powerful effect produced by multitudes subject to a common feeling of enthusiasm, religious fervour, or pure panic. In the few occasions on which I have had the opportunity of experiencing such manifestations, it seemed to me that every one of the multitudinous sounds and movements that reached the ear and eye, being inspired by a common feeling, added its effect to that of all the others. When we are in the presence of a single person or of a small company, the empty background fills a large part of the field of view and dilutes the visual effect of their enthusiasm. Nay, the larger part of the forms of the persons themselves are similarly inexpressive, unless they be consummate actors. But nothing is seen in an enthusiastic multitude but excited faces and gestures, nothing is heard but excited voices and rustlings. Their variety is such that every chord in the heart of a bystander, that admits of vibrating in sympathy with the common feeling, must be stimulated to do so by some of them.

The background of our mental imagery is neither uniform nor constant in its character. It changes in colour, tint, and pattern, though, in my case, all these are usually very faintly marked, and it requires much attention to study them properly. Its peculiarities have nothing to do with associated ideas; they appear to depend solely upon chance physiological causes, to which some of our ideas are also undoubtedly due.

The usual faintness of highly generalised ideas is forcibly brought home to us by the sudden increase of vividness that our conception of a substantive is sure to receive when an adjective is joined to it that limits the generalisation. Thus it is very difficult to form a mental conception corresponding to the word 'afternoon;' but if we hear the words a wet afternoon,' a mental picture arises at once, that has a fair amount of definition. If, however, we take a step further and expand the phrase to a wet afternoon in a country house,' the mind becomes crowded with imagery.

The more we exercise our reason, the more we are obliged to deal with the higher order of generalisations and the less with visual imagery; consequently our power of seeing the latter becomes blunted by disuse. Probably, also, the mind becomes less able to picture things to itself as we advance in age. I am sure there is wide difference between my mental imagery now and what it was when I was a child. It was then as vivid and as gorgeous as in a dream.

It is a perfect marvel to me, when watching the working of my mind, to find how faintly I realise the meaning of the words I hear or read, utter or write. If our brain work had been limited to that part of it which lies well within our consciousness, I do not see how our intellectual performances would rise much above the level of those of idiots. For instance, I just now opened a railway prospectus, and the following words caught my eye, the purport of which was taken in block- An agreement will be submitted for the consideration and

approval of the proprietors on Friday next-yet I am certain that I had not, and I doubt if I could easily obtain, a good general idea corresponding to any one of the six principal words in the passage, 'agreement,' submitted,' consideration,' approval,' proprietors,' and 'Friday.' If I puzzle over the words in detail until I fully realise their meaning, I lose more than I gain; there is time for the previous words to slip out of mind, and so I fail to grasp the sentence as a whole.

The more I have examined the workings of my own mind, whether in the walk along Pall Mall, or in the seventy-five words, or in any other of the numerous ways I have attempted but do not here describe, the less respect I feel for the part played by consciousness. I begin with others to doubt its use altogether as a helpful supervisor, and to think that my best brain work is wholly independent of it. The unconscious operations of the mind frequently far transcend the conscious ones in intellectual importance. Sudden inspirations and those flashings out of results which cost a great deal of conscious effort to ordinary people, but are the natural outcome of what is known as genius, are undoubted products of unconscious cerebration. Conscious actions are motived, and motives can make themselves attended to, whether consciousness be present or not. Consciousness seems to do little more than attest the fact that the various organs of the brain do not work with perfect ease or cooperation. Its position appears to be that of a helpless spectator of but a minute fraction of a huge amount of automatic brain work. The unconscious operations of the mind may be likened to the innumerable waves that travel by night, unseen and in silence, over the broad expanse of an ocean. Consciousness may bear some analogy to the sheen and roar of the breakers, where a single line of the waves is lashed into foam on the shores that obstruct their course.

VOL. V.--No. 25.

FF

FRANCIS GALTON.

A GRAVE PERPLEXITY BEFORE US.

6

MANY persons-especially practical men, busy men, and men charged with the toils and difficulties of administration-are prone to regard it as useless and unwise to call attention to rocks ahead' unless they are close upon us, and unless we have some distinct and welldigested remedy or safeguard to propose. Our rulers especially, whether executive or legislative, are apt to resent such embarrassing and meddlesome forecasting, and to snub and silence the over-anxious prophets of danger who indulge therein. 'Sufficient to the day,' they tell us, is the evil thereof-let the future take care of itself."

There are several reasons why we do not share and cannot approve this habit of thought and feeling, and why we deem it shallow, indolent, and noxious. In the first place, dangers which threaten us in the future often take their origin in the action or the negligence of the day that is passing over us. The long years that usually elapse between the seed-time and the harvest of coming mischief easily lay vigilance to sleep, and fan us into a false security which is full of peril. Then difficulties, which might have been readily met and conquered if boldly faced as soon as they were perceived, grow into giants if denied by the reckless, or hidden from the blind, or fled from by the cowardly. We may be torn to pieces by the eagle which we could have smashed in the egg, or by the tiger which it would have been easy to grapple with while yet a cub. Rocks ahead, which mean shipwreck if unobserved by the look-out man on the prow or at the masthead, are without risk if recognised in time for the vessel to cast anchor or to alter her course. To drop metaphor, administrative dangers may be creeping upon our nation with rapid steps, silent and insidious and therefore practically unnoticed, which it is not even now too early to confront-or, at least, to consider coolly and searchingly how we propose to confront them when they can no longer be neglected or ignored.

There are two other reasons why the observation and deliberation I am urging should not be postponed too long or be too hastily or perfunctorily made-especially in reference to such matters as I now allude to. The nation as a whole-embracing all classes of the community-has more and more of late years taken its

affairs into its own hands, and (notwithstanding passing appearances to the contrary) is less and less disposed to allow arrangements to be made behind its back, or to permit its rulers for the time being to act for it without consulting it and obtaining its consent. It likes to know what is being done and why it is being done; and since it is undeniably, as a whole, both very imperfectly informed and very inadequately trained to habits of reflection, the processes of the needful instruction and persuasion are difficult, and the result by no means certain. The English people, moreover, are proverbially slow to take in new ideas, to alter old conceptions, to arrive at clear conclusions on difficult and complex questions, especially on such as involve their interests and are not unlikely to arouse their passions or their prejudices. Now, all classes are concerned in the satisfactory and just determination of the problem to which I wish to direct attention; and therefore, if it is not to be determined amiss, it is essential that time should be allowed for all its conditions to sink into the nation's mind, there to ferment, germinate, and ripen.

The problem is neither imaginary nor remote. On the contrary, it is imminent, practical, and, as it seems to me, peculiarly serious. It is not precisely new, but our eyes have been rudely awakened both to its gravity and its imminence by some of the events of the year that has just closed over us. The many and bitter conflicts of 1878 between employers and employed in nearly every branch of industry, especially in the North of England, have brought it to the front. The essence and the crux of it lie in small compass, and admit of being stated clearly and with brevity. Distress among the working classes has been very general and very severe; and while much of this has been inevitable, and has been due to the disturbed and depressed state of trade throughout the world, it has been enormously aggravated and prolonged by their own mistaken and perverse proceedings. For a great deal of it they have themselves been directly and exclusively responsible. Work has been deplorably scarce, but they have made it, by their own voluntary action, far scarcer than it would otherwise have been. In many instances masters have been ruined and their works unavoidably closed and the men they employed have been thrown upon their own resources, and not unfrequently reduced to destitution, by no fault of their own. But in many other instances the men have voluntarily thrown themselves out of work by refusing to accept it at the reduced rate of wages which was all their impoverished employers could afford to offer them. They deliberately deprived themselves of employment, and their consequent privations, however severe, were entirely gratuitous. Of course, therefore, in strict equity they were not entitled either to relief from the rates or to assistance from charitable neighbours; and, to do them justice, they have not usually applied for either. Earnings and usually ample earnings for these times of unprofitable trade and cheap food

were within their grasp if they chose to stretch forth their hands to take them; but they preferred to be idle rather than work, except on their own terms—which they had an irrefutable claim to do. They were within their legal rights, however foolish or short-sighted they may have been thus to exercise those rights. So far the problem was simple enough-or, rather, there was no problem at all to solve.

But here the difficulty and the complexity come in. In the intricate system of our manufacturing industry one set of workmen is inextricably bound up with other sets who cannot for any length of time continue to labour or to earn a sustenance without them. For example, to make the matter clear to outsiders, we will take the case of the cotton manufacture. The 'hands' in a mill may be roughly divided into three classes: the preparers (blowers, carders, drawers, &c.), the spinners (whether hand-spinners or self-actors), and the weavers. If the spinners turn out on a question of wages or of rules, and cease work, the preparers are not needed, and cannot be kept on, and the weavers who can no longer be supplied with warp or weft must stop also. Likewise, if the weavers strike, neither preparers nor spinners (as a rule) can be kept at work. If one class of hands quarrel with their masters, both the other classes are paralysed, and the entire machinery is thrown out of gear, as the phrase is, though only one class out of the three is concerned in the dispute, and the other two may be in no degree either discontented or to blame. Often, no doubt, all of them pull together and support one another; and this is usually true where the question at issue concerns a per-centage reduction or advance of wages throughout the mill; but it has often happened that the spinners only (or separately) strike work, and thus force the employer either to yield or to give notice of cessation of employment to the preparers and weaverswho are possibly quite innocent, perhaps even disapprove the spinners' action; at all events who may not be accomplices, and who therefore technically cannot be said to refuse offered work, but have work and earnings both taken from them. This used very generally to be the modus operandi in trade disputes (though less usual now since the introduction of self-acting mules), and made such cases peculiarly difficult to deal with. The embarrassment was enhanced by the fact that the spinners, being the most highly paid class of cotton operatives and having comparatively rich unions to maintain them through the contest, could hold out with ease, while the weavers and others had seldom such resources. The spinners in a factory, again, were comparatively few, so that it might happen that perhaps fifty spinners could at their pleasure stop the mill, and thus deprive five hundred fellow operatives of their bread.'

1 Similar divisions and subdivisions of workmen, entailing analogous embarrassments, exist in most other branches of industry; but I do not quote them, as I am anxious to make my exposition of the problem to be considered as lucid as possible.