any rate, the whole drift of modern legislation, Irish land laws, railroad commissions, factory laws, etc., is in that direction, and this at least shows us that there was or is some want in the social organization which we are trying to satisfy.

(4) Finally, modern political economy teaches us to be conservative in the changes we desire or attempt. Social institutions are the result of a long process of development, and it is reasonable to suppose that, as a rule, they are adjusted to the nature of man. They are not to be lightly overthrown or cast aside, for thereby we lose the basis on which historic civilization rests.

The two things which lie at the foundation of our modern civilization, and which have been the final result thus far of the evolution of the human race, are the principle of individual liberty and the institution of private property. Liberty, not only from subjection to another, but liberty to make what use one pleases of one's powers and talents; liberty to travel, liberty to choose an occupation, liberty to trade: all this is the fruit of long years of contest and struggle against feudal nobles, guilds and monopolies and absolute monarchies. This liberty is to be surrendered neither to capitalist nor to boycotter, but is to be preserved as the hard-won fruit of civilization. Private property, again, is an institution which has grown up step by step with civilization. We have no historic knowledge of any high civilization which has ever existed without it; and we do not see how sufficient inducement could be given the individual to carry on the onerous work of production if we did not in some way assure to him the fruit of his labor.

Finally, the functions of the state are probably extending themselves; but experience shows us a limit to these functions. The state in our present stage of civilization could do a great many things better than the individual does them; just as a parent can do for a child almost everything better than the child. can do it for itself. But just as the child, if the parent do everything for it, never attains an efficient manhood, so the individual, if the state does everything, is never able to do anything, but is at the mercy of the bureaucracy which administers the state. In other words, the functions of the state are never to be so far extended as to destroy individual character and energy, for thereby

the state destroys civilization itself. The state is not a socialistic organization intended to relieve the individual of all responsibility, but an organization intended to assist the individual in his pursuit of happiness.

It is in this sense, therefore, in a strong historical conviction of the importance of the principle of individual liberty and the institution of private property and a philosophical conviction of the worth of individual character and energy, that the new political economy, while fearlessly radical in looking at social problems, is also intensely conservative.

ENERGY'S ETERNITY.-Correlation is a word proposed by Mr. W. R. Grove, in 1842, and means "mutually convertible." He says: "Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, motion, are all convertible material affections. Assuming either as the cause, one of the others will be the effect." Let us take as an example motion and heat. Their relations were first established by Mr. Joule, in 1849, and after seven years' patient investigation he found that the amount of mass motion in a body weighing one pound, which had fallen 772 feet, was exactly equal to the molecular motion which must be added to a pound of water in order to heat it one degree Fahrenheit. If we call the actual energy of a body weighing one pound which has fallen one foot, a footpound, then we may speak of the mechanical equivalent of heat as being 772 foot-pounds. Tyndall has made the calculation that our earth, moving with a velocity of 19 miles a second, would strike with a force of 98,416,136,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons! Were this energy all converted into heat, it would equal that produced by the combustion of 14 earths of solid coal. Take note, also, that all energy, not active in motion, is potential in attraction, from which it follows that in the attraction we have energy stored up for future use. The sun is thus storing up energy. Every minute it raises 2,000,000,000 tons of water to the mean height of the clouds, 3 miles, and the actual energy set free when this water falls, is equal to 2,757,000,000,000 horsepower.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.

[Read before the Society of Arts, London, February 24, 1888.]

BY SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER.*

I

LATELY read in a newspaper that the average cost of educating each student in a certain college at Oxford is £6,481. The calculation was, from an arithmetical point of view, unassailable. The revenues of the college were correctly given, and when divided by the number of so-called students they showed this enormous expenditure. The ingenious statist had, however, overlooked the fact that the income of that college is not applied to educating students itself, but to strengthening the teaching staff of the other colleges, or of the University, and to the endowment of research. No one, so far as I am aware, took the trouble to expose the miscalculation, and it passed as an amusing example of the abuse of figures. There is a miscalculation, similar in kind, but fraught with more serious consequences— sometimes heard on English platforms, and reiterated in the press-which saddens the hearts of thousands of earnest men and women in this country, and which carries discouragement to hundreds of devoted workers in distant lands. When I hear the result of Indian missions estimated by dividing their expenditure among the number of their conversions, and then giving the cost of each new convert at so much a head, the same effect is produced on my mind as by the statement regarding the average expenditure on each of the so-called students at that Oxford college. There may be initial periods of missionary effort among the Polynesian and African races to which a calculation of this sort can be properly applied. On that point I do not presume to offer an opinion. But speaking of the country in regard to which my own experience enables me to speak, the country which in our times forms the great field of missionary labor, I declare that

* No more important paper has appeared anywhere this year, in our judgment, than this by Sir William Hunter. It is timely, in view of recent discussions, and authoritative, because of its source. We think that all our readers will be pleased to read and preserve it.

no true ratio exists between missionary expenditure or missionary work in India and the number of new conversions. I affirm that calculations based on the assumption of such a ratio are fundamentally unsound. It has been my duty to inquire into the progress of the various religions of India. The inquiry discloses a rapid proportionate increase among the native Christians, unknown among the Muhammadan and Hindu population; but it also proves that the increase bears no direct relation to the new conversions from orthodox Hinduism and Islam. For this misapplication of statistics the friends of missionary enterprise were originally in some sense responsible. The great outburst of evangelistic effort in India took place during the upheaval of Dissent against lukewarm orthodoxy in England. The first idea of our missionaries was to make converts from the established religions of India, as some of our Dissenting bodies at home hoped to swell their numbers at the expense of the Established Churches of Great Britain. During the past fifty years this idea has been modified. Experience has shown that a vast increase of activity and usefulness among the English and Scottish sects outside the Established Churches is not only consistent with, but has actually proved concurrent with a vast increase of activity and usefulness within those Churches. It has also shown that the progress of Christianity in India is compatible with the progress of Hinduism and Islam. For as the Dissenting bodies of Great Britain have in our century won their great successes not by a large absorption of good Churchmen, but by their noble labors among the encompassing masses on the outskirts of religious life, so the missionaries in India have chiefly made their converts, not from the well-instructed Muhammadans and Hindus, but among the more backward races, and from the lower castes, who are destitute of a high faith of their own. There have been many conspicuous exceptions to this rule. But the rule has been so general, and the possibility of common progress is so evident, that a violently aggressive attitude towards the native religions is felt to be unsuitable in India, very much as the old odium theologicum between the Established Church and Dissent is felt to be an anachronism in England. In both countries it is the poor that have had the Gospel preached to them. In both countries

the leaders of Christian thought have read again the opening words of the first missionary sermon, and recognized that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. In India especially a religion must be judged, not by its alarms and incursions into other encampments, but by the practical work which it does for its own people. For in India religious organization plays a part in the social structure which it has long ceased to discharge among the more consolidated nationalities of Europe. The religious bond has to do in India for a dense population—subject to the overwhelming calamities of the tropics, and destitute of any poor law-what a highly developed system of State relief does for England. It has also to take the place of the innumerable charitable organizations which in England supplement and humanize State relief. The religious bond in India has to exercise the constraining moral influences on a multitude of self-contained communities, which the cumulative force of public opinion exerts in more homogeneous nations. The religious force in India had, until our own days, to supply the motive power of education; nor are signs wanting that it will again assert itself actively in the spread of Indian schools. The religious bond in India forms an important factor in mercantile credit, and tends to concentrate trade within certain communities of joint believers. To sum up, religious organization in India does the work of public opinion and of poor law; it forms the basis of private benevolence and of mercantile credit; it supplied until lately the motive power of public instruction. In such a country, I repeat, a religion must stand or fall by what it does for the well-being of its own people. I propose to apply this principle to three great religions of modern India— Muhammadanism, Hinduism, and Christianity. British rule has created a new world in India, with new problems of existence, which each community must solve for itself. What power do the various religions disclose of adapting themselves to this new world? What solutions do they offer for its new problems? I am well aware that any theological discussion, or even any expression of my own belief, would be out of place within these walls.

But while, in addressing this society, I confine myself to the