do not seem to allow that any mental—and cerebral-energy disappears. It must have some practical result, either positive or negative. It must either propel us to action, or make us more torpid than before.

But how is the modern boy or girl to apply anything like heroic emotions to his everyday life? Can our children kill the giant, or help to conquer half the world?

Most certainly they can. And by daily effort. A task as romantic as any that is told of in history or fiction calls upon the children of our own age. The whole human race has to be regenerated. Every organism must be re-built, as it were, through its own efforts. A new and more beautiful mankind is to look out upon a new and brighter reality. In spite of our splendid auxiliary organs, and partly through wrong use of them, we have slipped down to be, on the whole, the most weak and unhealthy of all animals-perhaps excepting some of the beasts we are fattening for our food. We are inhabited by a greater number of noxious parasites and bad habits than any other living creature. Why should not man be at least as healthy as any other animal? Why not as long-lived as a raven?

One of our bad habits is to speak of the "human beast," la bête humaine, in referring to our vices. The animals might retort the insult by pointing to some of our domestic and captive animals as sadly and sordidly human.

If man could become one of the finest animals, in physical perfection, it would be something to begin with. The physical and mental regeneration of the human race, this is a task which requires heroic visions and emotions in everyday life. The campaign may be long. It requires a larger army than any that has hitherto waged war upon earth. The hundreds of millions of human beings must be enlisted as volunteers.

The Greeks seem to have been, on the whole, the finest human animals upon record. A great deal may be learnt from them. In the ancient Greece of the greatest period, artistic emotions were not shut up within the bounds of socalled " 'pure art." Art was not isolated from other human activities. The visions and emotions kindled by sculpture were not used to gorge and fatten a torpid race of artistic

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epicures. Else there would soon have been no models from which beautiful statues could have been moulded. Artistic emotion overflowed into choral dances, athletic games, and other trials of agility and strength. As to this fact there seems to be a general agreement. But it has been less noticed that music, no less than sculpture, contributed to make man the master of his own supple body. No other nation seems to have equalled the Greeks in attuning everyday life to the bird-like agility and alertness of music. ancient Greece, more than anywhere else, the easy grace of rhythmic movement pervaded all the branches of human activity. In no other nation has the artistic sense of harmony and rhythm become so organic, or so deeply ingrained. Nowhere else have all the simulating arts been so closely in touch with almost all the arts of living. "Pure art" did not stand aloof in haughty and sulky isolation, which is apt to turn poetry itself into a stagnant pool of impurity. Art for a long time kept its purity by lively circulation of the sap of energy between one branch of human activity and all the other branches.

Poetry and pictorial arts should again unite with civic ardour, with ethical self-culture, with religious worship of ideal perfection, as in ancient Greece. The bird-like movement of music should again flow out into choral dances, and pervade our whole organism with a new elastic vigour and buoyancy. All the simulating arts should unite in the Herculean task of making everyday life poetical, plastic, and picturesque.

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One of the greatest movements of the present day seems to be the gradual application of the all-conquering methods of empirical and experimental science to the bettering of ourselves. The ethical movement, if I understand it aright, aims at nothing less than the regeneration of man by means of physiological and moral hygiene. The time seems to have come for leading the victorious army of applied science from the outworks of human life to the very citadel; from the revolutionising of human implements and appliances to the radical renewal of man himself.

Psychology and hygienics, in turning every one of us into a laboratory of personal experiments, bid fair to become two of the most distinctive forces of a new reform movement.

The greatest of human wars of liberation can only, it seems, be fought by an invisible army of scientific ideas beleagering and burning out our invisible invaders. The struggle with the infinitely small organic parasites, and with the giant Bad Habit whose many heads are so apt to crop out again,— this inner struggle will perhaps take up the foremost place in the imagination of men, and drive the pictures of all other kinds of war into the background.

But scientific ideas alone, however practically applied, will hardly be able to regenerate human life. There would be something disappointingly stiff and machine-like about the methodically and strictly hygienic man.

The pressing problem of a new reform movement is a more complicated, but also a more fascinating one. The problem can only be solved by uniting the two old rival armies of general ideas and artistic visions in a common campaign. After having rivalled in conquering the immensity of the outward world, and thereby lost their hold on the human body and soul, they may join their banners for the conquest of the little world of man himself. And man may prove to be their greatest and most glorious battle-field.

THE DYNAMICS OF DEMOCRACY

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STANTON COIT

IN the whole literature of politics there is no more penetrating analysis of the mental energies which generate and are generated by democracy than that presented by Mr Walter Bagehot in his book on "The English Constitution." But while it is exact and searching, his analysis is neither cold nor indifferent; it glows with enthusiasm for the beneficent influence which democracy exercises over every person who vitally participates in it.

He contrasts the constitutional form which Government by the people has received in America with that which it has assumed in England. Contrary to the common opinion, he traces the great evils of American political life not to democracy itself but to anti-democratic machinery which the founders of the United States introduced in order to check a full, free, and rapid expression of the popular will. It is generally supposed that America is more democratic in machinery; while England, although aristocratic in form, is more democratic in spirit. But Mr Bagehot shows that England, by virtue of one peculiarity in her Governmental arrangement, is incessantly manufacturing democratic intelligence and the democratic spirit; while America is not. The reason, therefore, according to him, for the fact that England is more democratic in temper and habit, is not only that her machinery offers less check to any expression of the popular mind after it is formed, but that it actually fosters, vitalises, stimulates, and educates public thought and character.

This beneficent peculiarity in her constitution is her Government by Cabinet-by a special committee of the House of Commons. Not only does the House virtually (although not formally) elect the supreme executive of the Nation, but at any

time when it opposes the policy of its chosen rulers it can and does turn them out of office. "The House is an Electoral Chamber; it is an assembly which chooses our President . . . but because the House of Commons has the power of dismissal in addition to the power of election its relations to the Premier are incessant. They guide him and he leads them. He is to them what they are to the Nation. ... The Cabinet is a committee which can dissolve the assembly which appointed it. It is a committee with a power of appeal. It is a creature, but has the power of destroying its creators. It is an executive which can annihilate the legislature, as well as an executive which is a nominee of the legislature." Because the Cabinet and the House are perpetually dependent upon the Nation at large, they have a motive for continually enlisting the interest of the voting public and instructing it. "Cabinet Government educates the Nation. The great scene of debate, the great engine of popular instruction and political controversy, is the legislative assembly. A speech there, by an eminent statesman, a party movement by a great political combination, are the best means yet known for arousing, enlivening, and teaching a people. The Cabinet system ensures debates, for it makes them the means by which statesmen advertise themselves for future, and confirm themselves in present, Governments. The nation is forced to hear both sides. . . . And it likes to hear-it is eager to know. Human nature despises long arguments which come to nothing . . . but all men heed great results, and a change of Government is a great result."

Mr Bagehot contrasts such executive by a committee of the House of Commons with the American system of executive by a President, who, although his whole policy may fail to receive the backing of Congress, remains secure in office until the end of his appointed term. The result of this system is that Americans have no motive to attend continually and thoughtfully to politics. "Under a Presidential Government a Nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not a ballot-box before it; it is not incited to form an opinion like a nation under a Cabinet Government; nor is it