Berlin, and in this matter his interest is feeling upon the subject, that the Empero clear. The greatest obstacle to the success of Austria has found it needful formally to of his plans is the lurking suspicion that his assure the Prussian Court that in the event object is not to "make Germany," but only of invasion it may count upon its good faith, to aggrandize Prussia- a suspicion which and Bavarians are holding public meetings his consent to the sale of any German ter- to sanction war for Luxemburg. The stake, ritory whatsoever would change into a cer- too, is neither so trifling, nor the pretext tainty. It is essential, if his master is ever quite so dishonourable, as some journals to be elected Emperor, that he should show seem to imagine. The war would be dehimself ready to defend every inch of the scribed as a campaign undertaken to defend Imperial dominion as zealously as he would Europe against exorbitant pretensions, to defend any Prussian province, and the King protect, as Napoleon would probably say, has repeatedly and publicly pledged himself the "independence of States, and the senot to surrender so much as a German vil-curity of thrones," while the stake would be lage. Count von Bismarck's reply to the neither more nor less than the frontier of Liberals in the North German Parliament the Rhine. War with Prussia is war with who asked if he intended to part with German soil was, therefore, couched in unmistakable terms. He did not wish to wound the "susceptibilities" of France unnecessarily, and the fierce language of the Liberal spokesman, Herr von Bennigsen, a Hanoverian, who seems destined to be the Prussian Liberal chief, though "worthy of a representative of the people was not diplomatic." But he trusted that no Government entertained a design of invading the "indubitable rights of Germany," and should any negotiations be opened, he would first of all ask the representative assemblies of Germany to take the matter into consideration. Their decision might be anticipated, and the Parliament broke up in a fever of enthusiasm, understanding well that Count von Bismarck, while abstaining alike from menaces and boasts, forbids the annexation of Luxemburg to France. Napoleon is therefore compelled to adopt one of two equally dangerous courses. He may persist in demanding the cession, on the ground that Luxemburg belongs to the House of Orange, that Prussia has no more right of suzerainty there than in Alsace or Lorraine, and that her claim to exercise one is an assumption injurious to the honour of France and manacing to the independence of all neighboring States. In this event we shall have war, perhaps before the Exhibition closes, for the French are exasperated beyond measure at Prussian success; and the idea so sedulously inculcated by the Emperor's friends in the Press, that Prussia, if threatened, will give way, is, we are convinced, unfounded. So strong is German Bavaria under the Treaties of August, and the Emperor, if victorious, would be master of Rhenish Prussia, Luxemburg, and the Palatinate besides. On the other hand, the Emperor may recede silently from his project; but if he does, he will have received another and most severe check, the pride of France another and an exasperating wound. The sense of suffocation of which M. Forcade once complained will be intensified, and all France will perceive that Napoleon is no longer the arbiter of Europe, France no longer able to move in her own strength and independent of any ally. Neither the French nor their Emperor are likely to bear that position long without a distinct trial of strength, for which both parties are, as many believe, silently preparing their resources. The re-arming of France goes forward at a constantly accelerating speed, while Prussia is urging the South to reorganize itself on the Prussian scheme till the Bavarian Premier tells his Parliament that if it chatters so much over his Army Bills he must perforce resign. When of two conterminous frontiers one is full of suspicion, the other of mortified pride, a very little incident may produce the explosion which both expect, and almost desire. Ordered out of Mexico, defeated at Nikolsburg, defied in Schleswig, resisted in Luxemburg, abused in Auxerre, with no liberties to offer to France, and new sacrifices to demand from his people, the Emperor, to keep his seat, must accomplish some great thing. His claim to reign is Success, and in Mexico and Germany, at home and abroad, he has of late been unsuccessful. From The Spectator. THE IMAGINATION OF ELEPHANTS. * THE reperusal of Sir J. Emerson Tennent's delightful chapters on the Wild Elephant reprinted in a separate form from his great work on Celyon, suggests one of the most curious questions connected with the study of animal psychology, how far the imagination is relatively weaker or stronger in the higher order of animals (relatively, we mean, to their other mental faculties) than in man himself. Mr. Bagehot in his acute essays on "The English Constitution" has remarked with much justice, that when we say that men are governed by their imaginations, we very often mean by the weakness of their imaginations, ie., we suppose, by failing to conceive as vividly and as truly as they might, from their own knowledge of what human nature and human passions are like, the hollow interior of those really feeble but apparently potent constitutional fictions by the showiness of which the larger part of mankind are still overawed. Feeble imaginations, Mr. Bagehot means, we suppose, fill in the background behind great state and dignity with such really unique qualities as would seem to justify an assumption of unique state and dignity, while stronger imaginations, building on better realized facts, such as the essential likeness and ultimate identity of human nature in all phases, realizes the hollowness of the interior in question, or at least convinces itself that there is no exceptional grandeur of mind and heart corresponding to the exceptional grandeur of mere external position and hereditary honours. The weaker imagination, in this case, paints a grander conception than the stronger imagination, because the one builds on mere conventional signs, the other on signs which it has itself tested, and of which it has explored the full significance. Keeping this distinction in view, there is little doubt that the higher order of animals, the Elephants especially, have what we should call the weaker sort of imagination in men, but have it very strongly, more strongly in proportion to their reasoning faculties and general power of mind than even the masses of men in barbarous States. No one can read Sir Emerson Tennent's striking chapters without noticing that elephants have in a very high degree, that peculiar kind of imagination which gives so wonderful a validity to • The Wild Elephant, and the Method of Capturing and Training it in Ceylon. Ry Sir. J. Emerson Tennent, Bart. London: Longmans, the conventional laws of human society. Their timidity, just like the timidity of children in relation to the magnificent selfassertion of a parish beadle or a country policeman, is due to the curious activity of an imagination dominated by the external appearances and shows of things. In Sir Emerson Tennent's description of the corral, in which whole herds of wild elephants are taken captive, with a view to training for the service of man, he shows us thousands of people hazarding their lives on the mere strength of their (well grounded) conviction that the elephants enclosed in the corral would not really try the strength of the boundary which held them in, and which was absolutely incapable of resisting the charge of even one resolute and fullgrown elephant. Indeed, the wild elephants showed much more superstitious fear of weak white wands pointed at their heads, than town urchins of the baton of a policeWhere is there in civilized society so complete a paralysis produced by imaginative timidity as is produced in the wild elephant by that quality? man. "There was a strange combination of the sublime and the ridiculous in these abortive onsets; the appearance of prodigious power in their ponderous limbs, coupled with the almost ludicrous shuffle of their clumsy gait, and the fury of their apparently resistless charge, converted in an instant into timid retreat. They rushed madly down the enclosure, their backs arched, their tails extended, their ears spread, and their trunks raised high above their heads, trumpeting and uttering shrill screams, yet when one step further would have dashed the opposing fence into fragments, they stopped short on a few white rods being pointed at them through the paling; and, on catching the derisive shouts of the crowd, they turned in utter discomfiture, and after an objectless circle through the corral, they paced slowly back to their melancholy halting-place in the shade. The crowd, chiefly composed of young men and boys, exhibited astonishing nerve and composure at such moments, rushing up to the point towards which the elephants charged, pointing their wands at their trunks, and keeping up the continual cry of Whoop! whoop! which invariably turned them to flight." The elephant here clearly attaches to the pointed wands, to the noise of the multitude, and the glare of the lights a completely false conception of power. It takes a show for reality, and when measuring against the showy forces which it fears its own huge strength distrusts itself, as civilized men always distrust themselves when in collision. with social conventions. And it is not only in moments of excitement and confusion that the elephant displays this remarkable imaginative timidity. Sir Emerson Tennent points out a much more curious case of the same tendency in the wild elephant, even when he is not disturbed by any tumult or display of force, to respect, in deference we suppose to some traditional elephantine convention, any artificial fence of sticks, however weak: "There is something still unexplained in the dread which an elephant always exhibits on approaching a fence, and the reluctance which he displays to face the slightest artificial obstruction to his passage. In the area of the fine old tank of Tissa-Weva, close by Anarajapoora, the natives cultivate grain, during the dry season, around the margin where the ground has been left bare by the subsidence of the water. These little patches of rice they enclose with small sticks an inch in diameter and five or six feet in height, such as would scarcely serve to keep out a wild hog if he attempted to force his way through. Passages of from ten to twenty feet wide are left between each field, to permit the wild elephants, which abound in the vicinity, to make their nocturnal visit to the water still remaining in the centre of the tank. Night after night these open pathways are frequented by herds, but the tempting corn is never touched, nor is a single fence disturbed, although the merest movement of a trunk would be sufficient to demolish the fragile obstruction. Yet the same spots, the fences being left open as soon as the grain has been cut and carried home, are - eagerly entered by the elephants to glean amongst the stubble. Sportsmen observe that an elephant, even when enraged by a wound, will hesitate to charge an assailant across an intervening hedge, but will hurry along it to seek for an opening." This can only be due to the activity of the imagination in suggesting some peculiar danger latent in the fence, unless indeed it be, which is quite conceivable in such a creature as the elephant, a real respect for the property of man, and a generous reluctance to deprive him of his chosen food when the elephant's own food is so much more plentiful. If this, however, were the true explanation, it would imply a very much more powerful and just imagination, building up a true impression of human wants by sympathy than the other supposition of a timid and apprehensive imagination disposed to regard certain indications of human care and vigilance as threatening danger to the race of elephants. That this apprehensive imagination is not mere senseless cowardice is shown by the fact that in other cases of artificial signs of human agency the ele phant, so far from superstitious avoidance, How strong the conventional imagination of the elephant is, is seen, even without respect to man, in his intense respect for the organic unity of a single herd or family, which he shows both positively and negatively. One herd will never, even when united by a common danger, admit another herd, or even a single individual of another herd, into the limits of its own group. Even when more than one herd are captured in the same corral, they will never unite or join in the same charges against the barrier. Any attempt to join them on the part of a stray elephant is resisted pertinaciously, even by blows. Here is the same high value attached to conventions which induced some fashionable man to assign as a reason for not saving another from drowning, that he had never been introduced to him. We should explain it by saying that the elephants attach a higher superstitious or imaginative value to the strict unities of elephantine States or na tionalities, than to the immediate result of life or death to any one such State or nationality. It is not a want of value for the power of organization. The wonderful description of the placing of a picket by the leader of a herd of elephants anxious to bathe near a human encampment, and the anxious generalship with which the leader examined his outposts, and himself surveyed the ground in advance, sufficiently proves this. Besides, whenever a herd of elephants is at bay it always follows one leader, and if that leader is slain, follows the next, and so on till the last is left in isolation. The imaginative insight into the value of organization is evidently fully possessed by the elephant. But with this positive and strong imagination he also combines that weakness of imagination which exaggerates the value of particular conventions to which he is accustomed; and this prevents him from concluding a treaty of alliance with another endangered herd, — or elephantine nation, in the hour of common peril; - therein inferior to some human Philistines, for did not even the Record combine with Dr. Pusey against the Essayists and Reviewers? The imaginative value for unity is exaggerated by him into the imaginative superstition of exclusiveness, rather than violate which he will perish. And the same imaginative sensitiveness is shown in the negative form by the result to the nerves. and mind of an elephant of being thus separated from his own State, and not allowed to join any other. Creatures so isolated are called by the hunters "rogue elephants," and always betray the vicious qualities of human misanthropes. Their solitude so preys upon them that, instead of sharing the generally gentle, timid, and generous nature of the elephant, they become insane, furious, and vicious, and are the dread of all the neighborhood in which they live. It is evidently even more true that it is not good for the elephant to live alone,' than for man himself. Solitude distorts his imagination till it becomes quite morbid and destructive. The " rogue" elephant is even more dangerous than the " rogue" politician who acts with no party. The political Timons are mildness itself to the elephantine Timons- the lonely 'miselephants of the Ceylon forests. There are other animals besides the elephant which the imagination sometimes paralyzes by its excitability. You will find with many dogs that while, for instance, they delight in being blown about in a high wind, if you blow at them even in play they will exhibit every sign of horror and pro What this may be found depression. due to it is impossible to say,possibly some magnetic influence of the breath, possibly some feeling that the cold sensation which comes from you is a sign of displeasure. So, too, many horses are said to be influenced in a very intense and inexplicable manner by whispering in their ear, to which they attach, as the dog does to the puff of air from the mouth, some superstitious signification. On the whole, all animals alike have that earlier and weaker form of imagination which we may call the conventional, which makes them attribute a great over-importance to the regular and ordinary signs and sometimes to extraordinary signs of either danger, or hostility, or kindness, or displeasure, and which makes them observe certain laws and habits in the obedience to which they have been brought up with an almost superstitious nicety; in other words, they have precisely the kind of imagination of what the Germans call "Philis ine" human beings. But there are very rare signs of that higher imagination which distrusts and disbelieves the most conspicuous and ostentatious signs of things, when there are trifling but much more trustworthy signs of a different condition of things to guide them. Elephants evidently, like many human beings, have an implicit faith in the power which can raise a great noise and dust, and no sufficiently sceptical elephant has yet arisen to teach them that these things are usually symptoms rather of brag and weakness than of real strength. They have not the sceptical imagination which distrusts ostentatious symptoms, nor have they apparently the still higher imagination which can discover an order at the root of apparent disorder, a government and a purpose behind seeming confusion and anarchy. The highest effort of purely creative imagination of which we know in any animal is that which induces it, for instance, to feign death in order to escape captivity, of one instance of which in an elephant Sir Emerson Tennent tells us. The elephant in this case, after capture, deliberately lay down and so entirely suppressed all movement, that all his captors thought him dead, and two of them leaned against the corpse, as they thought it, while the others took off the ropes. They had not advanced many feet from the place where his body lay than he jumped up, and fled swiftly back to the jungle, with loud cries of excitement. In cases like these the animal must clearly apprehend that its captors can do nothing with it, and will be induced to abandon it, -- if they believe it dead, and also must clear- habits, to which usually the imagination ly conceive what the signs of death are. of animals and of elephants, as the most This is the only case we can remember of docile of all animals, attaches too much animal imagination working counter to the importance. direction of immediate impressions and past THE OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLERS. which ceased to be believed in when the rigidity Sometimes such chroniclers' tales of the super- of the conception they had formed of him benatural are more tragic, yet with a dash of the gan to be refined away. In reading story after grotesque in their tragedy. The cellarer of a story illustrative of the prodigious superstitions certain monastery had been defrauding the de- which the chroniclers recorded and shared funct members of their masses, in order to feed how, when Richard I. approached his father's more sumptuously the living brotherhood. One corpse, it began to bleed, and the Lion-Heart, time that he was passing the empty chapter- who feared nothing human, instantly wept with house, as he thought it, a voice that made his horror like a child-in reading such things, flesh creep summoned him to come in. He en- we say, it is difficult to fancy how men breathed tered trembling, as well he might; for there sat freely or enjoyed life at all. But the truth is the dead abbot at the head of the table, with the that the counteracting elements were propor dead monks around him, and the cowering sin- tionately vigorous. There was a very active ner who had robbed them was first rebuked and animal life, and a great deal of rude roystering then flogged. But the most awful stories are jollity, for one thing; while, of course, if one those in which the Devil and his subordinate set of superstitions stimulated fear, another set devils appear: sometimes dragging corpses from encouraged hope; and the Church was a vast their graves; sometimes vainly attempting to standing army against the powers of hell, just bully good and pious men; almost always tri- as the feudal militia was always ready for serumphant over those who by wickedness had be- vice at short notice against foreigners. The come their legitimate prey. The Devil was no point of view, then, from which the chroniclers abstraction, no principle of evil, no figure of regarded things in general was the antithesis of speech, in the days of the chroniclers, but a real the scientific one. They did not deal with ubiquitous being, ever on the watch to ruin " causes, tendencies,"" currents of opinion," man, and endowed with indefinite powers of and so on, like the modern philosophical histometamorphosis for the purpose. All mischief rian, at all. With an ever-living sense of the that was done, was done Diabole suadente or continuous action of Infinite Power on human instigante; and even in politics he was so influ- affairs, they hardly grasped at all the idea of ential that he fairly ranked as a European Pow- Law. They saw in Providence a force like er, like the Emperor or the King of France. that of the kings and barons under whom they Long after the dates of which we have been lived, striking in at every moment to do justice chiefly speaking, that is, the eleventh, twelfth, in some incomprehensible way; and they saw and thirteenth centuries, Luther habitually such special intervention in a thousand cases talked of the Devil along with the Pope and in which nobody now would venture to say that the Turk, as the chief of a kind of Triple Alli- he sees anything but the operation of general This materialistic view, so to speak, of principles long since recognised as universal the Enemy is the real explanation of the intense and unchangeable. Cornhill Magazine. credulity of our ancestors about witchcraft, ance. - |