-because, whatever his ultimate nature, he is the god who teaches men to learn by suffering, he is the god, we might almost say, of conscious mind. But he and his daughter, Athena of the intellect, are by no means the only divinities of whom Eschylus takes account. The ancient goddesses, the goddesses who dwell in the earth guarding the primitive instincts and claiming vengeance for any transgression of their rights, who pursue Orestes unmercifully because he has broken the natural bond between mother and son at the bidding of an abstract - 'justice,' they must be reconciled before Eschylus can be at rest. It is Athena herself who goes about to persuade them and, whatever difficulty there may be in understanding the mind of Eschylus in detail, there can be no question of the significance he attached to the final consummation when, after the slaughter of Agamemnon and Cassandra, the avenging slaughter of Clytemnestra and her paramour and the vengeance on Orestes himself, all the struggle and fury is closed by a pæan of triumph and rejoicing in which the whole world seems to take part.

The attempt of Eschylus to lift the legends up to the height of his own imagination did not succeed. The base and cruel fancies that persisted roused, as we saw, the indignation and mockery of Euripides. Yet Euripides' concern with religion was unceasing, and when he gets nearest to formulating his own symbol he too demands the union of Intellect and Nature, Thought and Being:

Thou deep Base of the World, and thou high Throne
Above the World, whoe'er thou art, unknown

And hard of surmise, Chain of Things that be,

Or Reason of our Reason; God, to thee

I lift my praise, seeing the silent road

That bringeth justice ere the end be trod

To all that breathes and dies' ('Troades,' tr. Murray).

That, after all, is the deepest demand of the religious consciousness, just as it is the supreme hope of philosophy. And here we come, as Mr Cornford has suggested, on the transition from religion to philosophy. Nothing is more characteristic of Greek speculation, from Anaxagoras and Xenophanes down to the Stoics, than the belief

that underlying Nature there existed intelligible 'Ideas,' 'Forms' transparent to Thought which pressed for embodiment in actuality, through which alone we could understand the world and which had a right to be called 'divine.' It was not that the Greeks confused what ought to be' with 'what is': it is that they believed the 'ought' influenced the 'is,' that Nature was, as it were, struggling towards a rational order.

It is a fair suggestion that in this belief they were not uninfluenced by an old worship of Nature as the guardian of Law, even as the belief itself points forward to the modern Nature-poetry of writers so diverse as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Whitman, and to the modern faith in an intelligible order for science to discover, a faith which, if less daring than the Greek, has shown itself more determined.

F. MELIAN STAWELL.

Art. 6.-ELECTRIFICATION AND THE ELECTRICITY

ACT.

THE British Association Meeting of last September, in Section G. provided probably the most reliable and up-todate survey of the more technical aspect of our subject in the form of a Presidential Address from Sir John Snell, the Chairman of the Electricity Commission.

'It is clear,' he says, that a period of great activity and progress is before us, which must inevitably be of great value to the nation. It is a duty laid on those of us who may be in responsible positions to shape properly and with foresight the lines along which this progress shall be made. Although a steady development is already discernible, much bigger things are before us, and it may be that we shall sow that a succeeding generation may reap. As Great Britain is essentially dependent upon imported foodstuffs to a large degree and on other raw materials for the feeding of her essential industries, it is clear that the most efficient and economic systems of industrial power and transport are necessary parts of the future equipment of the country. If we can add to this work an increased power application, a notable improvement in the conditions of rural life will follow. We shall help to improve the physical conditions of our people in both urban and rural districts, in addition to providing those engaged in industrial pursuits with better means of competing and holding their own with manufacturers in other countries. In this, electricity must necessarily play a great part. Public opinion will increasingly require that this indispensable service shall be brought to the highest degree of efficiency and made as generally available throughout the country as true economic development will allow.'

One of our greatest problems to-day is that of finding employment for our rapidly increasing population. For a long time the number of registered unemployed has exceeded a million. To these a great many unregistered unemployed should be added. Widespread unemployment is due, primarily, of course to the coal strike, but also to the fact that the sale of English manufactured goods, both at home and abroad, is insufficient. Other nations sell goods similar to ours both in England and elsewhere at prices below the British cost of production. In the past we may be said to have been a hive of

industry. Cobden proclaimed that England was, and would remain, the workshop of the world; but now we find that, according to the official figures, there are more unemployed workers in Great Britain than in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Holland combined. Why is it that unemployment is so much less prevalent abroad than in this country?

The assertion that our industrial stagnation is due to the after-effect of the war, to the impoverishment of England's foreign customers, to inflation on the Continent, and to friction between capital and labour at home, does not suffice to explain the position. All these factors are important. We find, however, that there is boundless prosperity in the United States where there has been no inflation; that business is rapidly expanding in Germany, where there has been unprecedented inflation; and that the United States, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Japan are encroaching upon British trade in many parts of the world. Modern industry is the outcome of countless machines, driven by power to set them in motion. Industrial success results from the possession of an abundant supply of cheap and efficient power. In Cobden's time, when coal was practically the only source of power, our country had the monopoly in the industries of the world, largely because she produced two-thirds of the world's coal, and English coal was far better and cheaper than foreign coal. Britain's old industrial predominance was to a great extent due to her commanding position in the matter of power.

The age of coal is visibly drawing to an end. The age of electricity has now dawned. England has lost the advantage of the cheapest and the most abundant supply of coal which she enjoyed in the past; whilst she is also backward in the development of electricity. Many people in this country are under the impression that the principal purpose of electrical power is to supply us with the cleanest and most convenient form of lighting. Occasionally the argument is heard that the vigorous development of electricity would merely injure our existing gas undertakings. Those who argue in this manner are unaware that industry throughout the world is rapidly being put upon an electrical basis; that electricity supplies not only the most convenient and the

cleanest form of light, but also that it is the most convenient and the cheapest form of power, leading to great economies in the use of coal-provided that the generation of electricity is properly developed.

The United States has now become the workshop of the world. American manufacturers are noted for scrapping, without a moment's hesitation, unsuitable machinery, replacing it by the most modern and the most efficient. The United States have a superabundance of cheap coal. Their known coal area is four times as large as the whole of the United Kingdom, and coal used for industrial purposes is currently sold for about $2 per ton at the pit's mouth. English coal is twice as dear. Besides their advantageous position in the matter of cheap and abundant coal, American manufacturers have developed the use of electrical power with extraordinary energy. The official statistics indicate that electrical horse-power used in the country has increased as follows:

The significance of these figures will be understood if we bear in mind that when, in the year 1907, the British Census of Production was taken, it was found that all the British industries employed in that year only 10,500,000 horse-power, of which but a small proportion was electrical. Between 1914 and 1923 the United States had added to their electrical horse-power alone considerably more than the total horse-power employed in British industry in 1907. Nothing can indicate more clearly the importance of electrical power than this impressive table which should be carefully studied and pondered over. It may be argued that the United States could easily develop a vast amount of electrical power because she possesses the Niagara and other waterfalls, to which there is no equivalent in England. That frequent argument is misleading. In the first place, the Niagara Falls belong chiefly to Canada, and are exploited in the main by Canada. Moreover, the bulk of America's electrical power is derived not from