elasticity, degeneration and decay. It is never the bare atoms that we are able to use. We can only operate on very complex molecules, the intricate chemical substance called protoplasm; and these molecules of protoplasm are in a state of continual flux; and like the complex atoms of radioactive substances, are liable to break down. Indeed it may be through their breakingdown that we derive the energy necessary for our activities. But there is no imperfection or breaking down in the Ether. It has no friction, its elasticity is perfect; and all its other properties, so far as we know them, are perfect too. Hence, on the hypothesis of its utilisation, there seems every chance that when we have got rid of our temporary imperfect instruments, our real existence will be unhampered and perpetual. And through what further stages of development we may pass, we can only guess, or perhaps not even guess. All we can make sure of, by experiment and observation, is direct testimony concerning the transition from this state of things to the next. Though really the word 'next' is inappropriate. There is no 'next world,' save subjectively. The Universe is one: everything is here and now. It is not so much a sequence as a co-existence. What we call 'the next world is co-existent and simultaneous with this. And death is, so to speak, a mechanical operation, a setting free of our more permanent and essential body or spiritual instrument from the assemblage of molecules which it has collected, put together, and utilised for a time. We may not fully understand why we should have had to enter into this relation with Matter-an apparently alien thing which, as all artists know, has to be coerced to represent our ideas, and manipulated to display our conceptions. But evidently the episode of earth-life is of importance; we can surmise that the difficulties we encounter in Matter, the troubles caused by our animal-ancestry, and all the struggle and effort which is here necessary, even for maintenance, have a training and disciplining effect; strengthening our character, sifting the wheat from the tares, and constituting an experience of the utmost value for the future stages of our development. So they tell us from the other side.' They tell us that they follow our progress with keen interest, and are always ready to help, when we are willing to receive help: not only ready, but able; though of course their powers are limited, and, like us, they can but do the best that is possible under the circumstances. It is not to be supposed, moreover, that every influence on that side is unmitigatedly good there may be evil influences too, in fact there are. And if we are willing to open our minds to them, we can experience deterioration, and go backward instead of forward. The responsibility is ours. We have free-will: we are VOL. XCV-No. 563 L able to choose. And all the exertions of good people, both on this side and on that, are directed to guide and influence us to choose what is best for our true welfare. This is commonplace. But I would have the whole thing regarded as commonplace. It ought to be part of common knowledge, the whole of it. Like all human things it has quite a simple aspect that is why unlearned and comparatively simple people have been able to get hold of it in advance of the scribes. Those eminent men who deny the possibility of continued existence are forming their opinions on mistaken theory. They deny what we call our facts. They think they are the product of delusion, hallucination, preconception, illusory and vain hopes. Well, it is a question of evidence. They would admit that it is a question of evidence. But they cannot form a working opinion without real and not casual study of the specific phenomena. The few that have studied the facts may differ from my interpretation, and especially from my Ether-working hypothesis. By all means. I am willing to abandon it on good ground shown: I hold it lightly but the facts I do not hold lightly Pontifically-if opponents like to call it so I assert emphatically that there is evidence for Survival, and that some of the evidence is thoroughly good. It can no more be treated superficially than any other of our scientific experiences. It has to be examined with caution and patience and critical care, but with an open, not a closed mind. Prepossessions and prejudices, hopes and desires in either direction, must be put aside. The study must be entered on with humility, with a certainty that, whatever else is doubtful, our present conceptions of existence do not exhaust the infinitude of things, and with more than a suspicion that our present knowledge of the Universe is such as to leave us with a very inadequate conception of the majesty of existence. There are signs that some of the prevailing ignorance may be remedied in a generation or two; for the facts are more frequent and accessible and open than ever they were before. It cannot be long now before humanity in general recognises that its view of the Universe has been unduly restricted, partial, and incomplete; that a wider outlook is even now possible; and that, in the light of that wider outlook, the problems of existence will be better understood and human life assisted to an extraordinary degree. OLIVER LODGE. LONDON NIGHTS OUR days are democratic; our nights are feudal. For if there is a seeming equality by day, there is an evident disparity by night. Though dukes and tramps may walk Piccadilly in the sunlit hours there is no such companionship in the night. Then doss-house and mansion are like serf's hut and baronial castle. Thus the past has a stronger hold on the night than it has on the day. Equality and fraternity come with the sun, lightening and warming us on our way--but they go down with the same. Night sends each to his home, to his own place. At the same time London is more beautiful by night; there is a poetry in it which is missed by day. The night skies and the fogs hold it and brood over it, the many voices are hushed, and out of all the discordances of the day comes an issue of peace. The strivers rest from their striving, the workers from their work. Darknesse closeth wearie eyes, Saying to man it doth suffice; Henceforth repose-thy work is done. A gentle hand which is not of London has been raised and then lowered again, and the brows of the many have been smoothed. The monition of Nature outbreathes from the midnight hours: Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past; Therefrom a feeling of exaltation creeps into the minds of those who watch while London sleeps-a sense of the majesty of seven million sleepers altogether under the one tent-roof of the London night, a sense of the repose of the vast shadowy forms of our architecture and of the lamps, which, like candles shining, might be at ten thousand altars. A great silence is made audible by our thoughts. London at night speaks to the heart, telling its dreams of humanity that has passed, whispering melancholy stories to the melancholy, and strange thoughts to the stranger. London is a dark city. It has not the street lighting of New York; it has more blinds than Paris. There is no opalescence as of Moscow snow. There are not the white buildings and spaciousness of Stockholm. Our walls are dark. Fog dims our far-off lights; our street lamps have haloes. As you stand on a bridge or sit on the Embankment the petty lights drip into the unseen but steady-flowing river and give romantic and fantastic effects, as if our London were an unreal world. The glimmering chiaroscuro enchants the eye and beguiles the beholder to tarry longer. Even though the river damp creep to his knees he still sits and gazes from his bench or leans o'er the stone parapet. Wonderful! The customed eye descries the glimmer of the surface of the river mud, and on the surface of the water remarks the presence of birds; even the unaccustomed takes in the moving eye of barge or tug and the fast-passing lights of a patrol boat. These in the midst of Father Thames, but from the lights o' London, a hundred waving splashes of reflected beams, like bunting made of light. On the Lambeth side London looks more portentous than from Westminster or Chelsea. If there should happen to be a late sitting of the Commons, the pilot light will be burning above Big Ben and the windows of St. Stephen's will be gleaming— darkness made visible! I have seen it thus at two in the morning. Despite the lights which lit up the debate the House seemed dark to those who sat on the Embankment benches. Parliament seemed to me, not a palace of democracy, but some massive, shadowy Bastille. You could imagine it to be all cells and grills and bolts and bars and torture chambers, not the hall of liberation, but the fortress where our liberties were imprisoned. Every bench on the Albert Embankment was occupied. In twos and threes and fours men and women sat there at two in the morning and stared across the river at the light reflections and the Houses of Parliament. They were the outcasts of the social system, disjecta membra of our inhospitality, each with his story, his tragedy, his tragedy-comedy, spending thus the midnight hours: Weeping and waiting for the morrow. Look at them carefully, they are burlesques. Think of them carefully; they are the outer audience of the hon. member for this and the gallant and honourable member for that and the right honourable gentleman, the member for that other. This is the real outer audience, which sees and hears nothing, and understands nothing, sitting in the undistinguished Strangers' Gallery. Some have fallen asleep. The head of one hangs backward from his neck like a dead carnation. But most sleep with their chins on their chests. On one or two benches some managed to sleep lying in the space between the metal division in the middle and the support at the end of the seat. But a constable on night duty made his round and tapped the sleepers and bade them wake up and put their feet down. Why do so many go to the Embankment to spend the night? It is always cold there; the damp airs from the river search the rags and the bodies of the homeless there. The beauty of the night is nothing to the homeless. 'If I'd a known it was goin' to be so cold I'd a taken another dozen matches,' says one. 'With another dozen I wouldn't a-bin out this night.' But his neighbour is quite apathetic. He does not sell matches; he hasn't the initiative. Or it needs too much patience. We look on the match-sellers in the daylight hours without much understanding. 'A pretext for begging,' I hear it said. ' He wants me to give him a penny; he doesn't want me to buy matches,' says another. A great mistake! Match-sellers are not beggars. They want you to buy their matches. Every box you buy from an unfortunate in the street helps toward the eight pence or ninepence required to pay for shelter in a lodging-house, helps to take a man or woman off the Embankment and put them in a warm building for the night. The same applies to other petty hawkers. In my opinion they are more to be encouraged than the many street dancers and singers who, masquerading as unfortunates, draw away the pennies of the charitably disposed. Not that a pass to a doss-house is a cure for outcast London. I have slept in these strange de-socialised caravanserais. It is unwonted, I must say, to undress in a general lodging-house, in the company of hundreds of men of all ages. Your bed is a lonely place. It does not matter that it is not comfortable, for you realise that it is paradise compared with the Embankment. If it prove to swarm with insects you realise that you are tender and that the habitués do not feel the bites so much. The most depressing thing is the atmosphere of homelessness. No woman or child enters there except in thought or prayer. Yet the young men might have mothers, fathers, homes; the middle-aged, many of them, must have wives and families somewhere; the old men must, by their looks, be grandfathers, and should have little children prattling at their knees. But each seeks his narrow bed, and none talks to his neighbour. There is none of the vivid talk of Gorky's Lower Depths, but a sense of intense British respectability and reserve. Many of the men sleep stark naked, partly because they have no night attire, but more commonly because, if they sleep in their shirts, they infallibly take upon them the curse of institutional bedding. Tramps though they are, and |