and at the sub-inspector's very earnest request the Collector put another bullet in its head. So a little later the great cat died, having killed and eaten many cattle in its time; and stretched out, lithe and massive, and suggesting even in its death its strong and incomparable vitality, it evoked my sentiment. There seemed a strange waste in the destruction of a creature so full of life and beauty. One can rejoice in the death of a crocodile or a shark -such things are repulsive to man. The cat-tribe is not. Between us there is not the same cold-blooded element. The heat and fierceness of the tiger's is not so different from our own. I suppose St. Francis could have said "Brother Shark," but a mere ordinary sinner could almost say "Brother Tiger."

Well, we sometimes go for our brothers heartily enough, and I have to confess that my humane sentiment did not amount to much, and was succeeded by that previous and much less humane feeling that I might with luck have shot it myself and hadn't. "I do think," I said reproachfully to the Collector, "that you need not have finished my first tiger with your first shot."

He also is a humane man, but he only grinned.

"Sorry," he said. "I wish you'd got it, of course. It's just as well it was dropped, though. A wounded tiger's a nuisance, especially when it comes roaring for your elephant."

"I daresay," I said grudgingly, for some experiences are worth having, and this would have been one.

Our elephant had been taken up to the tiger's body, and its waggling trunk, as it snuffed it from head to tail, proclaimed that the chuprassie might with safety descend. Already, as if by magic, the little wood was filled at a respectful distance with villagers, and as the chuprassie took his

proud stand by the body, they crowded up jabbering till the glade was like a parrot-house. The bolder spirits smacked their dead enemy, or dipped a finger in his blood, and the chuprassie watched with jealous eyes lest any one should try and steal a hair of its whiskers. These and the claws are so highly esteemed for charms that there is scarcely a Bengali who can refrain from abstracting them if he gets the chance. In this instance the whiskers were solemnly counted. I forget what they numbered, but I could see the chuprassie going over them again at intervals until the bullock-cart, which in some mysterious way was hauled up through the trees, arrived to take the body into camp to be skinned. The procession thereupon formed was a triumphant one, and must have numbered some hundreds, some on foot, some on the small ponies of the country. I particularly remember one aged man, in a bright mauve robe on a white pony, who hastily galloped up for the purpose of spitting at the dead tiger and saying, “Ho, ho, you thought you were a great tiger that could frighten us. But you are nothing but a weak little jackal-how could you kill a cow?"

This was a figure of speech, of course, for it measured exactly eight foot eleven, which is medium for a tiger. Certainly it was not the eightfoot-high creature, bigger than a horse, which the sub-inspector had promised us. That one, he now vowed, was still at large, and would make even better hunting for his Honor, if his Honor would only wait and go after it. Unfortunately our time was limited. These are not days when the official may take a week off as he pleases for the hunting of tiger, and we had to move on that same afternoon. But the Collector said that he would return some day to that part of his district, and that mean

time the sub-inspector had better keep a record of the tiger's movements, and also of the movements of dacoits, some of whom it would be well for him to catch.

About a month later, when we were back in the station, a young police superintendent -a Scotsman came round to the bungalow. He too had been visiting the same outpost in the course of his duties two days beforethat is to say, rather more than three weeks after the tiger was shot. soon, he said, as he rode up, the subinspector ca'ne bustling out with smiles upon his face, and in answer Blackwood's Magazine.

As

to the question what report he had to make, said delightedly

"Sir, I have to report that the Collector has shot a tiger."

"And what about the dacoits?" demanded that official.

"Well, he's looking for them. But he's so pleased about the tiger still, and thinks you are, that they've rather taken a second place."

"I'll make him think," said the Collector grimly, and the young policeman winked at me.

"Shows how jolly incorruptible we have to be out here," he said. "The price of Empire what?"

R. E. V.

To the Editor of THE NATION. Sir,-There is a single sentence in Mr. Sidney Low's generous review of my book, "Broken Earthenware," to which it is necessary that I make reply; but before referring to this sentence and furnishing my answer. pray permit me to express my gratitude to Mr. Low for his brilliant and understanding notice of my book.

Mr. Low says that I am on insecure ground when I issue a challenge to science to perform miracles of "conversion"; and he refers me to a subject with which I happen to be well acquainted, medical hypnotism. Now, it is as true that hypnotism can occasionally turn an almost dipsomaniac, if he desire to be saved, into a teetotaller, as that Salvation Army conversion can turn a similar drunkard or a sensual monster into a saint. But, the immense difference! Science cures malady; conversion creates a soul. Mr. Low's criticism, in fact, underlines the chief contention of my book. I say that science can save a man from himself, but cannot give him the impulse "The Living Age," February 5, 1910.

a

to save others. The whole wonder and the chief beauty of conversion, under the Christian influence, is that it renders fair what was foul, and afterwards creates in the converted and cleansed soul a resistless passion for saving other souls which are yet sunk in degradation and despair.

I do not think that it is either fair or wise to make a comparison between the mad and unreasoning fanaticism of the Mahdi's followers with the quiet, self-sacrificing, and most gentle tenderness of those Salvationists, men and women, who, without sounding a trumpet before them, devote their days and nights to nursing the sick, to comforting the sorrowful, and to saving the lost, in neighborhoods of horror and contagion. Mr. Low may account on physical grounds for the mental disturbance at the moment of "conversion," but who of us will dare to attempt on purely human ground an explanation for the beauty and the sublime devotion of the after-life?-Yours, &c., Harold Begbie.

Carbis Bay, S.O.,
January 12th, 1910.

And

To the Editor of THE NATION. Sir,-There are many points of interest raised by Mr. Sidney Low in his article on "religious conversion," in your last number. Mr. Low has before him Mr. Harold Begbie's records of a number of conversions in a slum district of London, and he acknowledges the marvellous reforms which are spoken of, most of them, as he notes, being from alcoholism and other forms of extreme sensual indulgence. he then proceeds towards a conclusion which, from the point of view of religion, is of a most seriously sceptical character. For he equates these changes with the changes due to mental suggestion and hypnotism. The point of these latter changes is that there is not any real object before the mind of the experient; there are only internal perturbations of his own being -even when these are induced by suggestions coming from other people, and therefore originating externally to the patient, they are not really objective, e.g., if a hypnotizer suggests that the patient is a King or the Lord Mayor and should behave more becomingly, the influence takes place, although the patient is neither of these exalted personages. But in many cases the suggestions are quite self-made, and have no external existence in any shape or form. Now it is Mr. Low's contention that the conversions from alcoholism by the preaching of a Divine promise of forgiveness and spiritual help are quite parallel to the above, and would take place even if such promise is quite fictional; in short, that false beliefs are as effective as true ones in producing mental reformation.

This contention is a very common one in our time, especially with people connected with medical studies or taking interest in psychological inquiries. Psychology is taken as capable of giving full and complete answer to the problems of reality. It would be a

very serious difficulty in the way of establishing religious truth if this contention were valid. For it cuts away the real veracity of the experience to which religious thought makes its appeal, and closes the gate against all reference to God and to our relationship with Him.

I trust that this momentous subject will be discussed in your pages. For

myself, I offer this counter-statement: that a revolution in the soul which is to be of a healthy and a permanent kind can be effected only by rescuing the mind from fictions and from its own unaided efforts for self-guidance by placing it in contact with the real spiritual order of the universe. I maintain that in a healthy state the mind is never self-fed, so to speak; it knows the difference between its own creations and realities, between its own power, and lack of power, and the power which surrounds it, and on which it can draw for support. may from time to time be misled by its own fancies or be despondent in its times of weakness; but over a long course of years and through a continued course of experience, health, insight, and vigor can come only from contact with what is real.

It

Now, the conversions on which religion relies are not simply sudden changes taken apart from the subsequent history of the converted men and women, but those in which we have before us records of subsequent health. vigor, and happiness. The records of religion abound with instances of men who, after conversion, have been so unquestionably healthy. SO notably sane, and so eminently vigorous, that we acclaim them as types of what man is capable of being. For example, I can think of no healthier and stronger types of human character in quite humble circumstances of life than those recorded in the "Lives of the Early Methodist Preachers"; veritable

leaders of men among the strong characters of England from the Yorkshire dales to the miners of Cornwall in the eighteenth century. If these, and others like them, were merely subjects of fictional suggestions, whether induced by John Wesley or evoked in their own minds, on a par with hypnotized patients recalled from mental alienation by Charcot and his assistants, we see in face of the grim conclusion that there are fictions more effective of sanity and vigor, more beneficent for individual souls and for social welfare generally, than reality itself. We should have to accept the strange conclusion that the unconverted men who accept as the only truth that they are morally failures and wrecks, left to themselves for all hope of reform, are in a superior position to those who lend themselves to the influence of fictitious suggestions, either generated by their own fancies or imposed on them by the will of other people. This would indeed be an abandonment of all belief in the rationality of the universe.

We grant that minds under delusion or in hysterical or abnormal nervous situations can be rescued by the intervention of baseless suggestions for the moment; but that they can settle down into permanent sanity unless they are presently brought into contact with realities is neither probable nor proved. And I affirm that the conversion of men from moral degradation, or simply from weakness of will or from poverty of moral ideals, into men of high aims and of well-knit moral constitution, takes place precisely because they are rescued from a realm of self-delusion and self-dependence, full of fictions, deceits, and vanities, and placed within a realm of highest reality by the moral order of the universe. In effecting solid and permanent conversions, religions-for it is not only Christianity which is concerned-are all of them effective, because they

bring to bear some truths about the Divine order of the world, and place converted souls in the light of these truths, and under the influence of the Spirit which is the source and the essence of reality itself.

There are other considerations to be brought to bear against Mr. Low's contention. I hope that your readers will not fail to accept your invitation to the discussion of this widely-prevalent tendency to abandon trust in that rationality of the universe on which true religion takes its stand.-Yours, &c., A. Caldecott.

King's College, London,
January 6th, 1910.

To the Editor of THE NATION. Sir,-There is a suggestive analogy to the psychology of conversion in Aristotle's "Ars Poetica." There he tells us that the two conditions of a good drama are Anagnorisis (recognition) and Peripeteia (revolution). In a perfect drama such as the "Oedipus Tyrannus" these two coincide. At the turning-point in the play Oedipus recogizes himself for what he really isthe murderer of his father-and his circumstances and character undergo a revolution, as we see in the "Oedipus Coloneus."

So in a real conversion: A man recognizes himself as ruined and guilty, and through that self-knowledge begins to know God; his character and often his circumstances are revolutionized. Conversion is the recognition and revolution which changes life from a chaotic and often a filthy dream into a well-ordered drama in which not self, but Christ, is the protagonist, and the best way to understand conversion is to be converted.— Yours, &c.,

January 12th, 1910.

C. F.

To the Editor of THE NATION.

Sir, Mr. Low asks how we shall explain the psychology of conversion, and he proceeds to answer his own question. He says that it is the power of suggestion and hypnotism which turns criminals and degenerates to habits of decency, order, and honest living. I venture to think that Mr. Low is mistaken in attributing conversion to the power of suggestion. There are many in every class of society who have experienced conversion, and who are prepared to affirm that the force by which the change is wrought is the power of personality. Suggestion is doubtless the first step, but suggestion acts on the mind, while the influence of personality operates on the soul. In other words, it is the influence of the living personality of Jesus Christ on the life of the individual that causes the change and produces character and a mind in approximation to the mind of Christ.

In the cases of the criminal, drunkard, and bully, conversion is explained by the same power-life-giving spiritual contact with God himself-but here the way is opened for that influence to operate by powerful suggestion, sometimes of a sensational and emotional nature. We find countless cases of conversion in the Salvation Army meetings and in the churches of all denominations, whether Nonconformist, Anglican, or Roman. But the force behind the change is the same in all cases. It is the vitalizing power of personality operating on the soul of man. And what power can be more regenerating and more permanently illuminating than continuous living intercourse with Jesus Christ who is surely the Son of God?-Yours, &c.,

C. Lyall Cottle.

Warren Drive, New Brighton,
January 3rd, 1910.

To the Editor of THE NATION. Sir,-The article of Mr. Sidney Low greatly impressed me. Conversions have all the fascination of mystery for the psychologist. As a scientist he is obliged to face them precisely as he has to face the mental phenomena of the child, the eccentric, the insane, the hypnotized subject, &c. Any facts of the human mind, be they normal or abnormal, must find a place within the region which he explores. The most daring explorer in this region comes often to a sudden halt by reason of the difficulties lying across his path. Thanks to the concentrated attention bestowed in recent years on the abnormal phases of the mind, and the labors of the Psychical Research Society, rauch fresh light has been shed on this dark region. Professors Starbuck and James amongst others have done much in directing attention to the subject of conversions. On strictly psychological grounds neither these authors nor anybody else here succeeded in tracing them to their exact cause. They remain more or less a problem. To refer them to "suggestion," or to the operation of the subconscious self, does not bring us much nearer the problem. What takes place in the mind of the convert Professor James would seem to regard "as results of the tension of subliminal memories reaching burstingpoint." (Varieties, p. 236.) Furthermore, he says: "If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. But just how anything operates in this region is still unexplained." (Varieties, p. 270.) He appears to think that the subconscious self is the mediating term between the Self and God (p. 511).

It would no doubt simplify the prob lem if all conversions were alike; but they are not alike. Conversions are endless in their variety. Moreover, as a word, conversion is variously ap