, its social significance depends upon the actual proportion of abnormal to normal births.

The highest estimate I am able to make of the total number of degenerates, both born and induced, is five and one-half per cent of the population, as follows:

ESTIMATED TOTAL OF DEFECTIVES PER MILLION POPULATION.

Census estimate (1890).

Insane 1,697
Feeble-minded 1,526
Deaf and Dumb 659
Blind 805
Prisoners 1,315
Juvenile delinquents 237
Almshouse paupers 1,166
-----
7,405
Outdoor Criminals (five times the number of inmates) 7,760
Tramps (McCook, 1895, New Haven Conference of Charities
and Correction, 85,768) 1,308
Drunkards (Crothers, 1893, Chicago Conference, 1,200,000,
equal to about 10 per cent of voting population) 19,000
Prostitutes (weighted average of Levasseur's estimate for
rural (600) and urban (11,200 to 17,200) France, in
"La Population Française," vol. ii, p. 434) 5,000
Outdoor Paupers (weighted average of report at Nashville
Conference, 1894, 46 per cent in Penna. to 2.2 per cent
in N. Y.) 15,000
------
55,473

This estimate would make the maximum number of all degenerates 5.54 per cent of the population. From these must be deducted those who are not congenital. We can estimate the congenitals by three methods: by statistics of _atavism_, or _consanguinity_, and by _experiment_.

In the statistics of atavism we add together the physical abnormalities of the individual, assuming that a criminal type is found when these abnormalities reach the number of three or more. The statistical method always suffers the limitation that it indicates not identity, but probability. Yet it has an important value, provided it discovers ratios of probability which concur. This is not the case in the method by atavism. Sixty to seventy per cent of criminals do not belong to the assumed criminal type; and sixteen per cent of normal males are classed as criminals, whereas the actual number is less than three per cent of the males of criminal age. (See Lombroso, "The Female Offender," pp. 104, 105.)

While atavism itself is unquestioned, this method seizes upon rigid physical characters to measure educable qualities. And where the latter are themselves abnormal the causes may lie with education and not heredity.

The method by consanguinity seeks not the abnormalities of the patient himself, but the signs of disease and degeneracy in his blood relatives. It therefore greatly increases the apparent weight of heredity, for it collects symptoms from several individuals instead of one. The medical authorities ascribe fifty to eighty per cent of inebriety to heredity. This method fails as does the other, for, as seen in the Jukes or the drunkard, the child gets both its heredity and its education from the same degraded parents, and the method provides no measure for separating the two.

In sociology the method of experiment has but limited employment. The modern sociologist cannot mate the parents nor vivisect the soul, after the methods of the biologist. He can only move the child from one education to another, and his experiment is incidental to the larger purpose of saving the child. His results, too, can appear only as a ratio of probability; but this ratio measures the mental and moral qualities themselves directly and not by inference. Elmira Reformatory and others cure eighty per cent of their charges. Model placing-out institutions and free kindergartens save nearly all. And these are taken from the most vicious and criminal parentage in the land. Our five and one-half per cent of degenerates must therefore be greatly reduced in order to find the residuum of congenitals. I have made the following deductions:

ESTIMATED DEFECTIVES NOT CONGENITAL, PER MILLION POPULATION.

Criminals (80 per cent of total) 7,369
Prostitutes (80 per cent of total) 4,000
Outdoor Paupers (80 per cent of total) 16,000
Tramps (80 per cent of total) 1,046
Drunkards (50 per cent of total) 9,500
------
37,915
Which deducted from 55,473
leaves congenital defectives 17,558

equal to 1.75 per cent of the population. Overlappings would diminish this ratio; greater infant mortality and the omitted youthful defectives would increase it.

If less than two per cent of the births are below the normal Aryan brain level, on the other hand possibly two per cent are above the average, and should be classed as the geniuses who could achieve eminence regardless of surroundings. The remaining ninety per cent or more are born with ordinary equipment; they are hereditarily neither good nor bad, criminal nor virtuous, brilliant nor stupid. With these masses of the people the first fifteen years of infancy and youth are decisive.

We may now classify the selective forces of society. Social selection is partly natural and partly artificial. It originates artificially in the self-consciousness of dominant individuals. Struggle and conflict ensue, out of which private property survives in its various forms as an intended control over others. This control is then transmitted as the various social institutions to succeeding generations and becomes for them natural and unintended. These social institutions then constitute a coercive environment, not over wholly unwilling subjects, but over those whose wills are shaped by education and social pressure to coöperate with the very institutions that suppress them.

Gradually, as subordinate classes become self-conscious, innovations are made which aim to check the unbridled despotism of private property; new conflicts thereupon take place and certain innovations survive, which, at first artificial, become natural for the next generations.

As society becomes more definite, reflective, and humane, as it acquires fixed laws and government, it increases the range of artificial selection; it supplants custom by statute, and remodels its inherited institutions.

It is now animated by a new motive, the development of moral character in all the people. With reference to this new motive social selection is either direct or indirect. Direct selection is highly artificial, but it is only negative. It consists in segregating the degenerates to prevent propagation. Society cannot, of course, directly interfere with the marriage choice of normal persons, for that would be to choke the purest expression of personality. But it can isolate the two per cent who will never rise to moral responsibility. This would doubtless increase the wards of the state, but it is needed both for the reason already given and, more especially, to clarify the public mind on the causes of delinquency and dependency. As long as these evils can be charged to heredity the public is blinded to the share that springs from social injustice.

The increase and classification of the custodial population here contemplated is a problem for administrative charity. Possibly the colony system would make that population mutually self-supporting and also remove the current sentimentalism against long isolation of the incurables.

With the ground cleared of the true degenerates, the operations of indirect social selection can be seen. This also is artificial, but in a less mechanical way. It consists in so adjusting the political, industrial, and social environment as to affect personality, either to suppress or develop it. The two instruments are legal rights and education. For example, the tenement-house congestion, with its significant educational environment, is the product of laws of property and taxation which favor owners and speculators instead of tenants, and of private property in rapid transit which puts a tax on exit to the suburbs. It cannot be said of this and other selective factors, such as the profit-making saloon, long hours of work, low pay, irregular employment, that they permit natural selection to operate. They suppress personality, which preëminently is the natural fact in the human being. Social selection is therefore tending to become less and less arbitrary, but is making room for a higher natural selection--a natural selection where not brute force and cunning are the fittest to survive, but where, with freedom, security, and equal opportunity, the human personality will work out its own survival. Man alone of all the animals can rise to the angels, but he alone can fall below the brutes. This is the glory and the penalty of personality. It becomes a unique selective agency whose standard is raised with the advance of civilization. The Australian cannibal, without opium, tobacco, alcohol, or syphilis, may survive with a low morality. The American exposed to these destroyers must be a better man or perish. Personality, thus becoming a keen selective principle, is based not necessarily on overpopulation and competition, but on that self-destruction which comes from vice, disease, and drunkenness. Its degraded offspring will perish or feed the ranks of the hereditary degenerates to be properly segregated and ended.

But with education and opportunity the higher forms of human character will naturally increase and survive. With the independence and education of women sexual selection becomes a refined and powerful agent of progress. With the right to work guaranteed, the tramp and indiscriminate charity have no excuse, and the honest workman becomes secure in the training and survival of his family.

We hear much of scientific charity. There is also a scientific justice. The aim of the former is to educate true character and self-reliance. The aim of the latter is to open the opportunities for the free expression of character. Education and justice are the methods of social selection. By their coöperation is shaped the moral environment where alone can survive that natural yet supernatural product, human personality.

PSYCHIC OR SUPERMUNDANE EXPERIENCES.

BY CORA L. V. RICHMOND.

From between ten and eleven years of age I have been endowed with gifts and favored with experiences that, I am well assured, are very exceptional, and that, until quite recently, have not been admitted to the realm of psychical investigation, philosophical discussion, or even human credence. Lately, however, there have been found a sufficient number of well authenticated facts in similar lines of experience to warrant the investigation and classification of them (if possible) under a modern name, "Psychic Research," and under a well established and not so recent one, Spiritualism.

I am not intending to discuss these subjects, _per se_, nor to endeavor to classify or explain the experiences I am about to relate. They are _experiences_, as real as any of those in my human or mundane existence; indeed, if I were called upon to decide that one is real and the other illusion, I should say without hesitation that these, and similar ones throughout my lifetime, are the real, and the ordinary mundane experiences unreal.

At the age above referred to I was, without any seeking, and without any surrounding circumstances to "suggest" such a state, taken possession of (entranced) by intelligences, distinct personalities in thought, word, and action, who spoke through my organism, unfolded and educated my mind, in fact became my mental and spiritual instructors. The public discourses and teachings given under these conditions are well known to many of the readers of THE ARENA, as these labors are the work of a lifetime.

It is not of this public work that I am constrained to write; but I may as well say here that I have had no other teachers, no other instructors, and have pursued no course of study or reading of human books; those whom I call my guides and guardians have been my teachers. During the time that these outside intelligences are controlling and speaking through my organism I am wholly unconscious of what is passing in human life and wholly unaware of that which is being uttered through my lips. I am also unaware of the lapse of time.

It may be best for me to here declare that I am not, in the usual sense, peculiar, nor was I different in my childhood from other children, save as each differs from the other. I was very diffident, and--not using the word in the psychical sense--sensitive. I was not given to morbid states or to the "dreaming of dreams." Perhaps I was imaginative; most children are; and I loved fairy tales, but not unduly. This is simply to show that there was no abnormal condition of mind or body to produce the supernormal results that I have referred to.

I ought also to say that I never made the slightest preparation for the discourses and poems given through my lips, many of which, as the reader may know, were listened to by able and thoughtful minds, and from them received the highest praise. I tell this, not boastingly, but with humble gratitude that I have been made the instrument of giving the message of immortality to the world.

My own experiences during this period of entrancement, or while in the supernormal state, may be of peculiar interest to the reader, since they seem to be almost unique. While passing into this state I experience no physical sensations that are describable; a sense of being set free, of passing into a larger realm,--not of being transported or going anywhere,--is all that I can ever recall as sensation. Before I have time or opportunity to think how I feel, I am in the other state. Then I see, but I now know it is perception more than sight; I sometimes experience that which we call hearing in the human state, but I am fully aware; perception supersedes the senses.

Those whom I meet are individualities; many are friends known to me in the form before they passed from the mortal state; many are those who were unknown to me personally, only known by name and fame; and many I have never known until they revealed themselves to me in this "inner," "higher," other realm. When returning to outward consciousness, I often see, or remember as sight, such visions of surpassing loveliness that no language, no gift of art, even with genius-portraiture, could describe or picture them. These scenes and visions are associated with individuals who exist in that state, and, apparently, are objective; yet I am fully aware that they illustrate or depict the states and tastes of the individuals with whom they are seen, and are not organic physical forms, but psychic projections of the individual spirits. These forms and scenes readily pass and change according to the state of the one seeing them, or according to the state of the individual with whom they are associated. The "sphere" of a spirit, or of spirits, is the state or condition, not the environment.

In early life, before my mind had thought on the "objective" and "subjective" meanings of thoughts and things, I thought these scenes were "objective" in the human, mundane sense. I am now perfectly aware that every sensuous faculty--seeing, hearing, etc.--is superseded by this "perception" to which I have before referred; in fact, that the bodily senses as well as the mental faculties--brain expression--are but the different avenues of perceiving and conveying the intelligence of the individual spirit while associated with material form, this perception, or awareness, being the one supreme state of the spirit.

Still I have been shown series after series of beautiful scenes,--gardens, landscapes, visions of art, transcendent pictures of tint, form, and tone that no language can portray; and I am sure these abide for all who wish for or have need of them, and are the illustrations of the spiritual states of those with whom one comes in spiritual contact--_rapport_. Yet the greater the degree of perception, the less important become these illustrations of states; we not only see "face to face," but perceive soul to soul. I became ashamed, almost, of the state of mind requiring these illustrations or any similar presentations. I found knowledge, however, in all the methods employed by my teachers, for they knew my needs.

Conversation in that state is not by means of speech or even language; sometimes before the thought is formulated the answer comes. Such is the rare sympathy existing between teacher and pupil in this state that the guide knows before the question is formed. Still, there must be the conscious desire for knowledge, or no knowledge can be received; reminding one of the "Seek, and ye shall find" of the ancient Truth-Teller.

When in that state I readily pass to a knowledge of what intimate friends in earth-life are doing and thinking. I even enter into such _rapport_ as to be aware of their material surroundings, their states of mind, and their bodily health, obtaining all this from their minds, not from physical consciousness or sensation. Many times they have been also conscious of my presence, and we have afterward verified these experiences by outward correspondence, mostly to satisfy our friends. One or two instances will suffice to illustrate this class of experiences.

When I was yet a child, twelve years of age, my father accompanied me on one of my pilgrimages of spiritual work to western New York, our former home. During that visit or tour a circle for investigation and experiment was formed in Dunkirk, N. Y. After we returned to our then home in Wisconsin, I was one evening entranced,--as was usual,--and while in that state was distinctly conscious of being in Dunkirk, of seeing every member of the circle, with all of whom I was acquainted except one lady. She proved to be the seer of the evening. She saw me and described me so accurately that everyone in the circle recognized me, and, of course, thought I was dead. This so disturbed her mental or psychic state that I could not impress upon her mind that my body was entranced and that this was but one of my usual spiritual pilgrimages. On returning to my mundane state I narrated what I had experienced, and asked my father to write at once to the circle in Dunkirk and relieve their minds. He did so, but, as naturally would occur, they had also written, the letters crossing each other on the way, and their letter confirmed what I had told in every particular.

Later in life I had a lady friend whom I repeatedly visited and comforted, for she was in great sorrow. One time I made her see my body, or its apparition, so plainly that she saw the dress in which it was clothed--precisely what I had wished, as it was the color she most liked to see me wear. Another friend in California became so susceptible to my presence that she wrote long letters from me--automatically--which I, in this state, dictated to her, thus rendering correspondence between us almost superfluous except for verification to our outward senses. My own mother was aware of my presence almost daily; and it was a curious fact that my telltale spirit would go to her and reveal the very things I wished to keep from her,--any little surprises or presents, or the time of my arrival home on a visit. However late the hour, I always found her ready with a warm supper to receive me. When arriving after the journey home she would say: "You came to me last night in spirit and told me you were coming in body." All important things connected with my welfare she knew in a similar way.

Two friends, Mr. and Mrs. B----, were extensive travellers. At one time they were absent three years, taking a tour of the Orient. We did not keep up a regular correspondence, as mutually our time was too much taken up with our respective duties or pleasures, but I could always locate them while I was in this "inner" state. At one time I saw them surrounded by what seemed more like a scene in the spirit state than in earth-life. They were on an island, surrounded by water-lilies; the skies were full of golden light, and they were amid pavilions, grottos, and altars of quaint and unique design. I could not place them, but on returning to my mundane state I related to my family what I had seen, and I wrote down the date. In about three or four weeks I had a letter from them dated at Tokio, giving a description of this very island I had seen; they were there on that very day when I saw them, and the island was as I had seen it. It proved to be one of the sacred islands in Japan.

This consciousness of visiting earth friends is, however, only the smallest part of these inner experiences; and usually occurs when I am passing into or out of the deeper or more spiritual states. Although I could fill volumes with these interesting experiences,--verified by being shared with others in human life,--I feel it due to the reader that I narrate my more inner experiences; at least in sufficient degree that they may be recorded, and that there may be some perception, however inadequately expressed, of what is possible in this surpassing realm.

I cannot pass from this subject of my visits to human friends, however, without here recording one other phase of this many-threaded line of experiences. While in this realm of spirit I often meet and converse freely, or commune, with friends that are yet in human forms, but who appear as spirits and seem to possess all the activities of the spiritual state. They meet and mingle freely with those who have "died" to human life, yet I am perfectly sure they recall nothing of this when in their human state. Why I should remember or take with me these experiences that the others whom I saw within this realm could not recall, I could not divine until it was explained by my guide.

The explanation is this: "In sleep mortals pass into this realm for spiritual rest and change, as it is the normal realm of the spirit; but they do not pass through the spiritual awakening of the faculties as those do who are endowed with 'spiritual gifts,' therefore the experiences cannot be recalled _as experiences_; still, they sometimes have vague reminiscences or glimpses of 'unremembered dreams' that aid them throughout the whole day, often for days; and thus the outward life is sustained and fed from this realm. By and by the race will have spiritual growth to know and remember the experiences of the spirit as they now do of the human life." I have frequently met those in that state who were strangers to me here, and who were still in human life; and in after years I have met them face to face in outward form, often wondering if they thought they had seen me before, as I was certain I had seen them. When the whole of this other side of human experience is made known, how many things now veiled will stand revealed! By far the greater number of volumes could be filled with those transcendent experiences referred to earlier in these pages, with friends in spirit states, with teachers and guides in their own realm.

My mother, always intuitive, sympathetic, religious, and caring much for the sick and ailing while in earth life, I was accustomed to see in a sphere or state of her own near the "Healing Sphere" of one of my teachers. She was surrounded with her own favorite flowers--old-fashioned hollyhocks, sweet-williams, and fragrant healing herbs. My guide explained that in _her thought_, or spiritual, state she requires these things to aid her in healing or ministering to those on earth. Whenever I visited her state it seemed to be in the midst of scenery such as she loved on earth, and under a morning-glory-covered lattice, where she sat in a low chair like one I had seen her use in earth life. Though not limited to that state, she always revealed herself thus to me; and I would return to my earth state with a sense of homesickness, and with the odor of thyme and rosemary clinging to my _psychic olfactories_.

My father was interested in all the reforms of the day; he was a truly practical Christian, though not a professing one. He was looking for that ideal social state which we all hope is sometime coming, of "peace on earth and love to all." His spirit state was revealed to me as among those arisen workers and reformers, whose work for humanity he loved and shared on earth, and learning of the wise ones,--a vast and wonderful sphere of individualities, who are still laboring for the good of humanity. I wished to know of my father, who passed out from the mortal form when I was thirteen years of age, and who was often my spirit teacher in my early life, why, after my mother had passed on, he was not always with her as in earth life. He replied, with a rare smile: "We are together; our work is different, but when we need each other we cannot be apart."

Singly or in groups, or as my needs seemed to require, I was aware of every relative and friend who had passed from mortal life, whom our mutual wish or need attracted toward me. I am sure there may be those related by ties of consanguinity whom I have not seen, and many related only by spiritual sympathy and kinship whom I have met and loved in that state.

My babe, now a beautiful young woman in the spirit state, is my almost constant companion in those visitations and experiences. I have "seen her grow," to use our mortal speech; have noted her spiritual unfoldment, and have many times been her pupil,--so wise are these "little ones" in the love of the angels, so sweet and simple is she in her teaching.

How few know the real meaning of "nearness" as applied to those they love! One thinks of the friend whose bodily presence is removed by mountains, rivers, and oceans as being far away; yet London, China, and India are as near in thought as the chair beside one, and doubly near the one whose body may be sojourning there. This very nearness of sympathy debars any separation. If people would turn to the real indications,--sympathy, intuition,--whenever desired the friend is near. Doubly true is this of those who have passed the barrier of death and are revealed to the heart of love. They have not died, they have not gone; they are so near as not to be seen or felt by the grosser sense that governs the physical state of recognition; so very near that even the thoughts of the friend still immured in the earthly form are shared by them, the very innermost longings responded to. Yet people unaccustomed to seek them in the inner instead of outer realm of existence, cannot find them, and say, "They are gone." With space and time annihilated, what shall prevent the loved from being ever near?

Teachers and guides bear a nearer relationship than those in human states, and teach by the magic law of adaptation and love. I cannot name, in earthly language, the tie that binds me to those who have led me through these many realms, who have taught by vision, illustration, and thought, until the awakened _perception_ knew, the _a priori_ knowledge came.

I have often been conscious of visiting at desire a realm of music that led through the world of tone, through the spheres of matchless harmony in which the great masters of music abide,--Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and to the divine realm of Wagner.

The realm of art, leading through color and form to the images of perfect life, until form and tint and tone are merged in the supreme soul of beauty, and sculptured image or architectural grandeur is lost in the eternal, all-forming, all-changing changelessness of the Soul of Art.

The realm of nature (the material universe), seen from the inverse side, appears to be the effect of causes that are in that realm of consciousness; laws that are the operation of the Supreme Will, the Logos. There science is reconstructed and made plain, and made secure by the knowledge of these fundamental principles.

The realm of philosophy, traced to its primal sources, reveals the truths concerning universal knowledge, often perceived by the great teachers, but dimly stated by minds enshrouded by the environments of earth.

The realm of religion,--the ineffable meaning of the All-Love and Wisdom; the nearness, the perfectness, the absoluteness of the Divine; the kinship of souls, the fraternity of spirits,--never in all this realm was there a thought, or teaching of thought, separate from a conscious individual entity.

I find that there is no Time or Space in this inner realm; the entity is not governed by the limitations of the person, so the terms and usages of earthly existence must fall into desuetude. One is not hampered by an ox-team while flying across the plains in a palace coach impelled by steam, and one does not need winter garments and furs in the tropics. The state of spirit needs no earthly day and night; all these are but incident to the physical earth and physical existence. The spirit is free from these limitations--time, space, and sensuous environment.

It will be interesting for the reader to know that my physical health does not suffer from these experiences, nor from the active duties incident to my spiritual work in human life.

I enter this spirit realm as naturally and easily as one enters the realm of sleep; yet it is not sleep. The body and brain are actively employed by another intelligence, loaned as an instrument might be, while the individual consciousness, the _ego_ of the human being, is set free to visit these illimitable realms or states of the "inner," the vaster, life.

When the mundane consciousness returns, it is instantaneous; but the mental and physical sensations vary according to whether the experiences have been "near or far" from the human state, with reference not to distance, but to resemblance or similarity in quality. When the experiences have been furthest removed from those usual in human consciousness, many minutes, and sometimes hours, are required to adjust myself to the conditions. This inner state is far more intense, but not unlike that experienced when one has been wholly wrapped and folded from the outer world in perusing a favorite author--living with and experiencing the scenes depicted; or when one has listened for hours to the all-absorbing strains of music in the grand operatic creations of Wagner. On returning to the mundane state my food has often tasted like chips or straw; the fabric of my dress would feel coarse to the touch, as though woven of cords or ropes; and every sound seemed harsh or far too loud. Gradually these supersensitive conditions would depart, leaving the usual state of mind and body.

I have said it is easy to pass into that state; not so easy is the returning to the human environment; yet one _must_ return. Like the child bidden to the task, reluctant to leave the garden of flowers and the freedom of the outer world, yet, constrained by love and duty, one consents to return. I suspect that these sensations I experience, of return to the human state, are something like those of resuscitation after one has been nearly drowned. The drowning is easy, because one is going into life; the restoration is painful, because one returns, if not to death, to mere existence. The work, the duty, the loved who are embodied here must win one to the form which has been loaned; but the spirit seems reluctant sometimes to leave that freedom and knowledge for the narrow walls of clay, the prison-house of sense. The only true way is to bring that realm with one into daily life. One learns after a time to do this: to clothe the earthly scenes with the inner brightness, and the human tasks with the spiritual aura of love and wisdom.

I cannot judge whether the scenes of earth seem lovelier to me than to most mortals; whether there is more ravishing sweetness in the springtime, more glory in summer, more richness and beauty in the autumn, more rest and whiteness in the winter, more transcendent splendor in the sunset sky and glory in the starlit heavens. But it is certain that in being admitted to this inner realm the writer has not lost any blessing of earth,--of love, of home, of friends, of practical knowledge and interest in the daily duties and work of life; nor, I believe, can one be barred from any needed experience, however bitter. These teachings, visions, and experiences of soul-life have given to earth an exquisite beauty; to life's work a meaning and impetus; to trials a lesson and interpretation; to the change called death a glory and radiance; to spirit states a nearness, and to soul a reality. Nor do these experiences rob one of one's individuality; the petty _personality_ to which mortals cling is, happily, forgotten or cast aside, but the _individuality_ cannot be lost, merged in another, or governed, except for its good. When the _personal_ is cast aside, one is grateful for the impersonality of the _individual_.

Trailing clouds of glory accompany me across and into the barriers of time and sense, and when the sharp contrast is over--which the guide ever prevents from being too sudden--I realize the great sweetness of the gardens of paradise by the fragrance that is filling the earthly dwelling, and I know that being aware of the visitations of angels, and of somewhat of the light which is theirs, does not hinder, but helps human endeavor and accomplishment.

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CIVICS.

BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.