it was also good for the body. By the methods of Psycho-analysis the burden of an unknown longing, unconsciously inhibited and suppressed, was to be lifted from the hidden recesses of the patient's being, just as the sinner in the Confessional heaves the load of guilt from his conscience. The terrible struggle going on unseen between the demons which haunt the Unconscious and the restraints imposed by existence in society is calmed by opening the gates that convention has locked, bringing the demons into the light of day, and capturing tracts of the Unconscious, like land reclaimed from the sea, to become blessed and fruitful in the agriculture of the Conscious.

No one who has any knowledge of the matter can doubt that the claims of the Psycho-analysts have earned much justification. They have brought healing into obscure regions where ordinary medicine was baffled. Their theories may not be so certain as their practice. The sexual basis, which Freud and his more faithful disciples find for nearly all human ills, has given offence to many. Yet the offence taken is neither intelligent nor useful. Freud may or may not be right in his interpretation. But if he holds certain beliefs, it is his duty to mankind to utter them without hesitation. As Fichte said, let the truth be spoken, even though the Universe be shattered thereby.

The Psycho-analysts are inclined to resent the idea that suggestion plays any part in the cures they work. Freud says that the word is popular only because it effects an economy of thought. Dr Ernest Jones holds that Psychoneurotic symptoms are the product of underlying dissociated mental processes, and that, when these are made fully conscious, the symptoms cease to exist. He has himself practised various forms of suggestion and hypnotism, and he is convinced that these results of the psycho-analytic method cannot be achieved by suggestion and hypnotism. He believes that suggestion merely blocks the outward manifestations of the underlying patho-genetic idea, that it suppresses the symptoms, without removing their cause, and that the cures effected thereby are not lasting or complete.

To set against these opinions there is the record of M. Coué's cures. They are detailed in his little pamphlet

and in the book of his 'disciple M. Baudouin-a book whose sale has equalled that of a successful novel, or one of those popular Diaries in which prominent individuals expose their nakedness. It is a lucid and straightforward book, with occasional lapses into pedantry, as in M. Coué's quoted saying that the force of the imagination is 'in direct ratio to the square of the will'-a parody of Newton's Law of Gravitation, which is not a happy use of mathematical language. Probably it was suggested by Fechner's law, that, in order that the intensity of a sensation may increase in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must increase in geometrical progression. Fechner goes to the permissible limits of metaphor, and M. Coué passes them.

The doctrines expounded by M. Coué and M. Baudouin have been criticised because of their mechanical tendency, and they have been rather unjustly blamed for adopting the theory of Lange and James that physical signs are the causes not the symptoms of emotion. This theory calls to mind Pascal's prescription of attending Mass and fulfilling all religious duties, as if you believed in them as a sure way of ultimately acquiring Faith. And it is not more paradoxical than Spinoza's statement that we do not desire things because they are good, but things are good because we desire them.

The accusation of teaching mechanical principles rather misses its mark. The idea that by merely repeating a formula we can permanently improve our health is certainly rather a shock to common-sense. But commonsense is a goddess whose throne has always tottered, in spite of the efforts of a whole school of Scotch philosophers to guard it. The history of Thought is the record of her buffeting. Against the evidence of her own eyes and the authority of Scripture, Copernicus forced on her the belief that the earth went round the sun. Kant made her brain whirl with the notion that objects did not present their appearances to the mind, but that the mind imposed their appearances upon objects. The postulates of the Euclid which she learned for centuries at school were turned out into the cold by Lobatschewsky and Riemann. And now Einstein is suggesting that when she moves she is stationary, that her infinity is finite, that her miles and furlongs stretch

and contract like pieces of elastic, while her hours and minutes are inflated and deflated like the currencies of Europe. And further, he is giving colour to blasphemies against that sacred entity, the Ether, which have brought sorrow and anger into devout scientific homes.

We cannot neglect any legitimate aid in facing the difficulties of life. It may be that M. Coué can help those sufferers who want to be helped. There are many who in reality do not, who morbidly enjoy ill-health and depression and anxiety. We all know the individual who might be described as the Happy Worrier. But to many who are really willing to become fitter for the long struggle of life, M. Coué has brought a message of hope. And his method need not destroy self-reliance, but might rather increase it. Merely to persist in repeating the formula requires a sustained exercise of the will. It amounts to making a conscious use of the Unconscious. It may or may not be true that only functional disorders can be thus affected. The distinction between functional and organic disease is not easy. Dr W. H. Rivers gives a useful definition, in saying that functional disease has no known structural or chemical basis, while organic disease is that for which such a basis has been discovered. And he says that functional disorders often accompany organic disease. The whole subject seems to a layman a little obscure.

The Psycho-analysts must be right in trying to bring more and more of the Unconscious into Consciousness. The progress of man takes him ever from the rule of instinct to the rule of reason. But man is weak and instinct is yet strong. Perhaps M. Coué can help him at any rate to tame it. Somebody once said to Disraeli, 'I hope you are quite well,' and he replied, with solemnity, Nobody is quite well.' Certainly there are men who have not needed to be well in order to be great. Cæsar, Mahomet, Napoleon, and probably Byron, were all epileptic. It may even be that disease can heighten the mental powers, as foulness will feed the beauty of the lily. Perhaps the hereditary taint which made Beethoven deaf was partly responsible for the symphonies whose glory faded out of hearing for all of him but his soul. It may be that the poison which killed Keats at the age of twenty-five enriched the mature splendour

of the 'Ode to a Nightingale.' And Chatham's tortured and disordered life may have stimulated the eloquence and the genius which wove the fundamental fabric of a mighty Empire. It is an interesting vein of specula. tion, not to be worked here.

If man had remained a savage, probably he would not have known disease. It is rare enough among animals, except when their lives have been modified by human interference. On these grounds there are some who wish to bring us back to Nature, to undo the evils of civilisation. They would summon into the province of hygiene those delusions of Rousseau, which yet survive among certain political theorists. The health faddists are usually concerned with food. There are people who believe that a rigid diet of nuts would restore the health and sanity of the race; and no doubt it should revive for them the happy condition of their Darwinian ancestors. If these enthusiasts were to adopt a diet of thistles, they might gain the mental and physical advantages of a more amiable animal than the monkey.

It is not a return to Nature that we need. Man has been toiling throughout the ages to subdue Nature, to make her his slave, instead of being enslaved by her. And he pays the price. The greater his advance, the more hyper-sensitive and neurotic he becomes. He lives more widely and deeply, and he suffers more. Disease is his shame, yet his privilege, the punishment of the good in him as well as the evil. It is the brand of his folly and sloth; but it is also the emblem of his dedication, the cross upon his armoured breast. He has to learn to hold it in check, to prevent its paralysing him in the endless battle, to make his nervous system an ally instead of an enemy, as William James said. He must welcome anything that helps him in this. But he may not hope that the burden will ever be lifted or the struggle ended, for with them would go all that makes possible his heroism and his nobility. In the words of Pascal, Toutes ces misères-là mêmes prouvent sa gran. deur. Ce sont misères de grand seigneur, misères d'un roi dépossédé.'

ARTHUR E. J. LEGGE.

Art. 5.-REYNARD THE FOX.

Reynard the Fox. By John Masefield. Fourth Impression. Heinemann, 1920.

THE thud, the rush, the uncertainties, the rapid changes, the accidents by field and flood, and the infinite excitements of a fox-hunt, prove circumstances well suited to Mr Masefield's inspiration. The clop and clink of hoofs, the cries of the hounds, the horn and shouts of the huntsmen, make just such vigorous music as he loves to pen in his breathless measures; with such occasional lapse in the metre as, perhaps, suggests the intervention of a field-hedge or a water-jump. He has, also, a catholic sympathy, both with the persons of the hunt-almost as brightly, though not nearly so sedately, drawn as the glowing company that travelled on a certain pilgrimage to Canterbury-as with his three-year fox, which led the chase, hot-foot and helter-skelter, from morning until dusk, over miles of diverse country, and through innumerable places, the names of which conveniently help the rhymes; coming to a conclusion of escape that proves grateful to the reader.

'He crossed the covert, he crawled the bank

To a meuse in the thorns, and there he sank,

With his ears flexed back and his teeth shown white,

In a rat's resolve for a dying bite.'

The Reynard of the poem is shown to be a splendid fellow, with such gameness and pluck that, under the illusion of this galloping verse, he wins sympathy and a right ending. Mr Masefield, perhaps through his creative imagination rather than from positive knowledge, is so well acquainted with the habits and psychology of the fox that he is able to picture him in his freedom, from the irresponsibilities of cubhood to the full-grown life, with its loves and rivalries, the stealthy hunting, the red-toothed kill, and the hiding in the secret earth, safe from the spades of the diggers and the intrusions of searching terriers.

The cleverest of four-legged creatures, the fox has to use all his instincts and wit to foil his many enemies and run free; and we can well believe Mr Masefield's suggestion that Reynard, conscious of his strength of sinews