48: 



The Review of Reviews. 



Kovemher 1, 1906. 



sistance of her body, but thought it was the wall. 

 Similar inability to see what it has been suggested 

 is not present lias frequently been noted in hypnotic 

 subjects. 



THE PERILS OF ASTEAL DOUBLING. 

 Colonel de Rochas communiratcs somt- e.xperi- 

 ences of his own which show that the practice of 

 externalising the astral is not without grave danger. 

 Describing one of his experiments, Colonel de 

 Rochas says : — 



One evening some friends besged me to show them liow 

 the diseusagement of the ustral body was affected. After 

 haviiii; placed Mrs. Lambert iu the ecstatic state. I left 

 her, according to her desire, in that state, and continued 

 the conversation without paying any attention to her. 

 Then the idea came to my mind to verify if the fluidic 

 bond uniting her physical body to her astral body, which 

 she said was then floating in the iur at a great height, 

 really h.;d travelled over to those higher regions; so, imder 

 some pretext. I left the drawing-room on the ground floor 

 where we were. I ascended cautiously to the first floor, 

 went into the apartment just over the drawing-room, and 

 put my liand forward with gr«.>t caution until I reached 

 a point which I judged to be vertically above the head of 

 the subject. When I oamo down again I found tlie specta- 

 tors in great agitation: -"uring my absence Mrs. Lambert 

 had suddenly leapt from .er chair, uttering a violent cry 

 of pain, and joining her Hands over her head. Her whole 

 bodv was contracted, the movements of the heart and of 

 therespiration had stopped. It was only after some min- 

 utes that, by means of warm insufflations on the principal 

 hypnogenetic points, I enabled her to recover her senses. 

 Then she complained about some drea ful pains in her 

 head, which I tried vainly to relieve by means of ener- 

 getic sngestions. I was obliged to have the poor woman 

 put to bed, where she rem inef', without being able to eat 

 or sleep, during all the night and a part of the following 

 day. A kind of cerebral rupture had occurred, by which 

 the Od waa escaping in great abundance: any object ap- 

 proaching her head was inaupimrtahle to lier, and the 

 inferior extremities were very cold. 



This was the first experience of the kind. He 

 had effected hundreds of times the exteriorisation of 

 the astral bodv, but never before had his subject 

 suffered in this way. He came to the conclusion 

 that the astral substance of a living person was 

 capable of being impressed only by agents en rap- 

 port with that person. This no doubt limits the 

 risk, but it is not surprising that Colonel de Rochas 

 did not repeat his experiment. 



HOW TO MEND THB HOUSE OF LORDS. 



By Mr. Frederic Harrison. 

 In the Positivist Revicii) Mr. F. Harrison tells his 

 Radical friends that it is all nonsense to talk of 

 ending the House of Lort's ; the only thing to do 

 is to mend it. .A.nd he knows how to effect this 

 most desirable object without convulsion, and even 

 without legislation. He says : — 



The first tiling to do is to put an end to the vicious and 

 obsolete rule that hereditary right shall give legislative 

 power. It would lie a step towards this if the nation re- 

 solved that from a given date no new creation of a peer 

 should endow his descendants with right to legslate. This 

 could he done at once without an .\ct of Parliament, if tl " 

 great majority of the nation insisted on this being an 

 understood practice, and that the consent of the Crown 

 were obtained to its being made effective. This might begin 

 b.v Resolution in the House of Commons. There is nothing 

 to prevent the Crown from creatine peerages for life: 

 though the House of Lords exactly fifty years ago decided 

 by resolution tha-t a Life Peer could not sit and vote in 

 their House. If it became a settled rule of politicians, at 

 least of Liberal politicians, that no hereditary Peerage 

 shou'd in future be created, and if His Majesty were to be 



a consenting party to such a rule, the worst anomaly of 

 the present system would receive a check. 



The irony of the situation is that such a reform would 

 be exceedingly popirlar with the Peers themselves. If the 

 Crown and the nation agreed that no hereditary Peerages 

 sliould be henceforth created, the actual hereditary Peers- 

 would receive a new dignity in that the roll of their 

 sjiecial order was closed. 



If the Peers doggedly refused to admit Life Peers, it 

 might be the time to try legislation and see if they would 

 venture to throw out a Bill empowering Life Peers to ait 

 by Statute, a.s Lords of Appeal do now. 



If it became a practice of the Constitution not to create 

 iu future any hereditary Peerage, and if a body of L'fe 

 Peers, strong in nuniber.s and reputation, were also en- 

 abled to sit in the House of Lords, the resistance of the- 

 old House to reforms would be effectually neutralised. 

 England is not often, and not at all at present, in the- 

 mood for revolutionary change, unless the Peers were to 

 act like Russian bureaucrats. I doubt if the country \» 

 even prepared to abolish the power of the Lords to throw 

 out a Bill a second time, when again passed bv the Com- 

 mons. Xo such reform is possible without legislation" which 

 would involve a long and bitt-er struggle, for the old con- 

 stitutional rights of the Peei-s would be at stake. The 

 suggestions I have made could be tried without a Bill at 

 all and would proceed in a tentative and grradual course 

 of reform. The country, as a whole, desires a Second 

 Chamber of qualified men. 



MR. 



MORLEY AND INDIAN REFORM. 



By Professor Beesly. 



Writing in the Positivist Revieiv on the Debate on 



India, Professor Beesly shakes his head mournfully 



over his old friend Mr. Morley. Not that he has- 



lost faith in him. " On the contrary, he gives him a 



glowing certifirate of merit. But^ — always that 



but : — 



Tvhen. at the end of his speech, Mr. Morley came to what 

 he called " close quarters, " that is to say, when he de- 

 scended from pious opinions to the mention of specific 

 reforms, he had absolutely nothing to offer of any sub- 

 stantial value. 



The most ureent difficulty of India is an economic one. 

 It ia capable of being very briefly stated. The population 

 is the poorest in tbe world— poorer, often, even than sav- 

 ages; for savages, being thinly scattered on the gronnd,. 

 can generally get enough to eat. And this poor, half- 

 starved population lias to support the most expensive Go- 

 vernment, in the world. This is tlie " insoluble problem." 

 Mr. Morley's treatment of it cannot be called serious. 

 His whole handling of the economic question left much 

 to be desired, both in breadth and profundity. To i>a«s 

 over iu silence the annual drain of wealth from India to 

 Europe wi'L,hout anj' economic return, and the real sigrnifi- 

 cance of the grea-t excess of exports over imports, while- 

 attentior is invited to casual scraps of information about 

 the use of sewing machines and mineral oil. looks very like 

 running away from the insoluble problem. 



"Where I think he is mistaken is in supposing that he will 

 facilitate his task by minimising the evils he has to combat. 

 by drawing rose-coloured pictures of the existing system^ 

 and by discouraging the "agitators" who are trying, under 

 great difi&culties, to bring English opinion to bear upont 

 it. The Indian bureaucracy is not going to be reformed 

 from witliin. Mr. Morley will need all the driving force ot 

 an aroused public opinion behind him if he is to accom- 

 plish any reforms whatever. 



No doubt But does Professor Beesly imagine 

 that any Secretary for India — even his friend Mr. 

 Morlev — will welcome the driving force without 

 which he is doomed to impotence as a reformer? 

 Professor Beesly says: — 



Infinitely more important, if one could believe that he 

 would be able to give practical effect to it. was Mr. Mor- 

 ley's declaration in favour of honestly carrying out the- 

 Koyal Proclarj-ition of 1853, which promised that all sub- 

 jects of the Crown, of whatever race or creed, should be 

 impartially admitted to all offices which they may be- 

 qualified to fill. Will he b.e able, before he leaves office, to 

 do anything in this direction? Will he succeed in effecting 

 the appointment of a single native of India to the Execu- 

 tive Council, or to his own Council at Whitehall, or— most 

 important of all— to the command of a regiment? Here liee; 

 the only way of pe pa ring India for self-government. 



