Isidore, and from early medical works like Platearius.' Bartholomew quotes Isidore, medical works, the Lapidary, Avicenna, and the Alchemy of Hermes; Vincent in his earlier work, the 'Speculum Doctrinale,' quotes Avicenna De Anima,' 'De Congelatione,' and ' Ad Hasen,’ Rhazes 'De Aluminibus,' the 'Liber Septuaginta,' Armenides, and two lost treaties on Alchemy; in his enlarged Speculum Naturale,' in addition to these, he quotes the 'De Natura Rerum,' the 'Lumen Luminum,' Alfarabi, the 'Doctrina Alchymie,' now lost, and the De Vaporibus' of Averroes, also lost. The quotations in Vincent of Beauvais are long enough and of sufficient accuracy to enable us to check the manuscripts of these tracts we still possess, and to establish their identity. With its entry into the encyclopedias, alchemy was launched into the scientific world of the Middle Ages.

The history of scientific theory has yet to be written : it is, largely, a subsection of the History of Human Error, but it is, none the less, an instructive and necessary study. A theory is founded to explain observed facts in the light of those laws of nature accepted as axiomatic by the mind. The greater part of the facts, to-day as in the beginnings of science, are taken on authority; that is, they are assumed to be facts, and necessarily so; while analogy is still used as a base for scientific arguments. From the earliest ages philosophers have been giving speculative explanations of assumed facts by assumed analogies; and the practice did not die with Alchemy.

ROBERT STEELE.

Art. 12.-THE BRITISH SPIRIT.

It is not becoming for an individual publicly to discuss himself, and in some measure the same principle may hold good of a people; but when a national crisis which threatened infinite possibilities, including black disaster, has been safely and resolutely passed, it is permissible to summarise facts and to estimate characteristics; and if the result is gratifying, it is legitimate not only to be gratified but also, with Cap'n Cuttle, to take a note on t.'

The recent General Strike, which might more accurately be called an attempted Revolution, was a crime against the community. So cruel and far-reaching were its effects, hurting the poor, the weak and the innocent, for the benefit of a class, that its wickedness can only be fairly compared with the amazing stupidity that launched it. Happily, the strike failed; but how easily it might have succeeded is illustrated by the panic shown by Mr Lloyd George in the astonishing contribution made by him to an American newspaper. That statesman, who evidently has learnt very little from his responsibilities as a peace-maker and a Prime Minister, saw deadlock as complete as was prophesied by pessimists in the War during the dark days of close trench-fighting on the Western Front; and if in the recent crisis we all had been Lloyd Georges the result must have been a victory for those who were in the wrong, and so, quite possibly, have led to the beginning of red ruin.

Happily, on this occasion, and not for the first time in the history of the last few years, the judgment of the Member for the Carnarvon Boroughs proved inaccurate. Almost before the printer's ink of his article was dry, the strike collapsed; and at the moment when we were reading his assertion that with protagonists of such power-the associated Trades Unions challenging the Imperial Government, while the resources of millions were on either side-a compromise was the only means of discovering peace, the right end had been reached and without a compromise. It is, however, not our purpose in this place to pillory any politician or to discuss the details or the principles underlying the General Strike. Those opportunities have been

to

sufficiently realised elsewhere. Our purpose is to see and suggest what personal and national characteristics were evident in that industrial, that political, struggle of nine days-because they were the causes of the collapse and the victory, as they have been of the general success of the British régime since the beginning of its constitutional establishment.

When the recent catastrophe suddenly fell, it was, in many respects, like the outbreak of the War in August 1914. Wiseacres said the thing was impossible. The consequences would be too vast. Civilisation had become too complex. The Prussians did not mean it. The Banking Industry did not want it. Commerce could not suffer it. The world, anyhow, was kinder now. The age of brute force, if not actually past, was to be realised only by the lesser breeds without the law. So leave it to natural common sense and the statesmen. Buoyed by such reasonings, the playing of games and the tournaments and dances continued. Evidently, in the circumstances, the statesmen did their best; but, again in 1926 as in 1914, wills were at work, cruel and angry forces, which not all the persuasiveness even of the Angel of Peace, it seems, could have convinced or controlled. War was called for, and War had to be.

We saw then an acceptance by the common people of the consequences of the strike, and a sacrifice of convenience and necessities similar to that shown when the darker grief had fallen twelve years earlier. this new occasion, also, the likelihood of the complete cessation of the normal machinery of social life had been ignored. It is safe to say that, even a day before the actual stoppage of transport by rail and road and the commission of the other unsocial acts of which the Trades Union Council was guilty, less than nineteen of twenty ordinary suburban citizens-even with the newspapers shouting at them in headlines-had the faintest belief that a General Strike was actually and at once to take place. Fortunately, others had not been so shortsighted, and measures were taken which proved finally effectual; but that is another story. The man in the street and his wife at home woke up on the morning of Tuesday, May 4th, to find their world silent. Wheels had refused to run. Newspapers did not arrive.

There was a doubt of the morrow's milk and bread. Clerks and typists, accustomed to the ease of trains, omnibuses, and trams, had to walk miles to the offices of their employment; but despite the almost universal unsettlement which marked the beginning of the strike, a spirit was evoked and quickened; an old spirit of cheerfulness and joyous acceptance of facts and of consideration and serviceableness to others, which has made history many a time, and invariably has proved a quenchless influence on the side of justice, as well as a primal consequence of the resultant victory in all manner of strife.

The spirit of the British nation at the outbreak of the War was idealist. The pride of the hour called to an answering greatness. Despite their years and responsibilities, men joined the Army eagerly, not from any such high-flown notions as poor orators sometimes indulge in in their perorations, but from an inward sense that duty must be done, and that the underdog should not be trampled out. On that occasion the underdog was Belgium. In May 1926 the underdog was the normal, hard-working, pleasant, tax-paying everyday citizen: and in defence of the simple rights of a plain humanity, women and men, girls and boys, met the crisis with a smiling equanimity which proved once more inconquerable. Mutual help in transport and other sorts of giveand-take were willingly offered and accepted. Cook's son and duke's son-to quote from a familiar ballad-were linked in a true democratic brotherhood, each helping the other to bear his burden, and determined, cheerfully and silently, but really very earnestly, that the common good should not be sacrificed to the dictation of an autocracy, which, with an astonishing levity and want of forethought, as events rapidly proved, had endeavoured to realise what, in effect, was a Coup d'Etat.

It is time that the national figure of John Bull was redrawn. The spirit of England is no longer to be fitly represented by a bluff pre-Victorian middle-aged farmer, stolid and burly, whose mind is given to the contemplation of acres of corn and the plentiful enjoyment of Devonshire cider and of good red beef. It is difficult to portray the revised idea of the national character; but, with all the experience of disciplined years and grim

sufferings not forgotten, there should be something of vision in the eyes, an added spirituality, and such a mirth and cheerfulness, with feeling behind it, as caused the ordinary British private soldier to sing the snatch of a familiar music-hall song as he sprang over the top,' to charge into such certainty of death as was proclaimed by the thrash and rattle of machine-guns Two other essentials also should be expressed in the aspect of the later Bull-a genuine simplicity and sincerity, with possibly a conscious sense of duty done; but yet with no cockahoop calling, and certainly no desire to crow over the beaten adversary. The moral fineness of the nation has grown with the spread and settlement of its responsibilities over-seas. Such a wish

for fair play and the giving of chances to others as is shown in the increased opportunities for self-government granted to India and Egypt; with the determination, which in crisis may grow to a passion, though 1 always controlled, that wrong shall not triumph, are qualities not possessed in an equal measure, we venture to assert, by any other people or country on the earth. Beyond these aspects, and indeed as their bases, are a faculty for shrewd, plain common sense, and a capacity for keeping-on, refusing to recognise defeat, until the right end is won. John Bull to-day, who, in spite of the passing years, is younger of heart than ever, has what is commonly called grit. The recent Strike, as well as the Great War, has proved it.

Simplicity and sincerity are such manifest characteristics of the British race that, under the impression of the impossibility of there being such in international relations, they have been sometimes a cause of the misunderstandings of foreigners about us. Evidently duplicity is expected of a Chancellery; and not even the sacrifice of the Great War has diminished the legend of the perfide Anglais in the hearts and minds, say, of average France. The general impression of the everyday Frenchman-as it was after Waterloo, after Madagascar, after the Boer War, and as it will be when the thousandth anniversary of Crecy is remembered-is that always the Briton has something up his sleeve which has not been declared and yet is necessary to win the trick. It is no use to protest against this spirit of distrust, for it is