Brahma, the soul into the Oversoul, is the reward; for the indifferent, a return into various bodies according to their moral state, is taught.

Six systems of philosophy aim at showing how absorption into Brahma may be accomplished, and they deal inferentially with the conduct of life and the whole duty of man.

Buddhism, which I may call the Broad Church Reform of Brahmanism, which took place about B.C. 620, must form the subject of a separate chapter.

The ascetic Brahman of later days, himself at last without feelings, had grown insensible to the sufferings of others.

The praying Brahman had turned himself into a mere praying machine, like the prayingwheels now imported from Thibet.

The sacrificing Brahman retained not a vestige of care for the spiritual meaning of all sacrifice in the subjection of the human to the divine will.

The contemplative Brahman had degenerated into a trance lunatic, without thought.

All conduct had got to be regulated by self-seeking motives, and all charity by mechanical and time-serving considerations. In a word, the whole of Brahmanism-and this was its sovereign corruption-had become centred in the priests; to that caste all the others were steadily and consistently sacrificed. One vast ecclesiastical tyranny had spread itself throughout the whole of the Peninsula, more pitiless than Mahometanism, more formal than Romanism, more gloomy than any form of Paganism. The masses of the people were oppressed and the rich squeezed by the extortion of the Brahmans. Nothing could be done without them, yet what they did seemed of no use to any one. The whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint; such was the spectacle which met the eyes of Prince Buddhia when he drove out of his palace gates six hundred years before Christ, determined to look upon the wide outer world for himself.

What he saw, what he was, what he did, shall be told in my next chapter.

HOW AND WHEN STIMULANTS ARE HURTFUL.

By J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, M.D.

то affirm that "stimulants are injurious" is especially desirable that it should be taken without explaining how, and showing into serious consideration by everybody, when, they are so, is to broaden out the pro- whether total abstainers, moderate drinkers, position until it becomes false. Truth may or free livers. Let me try to cast what I be transformed, by extension, into untruth. have to communicate into a few aphorisms. There is nothing we more need to under- If I can so make them they shall be axioms. stand and bear in mind, while tracking the path of progress in science and general knowledge in this "go-ahead" age, than the relativity of truth. The worst errors are made by truth-seekers. The greatest and most deplorable misconceptions of fact are commonly formed by those who, in their eager but unwise endeavours to "get at the bottom of things" or to take "broad views," either mistake the particular (e.g., the individual), for the general (i.e., the universal), or construe and apply the general as if it were the particular. For example, in this matter of stimulants, it may be relatively true in reference to an individual that they are injurious, that is to the one person; but this, fact as it is in the individual case, may not be a fact, and therefore not true, in a general or universal sense. This must be remembered. It is not, however, the point I am expressly intent on placing before the reader in this little paper. What I have to say may be said in a few sentences, and it had better be so said than lost in a cloud of words; for it

A stimulant stirs to activity; sensation is heightened, force or power is increased by stimulation. This is the direct or immediate effect of a stimulant, and, in a strict sense, stimulants do not, in truth cannot, produce any other, or secondary, effects. It is a fallacy to say that stimulants are first exciting and then depressing. What occurs after the excitement is not the effect of the stimulant, it arises out of the condition of the organism stimulated, and varies with its state. Sensation is a faculty of knowing. We know the properties or qualities of the objects around us by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. These are faculties or functions of relation, that is, they bring the Consciousness into relation with the external world. When one or all of the sensory faculties are heightened by stimulation, that effect is brought about by the excitation of the organ or organs of sensation. So with action, the organs of movement may be stimulated, and when they are so stimulated the effect is produced by excitation. This is the

whole story of stimulation, and it will be seen that, inasmuch as the sensations and activities are natural, stimulation cannot in itself be injurious. Now comes the important point upon which I ask the reader to bestow his best attention.

Stimulation cannot either give power or increase strength. It simply calls into activity what already exists in the organism. To speak accurately, it converts potential energy into kinetic (from Kew, I move) force. Energy is power held in reserve, force is power in action. Stimulants provoke a discharge of energy, and in so doing of course they reduce the stock in hand by just so much as they consume in action. Sometimes it is good and wise to stir up the energy of a torpid organism, and to compel its conversion into active force. Activity may relieve a too tense, or, if I may so express myself, a turgid, state of the "nervous centres," which are the generators, accumulators, and reservoirs of energy. Meanwhile, it will be evident that stimulation must be injurious when it excites an organism which is deficient in energy to discharge its almost exhausted reserve of force. This will take us a step further.

Stimulation consumes energy and tends to exhaust. This is strictly and universally the fact, and if nothing more than we have yet seen existed and claimed to be taken into account, the one rational and inevitable conclusion must be that stimulants are injurious without stint or limitation. There is, however, more to be said. The fact that energy, or strength, or power-call it what we please is produced and stored in the organism ready to be called out by excitation, implies the existence of faculties of production and storing. And, as a matter of fact, these re-creative faculties may be, and are in health, stimulated by the same agent that excites to the conversion of energy into force; so that not only is strength consumed, but a fresh supply of strength is called into existence by stimulation of the energymaking faculty. This brings us to the root of the question.

Now let me endeavour to set
works, and only as it feeds and works can it
be healthy.
down a few maxims which will, on consider-
ation, be found to grow out of what we have
thus briefly reviewed.

1. Never take stimulants in moments of extreme exhaustion. That is precisely the time and state when there is especial peril of discharging the last remains of energy, and leaving the nervous centres too exhausted and powerless to recuperate. There is in nervous action, as in mechanical motion, a dead point at which inertia becomes imminent.

2. Never take more of a stimulant than will suffice to stir the energies gently. If you want to incite a horse to action, you must If more than this be done, not whip him more than will suffice to rouse him. strength will be exhausted by irritation. 3. Never forget that stimulants are excitants, and only when they excite to recuperation-i.e. to the formation of new reserves of strength-as well as to the consumption of the strength in hand, can they be useful or even safe.

4. Never persist in the use of stimulants for the alleviation of feelings of mental or muscular weakness or weariness, if the relief "coldness of the feet," or "pros obtained is followed by "depression of spirits," tration" either of mind or body; because when these consequences ensue after a temporary revival of tone and power it is manifest that the recuperative faculty is either not properly stimulated or is itself exhausted, and harm instead of good is being done by the stimulation.

What I have tried to show tends obviously to the conclusion that extreme views on the subject of stimulants, whether those of the total-abstainer or those of the free-liver, are fallacious. The truth lies midway between the two contending parties; and yet it is not with the moderate drinkers any more than it is with the extremists on either side, unless they recognise the "how" and the "when" of injurious stimulation. Wine was given to make glad the heart of man, and it would not have gladdened his heart unless it had been stimulating and capable of quicken

Stimulants may simply provoke an expenditure of strength without creating or elicit ing a new supply. In this way and when they so act they are injurious. When, how-ing the flow of blood through his organism, ever, they stir the recuperative faculty to an activity which replaces the energy they consume, they are not injurious, but, on the contrary, useful, inasmuch as it is better that the organism as a whole, and every part of it, should act, than that it should be inactive. All living matter feeds in proportion as it

and of heightening his sensibilities and augmenting his power of action; but an intelligent instinct, free from passion and greed, must determine the mode and extent of its use, or it will not add to the sum of his happiness, or render him more fit to live and labour, to labour and live.

THE NEW MANAGER.

BY KATHERINE SAUNDERS,

AUTHOR OF "GIDEON'S ROCK," "THE HIGH MILLS," ETC.

Among the dogs belonging to the draymen and brewery workmen, there is unusual activity, and more disputes have to be settled on this afternoon than any other; more bones to be hidden, and friendly consultations to be held. All this is much to the inconvenience of busy stable-men, and the profound disgust of Hector, the great mastiff, who, chained to his kennel, is spending the whole force of his character in pretending not to see his inferiors vaunting their liberty before him in every possible and most hurtful way.

The south yard, on the other side of the house, has just been washed, and is drying in cool grey patches. The great outer gates stand open, and the yellow-footed ducks, on their way home from the common, have turned in to drink the water still lying between the huge uneven stones. Their trespass is seen by Grab, the Scotch terrier, on the counting-house steps, and they return to the public highway in less dignity than they deserted it. The inner gates are also open, revealing the interior of the brewery, all in cool, yeasty-smelling, Rembrandt shadow. Far back in that darkness is a narrow door, making a strip of light, and giving a glimpse of what seems a forest of apple blossom. Half in the darkness of the interior, and half in the sunshine of the outer yard, is a great gathering of scarlet-capped heads, reminding one of a patch of Brobdignagian poppies. Such a gathering at this hour is rather an unusual phenomenon, for work being over, and wages paid, generally signifies vacancy in the outer yard.

On this particular Saturday afternoon, however, there seems to be some charm about the Pelican, in its clean repose, that keeps its aproned servitors still lingering with their thumbs in their bibs, or in the custody of small messengers sent to tell father "tea's ready." It may be the penny pieces, pats, and admiring glances bestowed on these messengers, causing the men to linger, shrewdly guessing their delay will bring other messengers as small and as pretty in search of them also.

1

him devolves the duty of seeing the brewery here when he's a-gonned," says William closed, and delivering the keys into the Treloggan. watch.nan's hands. He looks at the men across the saucer of steaming tea balanced on his finger tips with the superior air of a domestic pigeon watching the gathering of swallows for migration.