Revieu! of Review!, lit/OS. 



Leading Articles. 



i8i 



PREVENTIVE SOCIAL SERVICE. 



The New York Clearing-House. 



The June Harper publishes an interesting account, 

 bv Marv R. Cranston, of the American Institute of 

 Social Sen-ice. 



Previous to the year 1894 such institutes, we aie 

 told, did not exist ; to-day they are to be found in 

 England, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Denmark, 

 Sweden and Germany, the Musee Social of Paris 

 being the first. 



The association founded in New York City by 

 Josiah Strong and William H. Tolman came into 

 being in 1898. It is composed of forty members, 

 one hundred associates, and one hundred collabora- 

 tors, men and women identified with social work, and 

 the aim of the Institute is educational as well as con- 

 structive. Its library is free to all students of social 

 life — in a word, it is a clearing-house for social 

 betterment where " the experience of all is available 

 for each." 



Although primarily for reference, the library circu- 

 lates its literature all over the United States, and 

 sometimes in foreign countries. Reports and pamph- 

 lets not easily procurable are widely circulated, and 

 bibliographies on social questions are prepared and 

 - nt out. 



A tangible benefit which the Institute has accom- 

 plished is the creation of a new profession — the 

 social secretary, a person employed in factories and 

 stores to look after the health and comfort of the 

 workers. 



There is a British Institute of Social Service at 

 II Southampton Row, W.C, corresponding to and 

 with the American Institute. 



Museum of Security. 



Mr. William H. Tolman, director of the American 

 Institute of Social Seri-ice, writes for the June num- 

 ber of the Century i\Jagaziiie an article on the 

 European Museums of Security. 



The first of these institutions was opened in 

 Amsterdam in 1893, and in it may be seen in actual 

 operation a permanent exhibition of apparatus and 

 de\-ices for the prevention of accidents in factories 

 and workshops. The Museum of Security at Char- 

 lottenburg, created in 1900, is divided into two sec- 

 tions, the second comprising exhibits relating to 

 social and industrial hygiene. Similar institutions 

 have been organised at Munich, Paris, Zurich, and 

 Vienna. The Munich Museum makes a feature of 

 improved housing exhibits. 



The establishment of a Museum of Security for 

 America, Mr. Tolman maintains, would save thou- 

 sands of lives. It has been estimated that 53 per 

 cent, of the accidents in Germany are avoidable, and 

 the writer infers that more than three-fourths of the 

 fatal accidents and a larger proportion of the non- 

 fatal accidents in America are needless. 



REINCARNATION OF ANCESTRAL MEMORY. 



Rev. Forbes Phillips contributes a suggestive paper 

 to the Nineteenth Century upon Ancestral Memory. 

 He begins with the common sensation of the recog- 

 nition of places and scenes where we have never 

 been before. 



SOME CUEIOXJS FACTS. 

 He adds striking incidents. One is from his first 

 visit to Tivoli : — 



Here, again, suddenly the whole place and coantryeid© 

 were as familiar to me as m.v own parish. I found myself 

 struggling with a torrent of words, desc-ribing what it was 

 like in the olden days. Up to that time I had read 

 nothing of Tivoli. I had seen no yiews; only a tew days 

 previous to my visit had I heard of its existence, and here 

 I was acting as guide and historian to a party of friends 

 who concluded tnat I had made a special study of the 

 place and neighbourhood; then the vision in my mind 

 began to fade. I stopped like a man who for the time has 

 forgotten his part, and I could say no more. 



On his first visit to Leatherhead, hearing of an 

 old Roman road, he at once said he knew it, and 

 led the way to it ; " and there w as the feeling that 

 I had been on that road before riding, and that I 

 had worn armour." Here is a more remarkable 

 case : — 



To the west. V, miles from where I live, is a Roman 

 fortess in an almost perfect state of preservation. A 

 clergyman called upon me one day and asked me to ac- 

 company him there for an examination of the ruins. He 

 told me" he had a distinct recollection of living there, and 

 that he held some otace of a priestly nature in the days 

 of the Roman occupation. One f.act struck me as signi- 

 ficant. He insisted on examining a ruined tower which 

 had bodily overturned. " There used to he a socket in 

 the top of it. he went on, " in which we used to plant 

 a mast, and archers used to be hauled to the top in a 

 basket protected with leather from which they picked 

 oflf the leaders among the ancient Gorlestonians. " We 

 found the sock-st he had indicated. 



WHAT IS THE EXPLANATION? 



Such facts as these lie at the back of Plato's doc- 

 trine of recollection, and of the theories of trans- 

 migration, metempsychosis, reincarnation. The 

 writer argues : — 



In the doctrine of Ee-incarnation it seems to me wo 

 have wandered awav from the subject, and then ap- 

 proached with a specially devised net to capture the main 

 facts, rather than allowing them to speak for themselvee. 

 I ask. is there not such a thing .as ancestral memory? That 

 a child should present certain features of his father and 

 mother, and reproduce certain well-known gestures and 

 mannerisms of his grandfather, is looked upon as some- 

 thing very ordinary. Is it not possible that the child 

 may inherit something of his ancestor's memory? That 

 these flashes of reminiscence are tlie sudden awakening, 

 the calling into action of something we have in our blood; 

 the discs, the records of an ancestor's past life, which 

 require but the essential adjustment and conditions to 

 give up their secrets? If so, then we have in ancestral 

 memory a natural answer to many of life's puzzles, without 

 seeking" the aid of Eastern theology. 



IS THIS THE SECEET OF GHOSTS? 



Having formulated the theory, the writer proceeds 



to support and apply it. He asks : — 



Have we not got here, too, a theory which explains a 

 large class of apparitions, the evidence for which it is 

 easier to ignore than explain, and so we prefer to shrug 

 oar shoulders and pass them by? Take the common form 

 of ghost story. A. sees the ghost of one B.. whom he subse- 

 quently identifies, say from the family gallery of portraits, 

 to be an ancestor. Some member of his house, I should 

 say back in the centuries, did actually witness such a 

 scene, did see B come in as A. saw, only the original 

 witness flaw B. in the flesli at such a moment, under ench 

 conditions that a great impression was made upon him. 

 and this impression was handed on to a later scion of bis 

 house to be preserved in this racial consciousness. 



