answer to his optimistic description of the comforts of the chase, as conducted in the interests of the quarry, is found in the fact that already, in the present hunting. season, no less than three stags have been done to death, and the details of these "infrequent casualties" have been dragged to light and published in spite of the desperate efforts of the Hunt officials to conceal them. Mr. Mortimer's quiet assertion that "there is no doubt that the indignation against the institution of the Royal Staghounds is as much a political as a humanitarian agitation", is entirely unwarranted by the facts that have come to my knowledge during a very intimate association with the crusade of the last six years. We have found a strong feeling against the Hunt among humane men of all political creeds; though of course, in addition to the humane question, there is the question of state-endowment. The indignation caused by a barbarous practice is naturally increased when the very people who abominate it are compelled to pay a share of the expense; but to suggest that the humane objections are less real or forcible on that account is another of the odd inversions to which Mr. Mortimer is addicted. His sneer at the "humanitarian ladies" who dislike the tame-stag-worry prompts one to ask whether a woman's judgment on an ethical subject is not presumably as good as a man's. Among the "humanitarian ladies" who have petitioned against this cruel sport, I may mention such names as Christina Rossetti, Mona Caird, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, Dr. Sophie Bryant, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Josephine Butler, Florence Bramwell Booth, Annie Besant, Lady Henry Somerset, Lady Frederick Cavendish, Beatrice Webb, Clementina Black, Lady Florence Dixie, and the late Mrs. Massingberd-surely a sufficiently typical and representative list to allay Mr. Mortimer's apprehensions.

I cannot follow Mr. Mortimer into the general subject of blood-sports, which has been fully discussed elsewhere. But I may remark, in passing, that he is the victim of at least two delusions which he would do well

1 See the Humanitarian League leaflet just published, "Is StagHunting Cruel? A Record of some Recent Incidents in connection with the Queen's Hounds".

to "work out "-the idea that sport is a public benefit because it puts money into private pockets, and "gives employment" without regard to the useful or useless nature of that employment-and the laughable assumption that the fox "would prefer" to be preserved for hunting purposes rather than to be exterminated once for all. The gravity with which these immemorial old fallacies are always enunciated, as if they positively contained something notable or new, and had not been repeatedly confuted, is very entertaining.

The essence of Mr. Mortimer's advice to us humanitarians is that we should leave sport alone and take up the horse question. At a recent discussion of the Jewish system of slaughtering we were strongly urged by a butcher to leave the slaughterhouse alone and take up the sport question. Ever since the League was started we have been receiving the same sort of counsel from interested parties; it is always the other question, some one else's cruelty, that calls for "the first blow of the humanitarian crusade ". In reply we beg to assure Mr. Mortimer, and each similar adviser, that we never feel more certain that we are on the right track than when we observe this naïve anxiety to divert our attention elsewhere, and that while we fully propose to agitate the question to which he so kindly invites us, we have not the least intention of abandoning the immediate subject which we happen to have in hand.

HENRY S. SALT.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "FREE REVIEW".

DEAR SIR,-Allow me to say a few words in reply to Mr. Salt's rejoinder, the proof slips of which you have been kind enough to forward to me. I have never claimed freedom from "delusions" concerning humanitarian principles or anything else. Mr. Salt states that I am "the victim of at least two delusions on this matter. I should say that I am the dupe of a great number of delusions on many questions. Unfortunately, I have not discovered Mr. Salt's infallible method of determining difficult questions of ethics. It is very far from my intention to underrate the humane efforts of

the League which Mr. Salt represents; but I presume that a not entirely unsympathetic criticism of seeming inconsistency in the advocacy of its principles is permissible and possibly useful. I am gratified to find that Mr. Salt approves of my declamation against "one-sided sentiment", and that he heartily endorses what I have written about the unnecessary ill-treatment of horses, by owners who profess to be humane.

As to the "blood-sports", I merely expressed the humble, tentative views of one who has seen them conducted, and who is therefore in a position to contradict extravagant statements. I said that the imposition of pain in sport "may be justifiable ", taking care to write the words "may be" in italics. Is this quite the same thing as posing as "an apologist of blood-sports"? When Mr. Salt tells me that I am "hopelessly at fault on the sport question ", I can only bow to the unimpeachable better judgment of one who is incapable of inconsistency, entirely free from hallucinations, and logically proof against the slightest suspicion of "topsy-turvy methods". In an encounter with such a formidable opponent I am defeated and put to rout at the very first shot. Against this unerring artillery fire of scientific precision, my "delusions", "immemorial old fallacies", and "narrow personal predilections" cannot possibly stand for a moment. Even if I yearned for more "dialectical triumphs", there would be no chance of success with such an antagonist as Mr. Salt.

In so far as Mr. Salt abstains from killing animals for food or diversion, he is thoroughly consistent, and I said as much in my article. He asks me why I don't turn "food-reformer". Well, I am a food-reformer already. For four years I was a strict vegetarian and an abstainer from alcoholic drink; and at the present time I prefer Professor Newman's V.E.M. diet to any other. it is one of my many inconsistencies that I still love to go a-fishing and shooting rabbits when rare opportunities occur. And I am still not ashamed to say that my capacity for harboring delusions has not allowed me to arrive at a ready opinion on the vivisection question.

But

GEOFFREY MORTIMER.

THE CERTAIN HELL.

It is very interesting to note how all the glorified delusions which comprise the various religious faiths that man's hankering after a metaphysic, leads him to adopt, are founded upon certain truths of demonstrable fact.

A man once tried to argue me down that there was no such thing as truth, because men can never agree upon what is truth. This is quite the fact so long as any allowance is given to mere assertions or assumptions.

Not long since I was told that no human system of things can be demonstrated without starting from a theory. Therefore if one be bound to accept a theory, why not a spiritual

one ?

Theosophists and Spiritualists might, and I believe do, argue in this way. But, scientifically examined, it amounts to no argument at all, because we are not bound to theorise about all that we cannot account for.

Spiritualists claim for their religion the merit that it does not depend upon faith, but upon demonstration by open miracle.

Science, however, is unable to accept these miracles as anything but visionary illusions, produced by powerful wishes or wills working upon excitable temperaments and more or less unhealthy brains, and weak nervous systems; the result of organic weakness or disease.

Why then cannot scientific men be bold and honest and throw aside all support or countenance to any religion that is not natural and practical?

My object in writing this essay is to bring forward some facts to prove the value of practical religion which is both physical and mental, and to show the utter inadequacy of all such religions as tend to produce "sores in the mind" and to keep them open.

Sores in the mind are as much facts as wounds in the body. There is no possibility of separating or divorcing the mind from the body. The brain is as much a part of the body as the ganglia and the generative organs with their beautiful, complicated and marvellous construction and function. Of course, the intellect of man is his crown and glory; but you cannot elevate the intellect at the expense of the body. If you do the results are fatal.

These facts are not denied now; but they are not even yet

properly grasped, In all times religions, no doubt from the fact of being used for the purposes of power and control, have fostered ideas of a spiritual existence apart from organic bodies. Mankind at large being dimly conscious of the existence of a universal will, have accepted these ideas, and the extraordinary egotism which men appear to develop in proportion as they attain means of power, has awakened in them a passionate desire for immortality. This passionate desire for personal immortality has produced inhumanity, for man has ruthlessly neglected and despised the beauties and virtues of his own human nature. Men never attempt to answer the question why one organised being should be individually immortal more than another, why a man should live for ever more than a dog? The whole scheme of nature is reproduction, or discontinuous growth. Some human natures are so miserably mean and despicable that the thought of their immortality is appalling. Nature alone is infinite; but man has come to regard death too much as an idea of finality, whereas, truthfully, it is merely a change of condition, the dissolution of organism involving the extinguishing of one mind. The development of mind in man has given him so much power that he has come to consider himself a being of far greater importance than he really is. But the fact of his being subject to death proves that he is relatively of little more value than any other organised being.

There is nothing new in these observations I am well aware, but the point I want to elucidate is, that man, in his egotistic desire for immortality, invents false theories of religion and morality which tend to render his short span of life more miserable than ever Nature intended. Nature is not opposed to happiness. In fact, nearly every animal being enjoys more happiness than man. Man introduced sin into the world, because he has invented forms of sin which have no foundation in fact. Nature's idea of sin and man's idea are totally at variance. Nature promptly and certainly punishes all transgressions against her laws. The only true sin is defiance of the laws of our being. But man by his invention of spiritual powers, and the glorifying of mental capacities, at the expense of the body, has brought about theories of sin which render his existence not only a burden, but well-nigh an impossibility.

The brain, though the crown and glory of man, has proved a snare to him from the fact that he has used it to form false conceptions. A Spiritualistic origin of things is purely an assumption.

All we know are forces of Nature and Matter, or to put it more tersely, the will of life and its manifestations in forms