Mexicans, don't know what they want; they are inarticulate; we know, and we inform the world!

In spite of all this, may I-having lived in Mexico, keeping house, circulating among all classes and especially among peons- may I suggest that your reviewer, in discussing certain books bearing on Mexico, fell into the very common error of reading into the Mexican people aspirations and ideas totally foreign to that very amiable and immature race?

The population of Mexico consists of some fourteen millions. Of these some two million are whites, chiefly Spanish, and the remainder, some twelve million, consists of Indian stock; Aztec, Toltec, Maya, Zapotec, etc. A psychological anthropologist (or whatever the proper title may be) would probably call them morons physically adults, mentally children. In that respect they are much like our negroes before the war.

Now, it is a matter of history that many of our good people half a century ago assumed that the negro had high and lofty aspirations for constitutional government and political freedom. In due time things shaped themselves so that the negro had an opportunity to demonstrate to the world just exactly what his aspirations" were, just what concrete form these longings for freedom, etc., took. As we look back now at the shameless tale of graft, boodle, corruption, blindness to public duty, and wholesale inefficiency, we wonder how the experiment ever came to be tried.

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The reason is simple: we persisted in reading into negro character aspirations and ideals totally foreign to it utterly incomprehensible to them. And at the present day, undeterred and unenlightened by the patent teachings of history, a large part of the American people still persists in the error of assuming aspirations and ideals among a people unable to read and write of which they have not the slightest inkling.

American and other foreign observers unite in limiting the aspirations of the average peon of Mexico to such simple things as a sufficiency of frejoles, tortillas and pan dulce to eat; a suit of cotton clothes and the inevitable frazada to wear, an adobe shanty with a few sticks of furniture to live in; an occasional bullfight or shady comedy to witness; and vague unlimited aspirations for mescal, gambling, cockfighting, robbery, and murder when drunk. He not only has no aspiration for representative government, just and impartial judiciary, civil service reform, and community altruism, but the very terms are meaningless to him. The peon is four-fifths of the Mexican people. E. L. C. MORSE.

Chicago, June 20, 1914.

"WHAT CHILDREN SHOULD KNOW."

(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)

The editorial on "What Children Should Know," in the last issue of THE DIAL, offers food for reflection. You are right, I think, in placing upon the parents much of the blame for the ignorance of the coming generation. We depend upon the school to supply our children with culture, and we blame the school if the child does not respond and

become educated. Doubtless the school is often at fault, but it cannot do everything. It can teach the lore of books, which it too often does by a cramming process, but after all the child will gain in the home, if at all, that broader knowledge of affairs and that outlook on life which constitutes culture as distinct from book-learning. Now, how much are the average parents of to-day doing at home to open the way for this culture? What is the usual conversation at the family dinner table? College-bred parents, who can talk intelligently and interestingly on literature or science or topics of current interest, and who do so at their clubs, spend the dinner hour at home in discussing the burning question of when the calciminer shall tint the parlor ceiling, or how the Joneses happened to get that outlandish green auto, or perhaps they eat in preoccupied silence and let the children chatter about anything or nothing. Is it any wonder that children in such homes are not vitally interested in the subjects that are given to them at school, or that they fail somehow to acquire an all-round education?

You have referred to the ignorance of the modern child regarding the literature of the Bible. I had occasion a few months ago to place two Bible stories in the hands of a class of third-grade pupils in one of the large public schools, as a test. Only three children out of a membership of fifty-two had heard the story of Moses. A majority had heard in Sunday-school about Joseph, but many were very hazy concerning him. Has the reading of the Scriptures at home been entirely abandoned in these latter days, and is the change of attitude toward them responsible for the condition just noted? WALTER TAYLOR FIELD.

Chicago, June 20, 1914.

UNPUBLISHED LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF LINCOLN.

(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)

The undersigned have been appointed by the Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library editors of a collection of uncollected and unprinted letters, speeches, etc., of Abraham Lincoln. We should greatly appreciate any information concerning such material that may be furnished us by your readers.

DANIEL K. DODGE, CLARENCE W. ALVORD. University of Illinois, Urbana, June 22, 1914.

MR. J. D. BERESFORD'S TRILOGY.
(To the Editor of THE DIAL.)

I should like to devise means of persuading Mr. J. D. Beresford to complete the trilogy which he began so wonderfully well in "The Early History of Jacob Stahl" and continued only less wonderfully in "A Candidate for Truth." Would not a petition signed by admirers of these novels have an effect? I should be happy to assist in the circulation of such a petition. FRANCIS BUZZELL. Lake Bluff, Ill., June 26, 1914.

is innocent. Among the Niellims there is a bee-hive test that serves the same purpose as the ordeal by fire or poison. The accused is compelled to thrust his hand into a bee-hive, and if the bees resent the intrusion in their usual manner the suspected one is pronounced guilty, a contrary result causing a corresponding verdict. But the court is commonly won over by unfair means by the plaintiff; that is, the bees are irritated beforehand, and hence an acquittal is all but unknown.

German criticism of rules and regulations in districts controlled by the French is not unnaturally to be found in the book. For example, in the Duke of Mecklenburg's account of his explorations about Lake Tchad we read:

"The daily loading of the animals was indeed a sore trial of our patience. Each ox carries his driver and a load suspended on each side, which must be very carefully balanced to prevent the heavier load from dragging down the lighter. This was an almost daily occurrence, so that we became quite accustomed to hear the crash of falling packing-cases, although this did not exactly improve their contents. The preparations for starting always occupied at least an hour and a half,

whereas well-drilled carriers get ready to march in less than half an hour. The animals soon tired and fell on the bad roads, which resembled nothing so much as a frozen and newly ploughed field. The overhanging branches, too, pulled down the loads, and thus necessitated halts of varying duration which were very tiresome. However, French 'humanity' forbids the employment of native carriers in all districts where they can be replaced by animals. Perhaps the happy day will yet dawn in Europe when all manual labour will be forbidden for humanitarian reasons!"

Sharper point is given to this ironical comment on French "humanity" by the thoughtless cruelty of the native drivers toward their beasts of burden. But in general we sympathize with the negroes in their decided preference for following their own pursuits rather than being coerced into the wearisome office of carrier.

Among the more interesting discoveries of these explorers may be noted the stone hatchets and hammers found in Bagirmi and regarded as "traces of a far-distant age," and also the "eatable earth" of the same region—a natural product looked upon by the natives as a great delicacy when made into a kind of pudding sauce. Here, evidently, is the paradise of which our own clay-eaters dream. Further eastward, in Bahr-el-Ghazal, there was encountered what might almost be regarded as the long-looked-for missing link; in fact, several links made their appearance, as described by Captain von Wiese und Kaiserswaldau. Recording his meeting with a

venerable old man named Bogpingi, he says that the patriarch related with great pride the history of his origin, which is as follows:

"His great-grandfather, Rumbi, had once upon a time lost his way in the great Congo forest, and had lived by himself until he made friends with a herd of chimpanzees. He made his home with this herd, and eventually married a chimpanzee young lady. By this union he had several children, amongst them Bansira, who was afterwards Bogpingi's grandfather. Bansira was finally adopted by the Pambias, and his family has remained with this tribe ever since; his son was the chief Gimma, the father of my informant Bogpingi. The old gentleman was very proud of having had a chimpanzee for his great-grandmother, and his face certainly confirmed his account of his ancestry, bearing an unmistakable resemblance to my two tame chimpanzees. Several times in this country I came across families claiming a direct descent from anthropoid apes, which they regarded as a special honour, and by no means as a disgrace!"

One further notable passage must be given, this time from Dr. Arnold Schultze's travels in the German Congo and South Cameroons, as related by him in the second volume. Near the village of Lau, between Yukaduma and Assobam, he was visited by a chieftain who gave interesting information concerning the widely-scattered secret society called "Labi."

"The most astonishing thing connected with this society is its secret language, understood by all members, and constituting a bond of union between natives belonging to the most diverse and often hostile tribes. A Labi member may not kill his antagonist in battle after the latter has proclaimed his membership by means of a few code words. Duku, a soldier who accompanied me, belonged to this society, and confirmed the statements of the Lau chief, adding that its members are found among the Yangheres, Bokaris, Bipalos, and Kakas, as well as among the Makas and Yebekolles."

No lack of unusual and often exceedingly interesting information is to be found in these generous volumes. The colored illustrations and uncolored drawings furnished by the artist of the expedition, Herr Ernst M. Heims, are excellent; and his pen contributes a notable section, "From Lake Tchad to the Niger." Pictures from photographs abound throughout the work, and a good map is inserted at the end. The translation, commendable especially for its successful avoidance of the tone of a translation, is from an unnamed hand or hands. Some evidences of haste in the preparation and proof-reading and printing of the book are discoverable, as is commonly to be expected in a work issued simultaneously in several languages; but the substantial worth of this contribution to our knowledge of equatorial Africa is not thereby impaired. PERCY F. BICKNELL.

AN ENGLISH MODERNIST.*

"Modernism" is a word which only recently has been found frequenting good society with a specific, not to say a technical, meaning. It would be a moderately good definition to say that Mr. G. K. Chesterton is a Modernist; but still only moderately good, for so many Modernists are not what Mr. Chesterton is. It may be better, then, to quote Professor Santayana, from his breezy "Winds of Doctrine": "Modernism is the infiltration into minds that begin by being Catholic and wish to remain so of two contemporary influences: one the rationalistic study of the Bible and of church history, the other modern philosophy, especially in its mystical and idealistic forms.' A little further on he says in his brilliant and slightly unfair way: "The modernist, then, starts with the orthodox but untenable persuasion that Catholicism comprehends all that is good; he adds the heterodox though amiable sentiment that any well-meaning ambition of the mind, any illumination, any science, must be good, and therefore compatible with Catholicism."

On reading the first half of Mr. Wilfrid Ward's "Men and Matters" one might not feel the application of the foregoing remarks, for though the papers on George Wyndham and John Stuart Mill and "Mr. Chesterton among the Prophets" all reveal the Catholic point of view, that view is truly Catholic, undisturbed by any hint of schism, modernist or mediævalist; while the two delightful papers on Disraeli might have been written by a Jew.

It is in the second half of the volume that the Modernism of Mr. Ward develops. Beginning auspiciously with an essay on Cardinal Vaughan, the unity is broken briefly by "Tennyson at Freshwater." Then the burden is renewed, and grows in volume and distinctness to the end. The titles alone are eloquent: "Cardinal Newman's Sensitiveness," "Union among Christians," "The Conservative Genius of the Church,' " "St. Thomas Aquinas and the Mediaval Thought," "Cardinal Newman on Constructive Religious Thought," "Reduced "Reduced Christianity," and "Papers Read before the Synthetic Society.' Although there is a formidable ecclesiastical sound to these titles, and indeed not a little ecclesiastical material under them, yet the writer's sound historical knowledge and mellow personality, joined with his completely flexible and dignified handling, give them all an interest even to the general reader.

The groundwork of assumptions in a con

* MEN AND MATTERS. By Wilfrid Ward. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

sistent Catholic book can scarcely be scientific in a modern sense. That is, the deductive Aristotelian interpretations made by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century have never been brought into harmony with the empirical methods of the twentieth century (and therein lies the problem of the Modernist). Science is always heretical and protestant, whatever the bias of the scientist may be. Therefore when a scientific person and a nonCatholic to boot reads in Mr. Ward's Preface that "the crude theory of 'private judgment' finds few advocates" and that "heresies are of course a danger to the Church," the audacity of this cool conservatism is more startling to him than the last outburst of the highest German criticism can be to the innocent literalist. But it will also be extremely salutary for that same non-Catholic to get the viewpoint of Modernism, not from a priest, but from a Catholic philosopher and man of the world.

The chapter on "Union among Christians" turns a frank face to the great schism in the Christian Church. Why are not Catholics as ready as Protestants to coöperate against the common foes of atheism and free thought? Mr. Ward's answer is so important as to deserve full quotation:

"What then is the true import and rationale of the exclusiveness of Catholics? of their slowness to amalgamate with other Christians? Why, if they wish to coöperate with others against the common enemy are they not more ready than they actually are to put out of sight points of difference, to join in common worship, to send their children to schools in which the essence of Christianity is taught, though not the distinctively Catholic doctrines? Why do they seem so slow to recognize that in the great battle for Christian faith, forms of the creed are minor matters compared with its essence? The reply may be put in various ways. The one which I think best appeals to the modern mind is the view which is illustrated in Cardinal Newman's Essay on Development, by his comparison of the Catholic Church to an organism. An organism has many parts performing various functions which cannot be regarded as equally important elements in its life-work. Yet its power to do its life-work effectively depends on the whole being kept alive and vigorous. And for this object functions not directly connected with its most important work are indispensable. Cicero's digestive functions are certainly a very minor matter in our thought of Cicero as a worldpower. Yet they may have played an all-important part in the general well-being without which he would not have left us the writings by which his greatness was established. The Catholic Church no doubt claims to be the one indefectible guardian of the Christian revelation. Her exclusiveness is largely based on this claim. But it has also much of its raison d'être in reasons which are the conditions of efficiency for any organism. Her creed

and ritual and organization form a complete and living whole. Once you begin to tamper with it and to suggest that only those parts of her creed should be insisted on which she shares with other Christians, you threaten the validity of the living organism and the individuality on which its power largely depends."

This would be fine were it not for a defect in the analogy of Cicero's "digestive functions." Modern history takes very important account of Cicero's digestion. We are dogmatically certain that life depends to an excessive degree "upon the liver," that the deepest tragedies (such as Hamlet's) have all a physiological basis. So it is not quite modern to assume that the liver is only obscurely in our minds. Furthermore, is there not a suggestion of casuistry in the comparison of ritual with such an important part of Cicero? Cicero's baldness or the cut of his toga really had no effect, according to the best information available, on his influence as a worldpower.

Another passage to the same point seems much more convincing. Speaking of one of the distinctively Catholic ideals, the monastic life, as a point at issue for Protestants, especially for Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Ward writes:

"Probably far more will be done to check infidelity by the zeal and esprit de corps of even one among the hundreds of Catholic religious orders than by all that the religion in common between Mr. Kingsley and the Pope would be likely to effect not because the points in common between them are not the most important ones, but because in the monastic vocation you have the inspiration and the faith that can move mountains, while Mr. Kingsley and the Pope are not likely to combine so as to create any parallel esprit de corps or selfdenying zeal in their followers. Zeal is needed as well as truth, heat as well as light. Nothing is more important than belief in God. Yet a miscellaneous collection of theists would probably be comparatively lukewarm and ineffective apostles." Herein lies the only effective justification of denominations. Speaking in terms of formal logic, as you increase the extension of a term or thing you decrease the intention, until finally the meaning grows so thin that it is nothing but skin and bone with not a drop of blood to give it force.

The gist of Modernism is contained in the two papers, "The Conservative Genius of the Church" and "St. Thomas Aquinas and Mediæval Thought." The conservative principle of the Church has resulted in the continuous double phenomenon of Resistance and Assimilation. "The palmary instance of this assimilative activity - because the change was greatest was the complete adaptation of theology to Aristotelian philosophy and to dialectical treatment by St. Thomas Aquinas.'

Aristotle's metaphysical works, condemned by the Council of Paris in 1210 A. D. to be burnt, were "sifted" by Albertus Magnus and transformed by St. Thomas, until in 1254 they were in the official required list for the Bachelor of Arts degree. This lesson from Aquinas, Mr. Ward would have the modern Church learn. He says the temper of mind of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was much like this of the twentieth. The material of the intellectual questioning was different; but the method, the precocious curiosity, was the same. Therefore in dealing to-day with secular learning the Christian theologians "have everything to learn from St. Thomas."

It appears later in this essay that what St. Thomas did was to join the philosophy of Plato to the method of Aristotle, and Mr. Ward's immense though natural mistake is that Christian theologians have still only Plato and Aristotle to reckon with. Mr. Ward knows something of later philosophies, of Pragmatism for instance, but he brushes this last aside as out of court. Such a magisterial manner with this potent element in our Zeitgeist argues only fear of the opposition or distrust of his own forces, or both. "Summa Theologica," however keen and effective a weapon in the thirteenth century, needs more than a simple readjustment; it must have a new handle and some new blades.

The

The essays that are without ecclesiastical tang are delightful. That on Disraeli flashes light upon so many facets of this sparkling person that the confluence takes on unity and historic truth. The treatment of John Stuart Mill is as fine a piece of critical writing upon a difficult and not over-engaging subject as can be found in contemporary literature. It is worthy of the early reviewers, of the hand of a Macaulay or the heart of a Carlyle.

"Tennyson at Freshwater,' though a charming piece of literary chat, curiously misses the mark of its author. Mr. Ward as a boy had known and worshipped Tennyson, and in recounting some homely incidents concerning the "god of his idolatry" he dangerously assumes that his readers will interpret them as sympathetically as he himself does. For instance, Jowett's remark, "Tennyson experienced a great deal of pain from the attacks of his enemies; I never remember his receiving the least pleasure from the commendation of his friends," quoted approvingly, may not be considered altogether conclusive as to Tennyson's imperviousness to flattery, but rather bears witness to a gluttony that no surfeit could satisfy. And Mr. Ward's concluding anecdote has such a doubtful twist as to leave one almost suspicious of his allegiance: