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side of order; if it is weak and of doubtful stability, the opposition will steadily increase.

I have shown that the government of the Khedive was established and maintained solely by British bayonets. It became, then, of the utmost importance to show that that support would remain; yet no occasion was spared to reiterate the threat that those bayonets would be withdrawn. Let us picture to ourselves the chances of an English administration which started with the programme of a speedy dissolution to be followed by a refusal to take office, and we shall then perhaps understand how it happens that the very few supporters we are able to secure give but a feeble acquiescence to our policy, and are continually seeking to make friends with the Mammon of unrighteousness, who only wait our retirement to seize our places, to upset our reforms, and to ruin all those who have cordially supported us.

But, if we are compelled to advertise our intention to withdraw the British force, what steps have we taken to substitute another? We have formed an army under Sir Evelyn Wood and a constabulary under General Valentine Baker.

We will take the latter first. We have formed it of the men from the disbanded army-the very men to oppose whose rebellion we entered Egypt. These are the men to whom we have entrusted the preservation of public order. Was it recklessness or prudence which induced us to allow them-a civil force-to become the victims of Osman Digna on the plains of Teb? Such as they were, a remnant of them exist, and at no period within a recollection of twenty years was brigandage so rife in the interior.

The army of Sir Evelyn Wood for some time promised to be a success. It was a body that did credit to its officers; in drill and discipline it was perfect. Would it have even been fit for taking the field? Who can tell? But it promised well, so all chance of achieving its promise was carefully taken from it; by refusing to allow it to co-operate with the English force, by almost forcibly seizing its material and ammunition, by separating the men from their English officers, and finally by defrauding the widows of their rights to pension, all chance of esprit de corps has been destroyed, and the costly labour of General Wood and his officers has been wasted. Clearly, then, we have as yet done nothing to make the government strong.

Have we tried to make it just? We have introduced a complicated system of French procedure-that is, through the instrumentality of an English lawyer, we have imposed upon the Egyptian people a system of which both reformer and reformed are equally ignorant. We have imported a number of Belgian and Dutch judges of high pay, ignorant of the language, mostly unwilling to learn, and so useless during the first six months in which they drew their salary that they were requested to go on leave. And the result is seen in

the fact that the prisons are so full as to necessitate a gaol delivery, and the question is still under dispute as to whether the majority of those released had ever been tried, or had ever even been charged with any offence.

We have failed, then, to show that our administration is just. Yet another question, however: If we have failed to make the government strong or just, have we at least made it equitable in its injustice? Here again we must answer no. Is anyone overtaxed, it is the fellah, for the foreigner goes free. Is justice or injustice meted out with equal impartiality to the fellah and the Greek? No, for the latter is subject to a different law, a different court, a different judge. Nor is it fair to blame the Powers who insist on maintaining for their subjects the benefit of the capitulations exacted as a protection against a weak, unjust, and corrupt government. The government is still weak, is still corrupt, is still unjust, and it must remain so until the capitulations are abolished. We come then to this deadlock: that the capitulations must exist until the government is strong, that the government cannot be strong so long as the capitulations exist.

Here, then, is the result of our eighteen months' occupation of Egypt-a government which is neither strong, just, nor equal; and for this government, disguise it as we will, England has become responsible before Europe.

Where, then, is the fault?

Certainly not in the people, easily taught and governed; not in the ruling classes, who, whether under pressure or no, have given us as much support as is consistent with their natures; not with foreign Powers, who have on the whole treated us with singular forbearance; nor with the English officials, for no more conscientious men exist than those now struggling manfully under difficulties in Egypt.

The fault is in the system, and in the system alone; we are wasting the precious months in trying to achieve the union of youth and crabbed age, of the old world with the new; we are trying to place new wine into old bottles, and because we have not the courage to adopt the one system or the other, we are making a contemptible failure between the two.

Why do we hesitate to decide? I shall be told that I ignore the responsibilities of either decision. I reply that I recognise both, but a third greater than either.

On the one side, as an Englishman, I see the enormous responsibility attaching to a country which takes upon itself the moulding of the destinies of five million aliens, and which, already burdened with duties fully up to the measure of its resources, hesitates to increase them.

On the other hand, equally as an Englishman, I recognise the difficulty of a position which would compel us to stand by as the watch

dog of a government conducted on principles totally at variance with our notions of right and wrong.

But as fully--nay, more fully-I recognise both as Englishman and Egyptian that no power in heaven or on earth can justify a nation strong and powerful for good in placing its hands, with intentions however benevolent, at the throats of an ignorant and helpless people, in compelling them to bear a burthen heavier than would be imposed by the one system, and yet to suffer misgovernment more cruel and unjust than would be caused by the other.

Not in the interests of any party or class, not in support of any pet theory of my own, but for the sake of our national reputation for justice and honesty, in pity to this people whose love we might have gained and whose hate we are earning, I make this appeal.

If we have attempted too much, more than, consistently with our other duties, we dare to perform, let us without false pride openly confess our error, and retire from the country our soldiers and our officials.

If, on the other hand, we dare to be great, let us avow our intentions, assuming in the light of day that authority we are now vainly trying to exercise in the background, and accepting the responsibilities which, whether we will it or no, are upon our shoulders so long as we remain in the country.

And in either case let us abandon a policy which is bound to fail and bound to bring its retribution because it is founded neither on truth, courage, nor justice.

C. S. MOBERLY BELL.

Alexandria.

THE UNKNOWABLE AND THE

UNKNOWN.

IN the January number of this Review, Mr. Herbert Spencer published an article called Religion: a Retrospect and Prospect.' In the March number Mr. Harrison made a variety of observations upon it in an article called the Ghost of Religion,' intended to point its practical moral' and 'to add to it a rider' of his own. I wish to add some observations on their views.

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Mr. Spencer's view is that religion began by dreams which suggested a belief in ghosts. This belief, compounding itself with other beliefs, became in course of time, and by steps still traceable, a belief in a pantheon of deities, which was gradually superseded by a belief in one God—a creature of the human imagination. This one God was at different times invested with characters varying according to the morality and philosophy of different times and places, but by degrees this process came to an end. As men considered more closely the God whom they had created, they discovered that it was, and is, impossible to make any intelligible assertion whatever about him, and in particular to ascribe to him, without falling into contradictions, either consciousness, will, or intelligence. This process must, in Mr. Spencer's opinion, go on. 'The conception which has been enlarging from the beginning must go on enlarging, until, by disappearance of its limits, it becomes a consciousness, which transcends the forms of distinct thought, though it for ever remains a consciousness.'

The evidence to prove this theory seems to me weak, and, whatever is its value, the conclusion is not plain. I do not clearly understand what is meant by a consciousness,' or how a conception 'by disappearance of its limits' can become a consciousness; or how, if this takes place, it can be known that the state of things so created will 'remain for ever.' I should have thought that, if the conception of God were proved to be an incoherent absurdity, the word ' God' would fall into disuse, and the belief in God cease to influence mankind.

Be this as it may, Mr. Spencer goes on to deal with an objection which he admits 'looks fatal.' It is this: The ghost-theory of the savage being baseless, is not the developed and purified conception,

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reached by pushing the process to its limits, a fiction also? Mr. Spencer replies that the ghost-theory of the savage had in it a germ of truth, to wit, that the power which manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently-conditioned force of the power which manifests itself beyond consciousness.' The primitive man did not indeed put this to himself in such an abstract way, but he thought that ghosts, being like himself, made efforts when they acted; when God was substituted for ghosts, it was supposed that God made efforts. Science at last discovered that when force is ascribed to natural objects this is a mere symbol, taken from our own consciousness of effort. When we speak of the force of lightning or the force of waves, we mean only that lightning or a wave is the cause of an effect which if a man produced it would require an effort. A man of science is compelled to symbolise objective force in terms of subjective force from lack of any other symbol.' Thus,

That internal energy which in the experiences of the primitive man was always the immediate antecedent of changes wrought by him . . . is the same energy which, freed from anthropomorphic accompaniments, is now figured as the cause of all external phenomena. The last stage reached is recognition of the truth that force, as it exists beyond consciousness, cannot be like what we know as force within consciousness; and that yet, as either is capable of generating the other, they must be different modes of the same. Consequently, the final outcome of that speculation commenced by the primitive man, is that the Power manifested throughout the Universe distinguished as material, is the same power which in ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness.

Upon this the following observations occur:

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First, I agree that our only direct experience of force is of that internal energy which' we are conscious of as muscular effort.' When a man says 'the wave strikes the shore,' 'the fire burns the stick,' 'the lightning splits the oak,' he personifies the wave, the fire, or the lightning to that extent, but this process pervades all language whatever. It has no special connection with the primitive man's supposed theory about ghosts, and if the fact of the primitive man's ascription of effort to ghosts proves that there is a germ of truth in his theory, it may be proved by the same argument that there is a germ of truth in everything everybody can be supposed to have ever said since language was invented.

Again, if force properly speaking means muscular or nervous effort, and if the application of that word to external nature is merely symbolical, and if all that we know of objective force so called is that it is unlike subjective force so called, it seems at least inconsecutive, if not contradictory, to go on to say that the two are both forms of one thing, which operates in nature as objective force, and 'in ourselves wells up under the force of consciousness.' To make this a little plainer take the three common words effort, force, and energy. Let effort mean that of which every man is conscious in himself, force that which he ascribes to material objects, and energy that of which both effort

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