THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XIV SLICE VI

Inscriptions to Ireland, William Henry

Articles in This Slice

618

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon), the general term for writings cut on stone or metal, the subject matter of epigraphy. See generally Writing and Palaeography. Under this heading it is convenient here to deal more specifically with four groups of ancient inscriptions, Semitic, Indian, Greek and Latin, but further information will be found in numerous separate articles on philological subjects. See especially Cuneiform, Babylonia and Assyria, Sumer, Behistun, Egypt (Language and Writing), Ethiopia, Phoenicia, Arabia, Hittites, Sabaeans, Minaeans, Etruria, Aegean Civilization, Crete, Cyprus, Britain, Scandinavian Languages, Teutonic Languages, Central America: Archaeology, &c.

I. Semitic Inscriptions

Excluding cuneiform (q.v.), the inscriptions known as Semitic are usually classed under two main heads as North and South Semitic. The former class includes Hebrew (with Moabite), Phoenician (with Punic and neo-Punic), and Aramaic (with Nabataean and Palmyrene). The South Semitic class includes the Minaean and Sabaean inscriptions of South Arabia. In most of these departments there has been a very large increase of material during recent years, some of which is of the highest historical and palaeographical importance. The North Semitic monuments have received the greater share of attention because of their more general interest in connexion with the history of surrounding countries.

1. North Semitic.—The earliest authority for any North Semitic language is that of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets (15th century B.C.) which contain certain “Canaanite glosses,”1 i.e. North Semitic words written in cuneiform characters. From these to the first inscription found in the North Semitic alphabet, there is an interval of about six centuries. The stele of Mesha, commonly called the Moabite Stone, was set up in the 9th century B.C. to commemorate the success of Moab in shaking off the Israelitish rule. It is of great value, both historically as relating to events indicated in 2 Kings i. 1, iii. 5, &c., and linguistically as exhibiting a language almost identical with Hebrew—that is to say, another form of the same Canaanitish language. It was discovered in 1868 by the German missionary, Klein, on the site of Dibon, intact, but was afterwards broken up by the Arabs. The fragments,2 collected with great difficulty by Clermont-Ganneau and others, are now in the Louvre. Its genuineness was contested by A. Löwy (Scottish Review, 1887; republished, Berlin, 1903) and recently again by G. Jahn (appendix to Das Buch Daniel, Leipzig, 1904), but, although there are many difficulties connected with the text, its authenticity is generally admitted.

Early Hebrew inscriptions are at present few and meagre, although it cannot be doubted that others would be found by excavating suitable sites. The most important is that discovered in 1880 in the tunnel of the pool of Siloam, commemorating the piercing of the rock. It is generally believed to refer to Hezekiah’s scheme for supplying Jerusalem with water (2 Kings xx. 20), and therefore to date from about 700 B.C. It consists of six lines in good Hebrew, and is the only early Hebrew inscription of any length. The character does not differ from that of the Moabite Stone, except in the slightly cursive tendency of its curved strokes, due no doubt to their having been traced for the stone-cutter by a scribe who was used to writing on parchment. There are also a few inscribed seals dating from before the Exile, some factory marks and an engraved capital at al-Amwās, which last may, however, be Samaritan. Otherwise this character is only found (as the result of an archaizing tendency) on coins of the Hasmoneans, and, still later, on those of the first and second (Bar Kokhba’s) revolts.

The new Hebrew character, which developed into the modern square character, is first found in a name of five letters at ‘Arāq-al-amīr, of the 2nd century B.C. Somewhat later, but probably of the 1st century B.C., is the tombstone of the B’nē Ḥeẓīr (“Tomb of St James”) at Jerusalem. An inscription on a ruined synagogue at Kafr Bir’im, near Ṣafed, perhaps of about A.D. 300, or earlier, shows the fully developed square character.

Since the publication of the Corpus Inscr. Sem. it has been customary to treat papyri along with inscriptions, and for palaeographical reasons it is convenient to do so. Hebrew papyri are few, all in square character and not of great interest. The longest, and probably the earliest (6th century A.D.), is one now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, containing a private 619 letter3 written in a character closely resembling that of the Kair Bir’im inscription. Other fragments were published by Steinschneider4 (perhaps 8th century), and by D. H. Müller and Kaufmann.5

Hebrew inscriptions outside Palestine are the cursive graffiti in the catacombs at Venosa (2nd-5th century), the magical texts on Babylonian bowls (7th-8th century), and the numerous tombstones6 in various parts of Europe, of all periods from the 6th century to the present time.

The few Samaritan inscriptions in existence are neither early nor interesting.

Closely related to the Hebrews, both politically and in language, were the Phoenicians in North Syria. Their monuments in Phoenicia itself are few and not earlier than the Persian period. The oldest yet found, dating probably from the 5th or 4th century B.C., is that of Yeḥaw-milk, king of Gebal (modern Jebel) or Byblus, where it was found. It records at some length the dedication of buildings, &c., to the goddess of Gebal. Of the 3rd century B.C. are the inscriptions on the sarcophagi of Tabnith and his son Eshmun’azar, kings of Sidon, and some records of other members of the same family, Bod-’ashtart and his son Yathan-milk, found in 1902 a short distance north of Sidon.

Outside Phoenicia the inscriptions are numerous and widely scattered round the Mediterranean coasts, following the course of Phoenician trade. The earliest is that on some fragments of three bronze bowls, dedicated to Baal of Lebanon, found in Cyprus. The character is like that of the Moabite Stone, and the date is probably the 8th century B.C., though some scholars would put it nearer to 1000 B.C. In the latter case, the Hiram, king of Sidon, mentioned in the inscriptions would be the same as Hiram, king of Tyre, in Solomon’s time. Similar bowls (of about 700 B.C.) found at Nimrud sometimes bear the maker’s name in Phoenician characters.

Many monumental inscriptions have also been found in Cyprus, at Kition, Idalion, Tamassos, &c. They are chiefly votive, some dated in the 4th century, and some being perhaps as late as the 2nd century B.C., so that they afford valuable evidence as to the succession of the local kings. Several also are bilingual, and it was one of these which supplied George Smith with the clue to the Cypriote syllabic system of writing Greek. Similar memorials of Phoenician settlements were found at Athens (Piraeus), in Egypt, Sardinia, Malta and Gozo. Most interesting of all is the celebrated sacrificial tablet of Marseilles, giving an elaborate tariff of payments at or for the various offerings, and showing some striking analogies with the directions in the book of Leviticus. For the information it gives as to civil and priestly organization, it is the most important Phoenician text in existence. It was probably brought from Carthage, where similar tariffs have been found. On the site of that important colony, and indeed throughout the parts of North Africa once subject to its rule, Punic inscriptions are, as might be expected, very numerous. By far the majority are votive tablets, probably belonging to the period between the 4th and the 2nd centuries B.C., many of them in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation. One of the most interesting, recently discovered, mentions a high-priestess who was head of the college of priests, and whose husband’s family had been suffetes for four generations. Later inscriptions, called neo-Punic, dating from the fall of Carthage to about the 1st century A.D., are written in a debased character and language differing in several respects from the earlier Punic, and presenting many difficulties.

In Aramaic the earliest inscriptions are three found in 1890-1891 at and near Zinjīrlī in North-west Syria, dating from the 8th century B.C. Of these, one was set up by Panammū, king of Ya’dī, in honour of the god Hadad, and is inscribed on a statue of him, the other two were set up by Bar-rekub, son of Panammū, one in honour of his father and on his statue, the second commemorating the erection of his new house. They are remarkable as being engraved in relief, a peculiarity which has been thought to be due to “Hittite” influence. Otherwise the character resembles that of the Moabite Stone. The texts consist of 77 lines (not all legible), giving a good deal of information about an obscure place and period hitherto known only from cuneiform sources. The ornamentation is Assyrian in style, as also is that of the inscriptions of Nerab (near Aleppo), commemorative texts engraved on statues of priests, of about the 7th century.

Of shorter inscriptions there is a long series from about the 8th century B.C., on bronze weights found at Nineveh (generally accompanied by an Assyrian version), and as “dockets”7 to cuneiform contract-tablets, giving a brief indication of the contents. Aramaic, being the commercial language of the East, was naturally used for this purpose in business documents. For the same reason it is found in the 6th-4th centuries B.C. sporadically in various regions, as in Cilicia, in Lycia8 (with a Greek version), at Abydos (on a weight). At Taimā also, in North Arabia, an important trading centre, besides shorter texts, a very interesting inscription of twenty-three lines was found, recording the foundation and endowment of a new temple, probably in the 5th century B.C. But by far the most extensive collection of early Aramaic texts comes from Egypt, where the language was used not only for trade purposes, as elsewhere, but also officially under the Persian rule. From Memphis there is a funeral inscription dated in the fourth year of Xerxes (482 B.C.), and a dedication on a bowl of about the same date. A stele recently published by de Vogüé9 is dated 458 B.C. Another which is now at Carpentras in France (place of origin unknown) is probably not much later. At Elephantine and Assuān in Upper Egypt, a number of ostraka have been dug up, dating from the 5th century B.C. and onward, all difficult to read and explain, but interesting for the popular character of their contents, style and writing. There was a Jewish (or Israelitish10) settlement there in the 5th century from which emanated most, if not all, of the papyrus documents edited in the C.I.S. Since the appearance of this part of the Corpus, more papyri have come to light. One published by Euting11 is dated 411 B.C. and is of historical interest, eleven others,12 containing legal documents, mostly dated, were written between 471 and 411 B.C.; another (408 B.C.) is a petition to the governor of Jerusalem.13 The fragments in the C.I.S. are in the same character and clearly belong to the same period. The language continued to be used in Egypt even in Ptolemaic times, as shown by a papyrus14 (accounts) and ostrakon15 containing Greek names, and belonging, to judge from the style of the writing, to the 3rd century B.C. The latest fragments16 are of the 6th-8th century A.D., written in a fully developed square character. They are Jewish private letters, and do not prove anything as to the use of Aramaic in Egypt at that time.

Nabataean inscriptions are very numerous. They are written in a peculiar, somewhat cursive character, derived from the square, and date from the 2nd century B.C. The earliest dated is of the year 40 B.C., the latest dated is of A.D. 95. The Nabataean kingdom proper had its centre at Petra (= Sela in 2 Kings xiv. 7), which attained great importance as the emporium on the trade route between Arabia and the Persian Gulf on the 620 one side and Syria and Egypt on the other. The commercial activity of the people, however, was widely extended, and their monuments are found not only round Petra and in N. Arabia, but as far north as Damascus, and even in Italy, where there was a trading settlement at Puteoli. The inscriptions are mostly votive or sepulchral, and are often dated, but give little historical information except in so far as they fix the dates of Nabataean kings.

A distinct subdivision of Nabataean is found in the Sinaitic peninsula, chiefly in the Wādī Firān and Wādī Mukattib, which lay on the caravan route. The inscriptions are rudely scratched or punched on the rough rock, without any sort of order, and some of them are accompanied by rude drawings. A few only are dated, but, as shown by de Vogüé in the C.I.S. (ii. 1, p. 353), they must all belong to the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. This accounts for the fact that already in the 6th century Cosmas Indicopleustes17 has no correct account of their origin, and ascribes them to the Israelites during their wanderings in the wilderness.18 They were first correctly deciphered as Nabataean by Beer in 1848, when they proved to consist chiefly of proper names (many of them of Arabic formation), accompanied by ejaculations or blessings. It is clear that they are not the work of pilgrims either Jewish or Christian,19 nor are they of a religious character. The frequent recurrence of certain names shows that only a few generations of a few families are represented, and these must have belonged to a small body of Nabataeans temporarily settled in the particular Wādīs, no doubt for purposes connected with the caravan-traffic. The form of the Nabataean character in which they are written is interesting as being the probable progenitor of the Kufic Arabic alphabet.

Another important trading centre was Tadmor or Palmyra in northern Syria. Numerous inscriptions found there, and hence called Palmyrene, were copied by Waddington in 1861 and published by de Vogüé in his great work Syrie Centrale (1868, &c.), which is still the most extensive collection of them. The difficulties of exploration have hitherto prevented any further increase of the material, but much more would undoubtedly be found if excavation were possible. The texts are mostly sepulchral and dedicatory, some of them being accompanied by a Greek version. The language is a form of western Aramaic, and the character, which is derived from the Hebrew and Aramaic square, is closely related to the Syriac estrangelo alphabet. The inscriptions are mostly dated, and belong to the period between 9 B.C. and A.D. 271. The most important is the tariff of taxes on imports, dated A.D. 137. Nearly all were found on the surface at or round Palmyra and remain in situ. Of the very few in other places, one (with a Latin version) was found at South Shields, the tombstone of Regina liberta et conjux of a native of Palmyra.

Syriac inscriptions are few. The earliest is that on the sarcophagus of Queen Ṣaddan (in the Hebrew version, Ṣadda), perhaps of about A.D. 40, found at Jerusalem. Others were found by Sachau20 at Edessa, of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and by Pognon.21

2. South Semitic.—The South Semitic class of inscriptions comprises the Minaean, Sabaean, Himyaritic and Liḥyanitic in South Arabia, the Thamudic and Safaitic in the north and the Abyssinian. A great deal of material has been collected by Halévy, Glaser and Euting, and much valuable work has been done by them and by D. H. Müller, Hommel and Littmann. Many of the texts, however, are still unpublished and the rest is not very accessible (except so far as it has appeared in the C.I.S.), so that South Semitic has been less widely studied than North Semitic.

The successive kingdoms of South Arabia (Yemen) were essentially commercial. Their country was the natural intermediary between Asia (India), Africa and Syria, and this position, combined with its natural fertility, made the south far more prosperous than the north. In language, the two most important peoples, the Minaeans and Sabaeans, differ only dialectically, both writing forms of southern Arabic. The Minaean capital was at Ma’īn, about 300 m. N. of Aden and 200 m. from the west coast. Here and in the neighbourhood numerous inscriptions were found, as well as in the north at al-‘Öla.22 Their chronology is much disputed. D. H. Müller makes the Minaean power contemporary with the Sabaean, but Glaser (with whom Hommel and D. S. Margoliouth agree) contends that the Sabaeans followed the Minaeans, whom they conquered in 820 B.C. Mention is made in a cuneiform text (Annals of Sargon, 715 B.C.) of Ithamar the Sabaean, who must be identical with one (it is not certain which) of the kings of that name mentioned in the Sabaean inscriptions. Their capital was Marib, a little south of Ma’īn, and here they appear to have flourished for about a thousand years. In the 1st century A.D., with the establishment of the Roman power in the north, their trade, and consequently their prosperity, began to decline. The rival kingdom of the Himyarites, with its capital at Zafar, then rose to importance, and this in turn was conquered by the Abyssinians in the 6th century A.D. With the spread of Islām the old Arabic language was supplanted by the northern dialects from which classical Arabic was developed. A peculiarity of the South Arabian inscriptions is that many of them are engraved on bronze tablets. Besides being historically important, they are of great value for the study of early Semitic religion. The gods most often named in Sabaean are ‘Athtār Wadd and Nakraḥ, the first being the male counterpart of the Syrian Ashtoreth. The term denoting the priests and priestesses who are devoted to the temple-service is identified by Hommel and others with the Hebrew “Levite.”

Closely connected with South Arabia is Abyssinia. Indeed a considerable number of Sabaean inscriptions have been found at Yeha and Aksum, showing that merchants from Arabia must at some time have formed settlements there. D. H. Müller23 thinks that some of these belong to the earliest and others to the latest period of Sabaean power. The inscriptions hitherto found in Ethiopic (the alphabet of which is derived from the Sabaean) date from the 4th century A.D. onward. They are few in number, but long and of great historical importance. There can be no doubt that exploration, if it were possible, would bring many more to light.

From time to time emigrants from the southern tribes settled in the north of Arabia. Mention has already been made of Minaean inscriptions found at al-’Öla, which is on the great pilgrim road, about 70 m. south of Taimā. In recent years a number of others has been collected belonging to the people of Liḥyān and dating from about A.D. 250. Nearly related to the Liḥyānitic are the Thamudic (so called from the tribe of the Thamūd mentioned in them), and the Safaitic, both of which, though found in the north, belong in character to south Arabia and no doubt owe their origin to emigrants from the south. The Thamudic inscriptions, collected by Euting (called Proto-Arabian by Halévy),24 are carelessly scrawled graffiti very like those of the Sinai peninsula. Their date is uncertain, but they cannot be much earlier than the Safaitic, which resemble them in most respects. These last are called after the mountainous district about 20 m. S.E. of Damascus. The inscriptions are, however, found not in Mount Ṣafā itself but in the desert of al-Ḥarrah to the west and south and in the fertile plain of ar-Ruḥbah to the east. They were first deciphered by Halévy,25 whose work has been carried on and completed by Littmann.26 Their date is again uncertain, since graffiti of this kind give very few facts from which dates can be deduced. Littmann thinks that one of his inscriptions refers to Trajan’s campaign of A.D. 106, 621 and that they all belong to the first three centuries. They are found together with the earlier Greek and Latin graffiti of Roman soldiers and with later Moslem remarks in Kufic. Many of them are not yet published.

II. Indian Inscriptions

The inscriptions of India are extremely numerous, and are found, on stone and other substances, in a great variety of circumstances. They were mostly recorded by incision. But we have a few, referable to the 2nd or 3rd century Materials on which the inscriptions were recorded. B.C., which were written with ink on earthenware, and some others, of later times, recorded by paint,—one on a rock, the others on the walls of Buddhist cave-temples. Those, however, were exceptional methods; and equally so was the process of casting, with the result of bringing the letters out in relief, of which we know at present only one instance,—the Sōhgaurā plate, mentioned again below. The Mussulman inscriptions on stone were, it is believed, nearly always carved in relief; and various Hindu inscriptions were done in the same way in the Mussulman period: but only one instance of a stone record prepared in that manner can as yet be cited for the earlier period; it is an inscription on the pedestal of an image of Buddha, of the Gupta period, found in excavations made not long ago at Sārnāth.

Amongst the inscriptions on metal there is one that stands out by itself, in respect of the peculiarity of having been incised on iron: it is the short poem, constituting the epitaph of the Gupta king Chandragupta II., which was composed in or about A.D. 415, and was placed on record on the iron column, measuring 23 ft. 8 in. in height, and estimated to weigh more than six tons, which stands at Meharaulī near Delhi. We have a very small number of short Buddhist votive inscriptions on gold and silver, a larger number of records of various kinds on brass, and a larger number still on bronze. The last-mentioned consist chiefly of seals and stamps for making seals. And one of these seal-stamps, belonging to about the commencement of the Christian era, is of particular interest in presenting its legend in Greek characters as well as in the two Indian alphabets which were then in use. For the period, indeed, to which it belongs, there is nothing peculiar in the use of the Greek characters; those characters were freely used on the coins of India and adjacent territories, sometimes along with the native characters, sometimes alone, from about 325 B.C. to the first quarter of the 2nd century A.D.: but this seal-stamp, and the coins of the Kshaharāta king Nahapāna (A.D. 78 to about 125), furnish the only citable good instances of the use of the three alphabets all together. For the most part, however, the known inscriptions on metal were placed on sheets of copper, ranging in size from about 2½ in. by 17⁄8 in. in the case of the Sōhgaurā plate to as much as about 2 ft. 6 in. square in the case of a record of 46 B.C. obtained at Suē-Vihār in the neighbourhood of Bahāwalpūr in the Punjab. Some of these records on copper were commemorative and dedicatory, and were deposited inside the erections—relic-mounds, and, in the case of the Suē-Vihār plate, a tower—to which they belonged. The usual copper record, however, was a donative charter, in fact a title-deed, and passed as soon as it was issued into private personal custody; and many of the known records of this class have come to notice through being produced by the modern possessors of them before official authorities, in the expectation of establishing privileges which (it is hardly necessary to say) have long since ceased to exist through the lapse of time, the dying out of families of original holders, rights of conquest, and the many changes of government that have taken place: but others have been found buried in fields, and hidden in the walls and foundations of buildings. The plates on which these inscriptions were incised vary greatly in the number of the leaves, in the size and shape of them, and in the arrangement of the records on them; partly, of course, according to the lengths of individual records, but also according to particular customs and fashions prevalent in different parts of the country and in different periods of time. In some cases a single plate was used; and it was inscribed sometimes on only one side of it, sometimes on both. More often, however, more plates than one were used, and were connected together by soldered rings; and the number ranges up to as many as thirty-one in the case of a charter issued by the Chōḷa king Rājēndra Chōḷa I. in the period A.D. 1011 to 1037. It was customary that such of the records on copper as were donative charters should be authenticated. This was sometimes done by incising on the plates what purports to be more or less an autograph signature of the king or prince from whom a charter emanated. More usually, however, it was effected by attaching a copper or bronze reproduction of the royal seal to the ring or to one of the rings on which the plates were strung; and this practice has given us another large and highly interesting series of Indian seals, some of them of an extremely elaborate nature. In this class of records we have a real curiosity in a charter issued in A.D. 1272 by Rāmachandra, one of the Yādava kings of Dēvagiri: this record is on three plates, each measuring about 1 ft. 3 in. in width by 1 ft. 8½ in. in height, which are so massive as to weigh 59 ℔. 2 oz.; and the weight of the ring on which they were strung, and of an image of Garuḍa which was secured to it by another ring, is 11 ℔. 12 oz.: thus, the total weight of this title-deed, which conveyed a village to fifty-seven Brāhmaṇs, is no less than 70 ℔. 14 oz.; appreciably more than half a hundredweight.

Amongst substances other than metal we can cite only one instance in which crystal was used; this material was evidently found too hard for any general use in the inscriptional line: the solitary instance is the case of a short record found in the remains of a Buddhist stūpa or relic-mound at Bhaṭṭiprōlu in the Kistna district, Madras. In various parts of India there are found in large numbers small tablets of clay prepared from stamps, sometimes baked into terra-cotta, sometimes left to harden naturally. Objects of this class were largely used as votive tablets, especially by the Buddhists; and their tablets usually present the so-called Buddhist formula or creed: “Of those conditions which spring from a cause, Tathāgata (Buddha) has declared the cause and the suppression of them; it is of such matters that he, the great ascetic, discourses”: but others, from Sunet in the Ludhiāna district, Punjab, show by the legends on them that the Śaivas and Vaishṇavas also habitually made pious offerings of this kind on occasions of visiting sacred places. Recent explorations, however, in the Gōrakhpūr and Muzaffarpūr districts have resulted in the discovery, in this class of records, of great numbers of clay seals bearing various inscriptions, which had been attached to documents sent to and fro between administrative offices, both royal and municipal, between religious establishments, and between private individuals: and amongst these we have seals of the monastery at Kusinārā, one of the places at which the eight original portions of the corporeal relics of Buddha were enshrined in relic-mounds, and also a seal-stamp used for making seals of the monastery at Veṭhadīpa, another of those places. And from Kāṭhiawār we have a similar seal-stamp which describes itself as the property “of the prince and commander-in-chief Pushyēṇa, son of the illustrious prince Ahivarman, whose royal pedigree extends back unbroken to Jayadratha.” There are no indications that the use of brick for inscriptional purposes was ever at all general in India, as it was in some other eastern lands: but there have been found in the Ghāzīpūr district numerous bricks bearing the inscription “the glorious Kumāragupta,” with reference to either the first or the second Gupta king of that name, of the 5th century A.D.; in the Gōrakhpūr district there have been found 622 brick tablets bearing Buddhist texts, one of which is a version in Sanskṛit of a short sermon preached by Buddha; and from the Jaunpūr district we have a brick tablet bearing an inscription which registers a mortgage, made in A.D. 1217, of some lands as security for a loan. Inscribed earthenware relic-receptacles have been found in the Bhōpāl state: donative earthenware jars, bearing inscriptions, have been obtained near Chārsadda in the North-West Frontier province: and from Kāṭhiāwār we have a piece of earthenware, apparently a fragment of a huge pot, bearing an inscription which presents a date in A.D. 566-67 and the name of “the glorious Guhasēna,” one of the Maitraka princes of Valabhī. For the great bulk of the inscriptions, however, stone was used: but limitation of space prevents us from entering into any details here, and only permits us to say that in this class the records are found all over India on rocks, on isolated monolith columns and pillars, of which some were erected simply to bear the records that were published on them, others were placed in front of temples as flagstaffs of the gods, and others were set up as pillars of victory in battle; on relic-receptacles hidden away in the interiors of Buddhist stūpas; on external structural parts of stūpas; on façades, walls, and other parts of caves; on pedestals and other parts of images and statues, sometimes of colossal size; on moulds for making seals; on walls, beams, pillars, pilasters, and other parts of temples; and on specially prepared slabs and tablets, sometimes built into the walls of temples and other erections, sometimes set up inside temples or in the courtyards of them, or in conspicuous places in village-sites and fields, where they have occasionally in the course of time become buried.

The inscriptional records of India which have thus come down to us do not, as far as they are known at present, pretend to the antiquity of the Greek inscriptions of the Hellenic world; much less to that of the inscriptions Reasons why the inscriptions are so valuable. of Egypt and Assyria. But they are no less important; since we are dependent on them for almost all our knowledge of the ancient history of the country.

The primary reason for this is that the ancient Hindus, though by no means altogether destitute of the historical instinct, were not writers of historical books. In some of the Purāṇas, indeed, they have given us chapters which purport to present the succession of their kings from the commencement of the present age, the Kaliyuga, in 3102 B.C.: but the chronological details of those chapters disclose the fault of treating contemporaneous dynasties, belonging to different parts of India, as successive dynasties ruling over one and the same territory; with the result that they would place more than three centuries in the future from the present time the great Gupta kings who reigned in Northern India from A.D. 320 to about 530. They have given us, for Kashmīr the Rājataraṃgiṇī, the first eight cantos of which, written by Kalhaṇa in A.D. 1148-49, purport to present the general history of that country, with occasional items relating to India itself, from 2448 B.C., and to give the exact length, even to months and days, of the reign of each king of Kashmīr from 1182 B.C.: but, while we may accept Kalhaṇa as fairly correct for his own time and for the preceding century or so, an examination of the details of his work quickly exposes its imaginative character and its unreliability for any earlier period: notably, he places towards the close of the period 2448 to 1182 B.C. the great Maurya king Aśōka, whose real initial date was 264 B.C.; and he was obliged to allot to one king, Raṇāditya I., a reign of three centuries (A.D. 222 to 522, as placed by him) simply in order to save his own chronology. They have given us historical romances, such as the Harshacharita of Bāṇa, written in the 7th century, the Vikramāṅkadēvacharita of Bilhaṇa, written about the beginning of the 12th century, and the Tamiḷ poems, the Kaḹavaḹi, the Kaliṅgattu-Paraṇi, and the Vikrama-Chōḹan-Uḹā, the first of which may be of somewhat earlier date than Bāṇa’s work, while the second and third are of much the same time with Bilhaṇa’s: but, while these present some charming reading in the poetical line, with much of interest, and certainly a fair amount of important matter, they give us no dates, and so no means without extraneous help of applying the information that is deducible from them. Again, they have given us, especially in Southern India, a certain amount of historical details in the introductions and colophons of their literary works; and here they have often furnished dates which give a practical shape to their statements: but we quickly find that the historical matter is introduced quite incidentally, to magnify the importance of the authors themselves rather than to teach us anything about their patrons, and is not handled with any particular care and fulness; and it would be but a sketchy and imperfect history, and one relating to only a limited and comparatively late period, that we could piece together even from these more precise sources. The ancient Hindus, in short, have not bequeathed to us anything that can in any way compare with the historical writings of their Greek and Roman contemporaries. They have not even given us anything like the Dīpavaṁsa of Ceylon, which, while it contains a certain amount of fabulous matter, can be recognized as presenting a real and reliable historical account of that island, taken from records written up during the progress to the events themselves, from at any rate the time of Aśōka to about A.D. 350; or like the Mahāvaṁsa, which, commenting on and amplifying the details of the Dīpavaṁsa, takes up a similar account from the end of the period covered by that work. Even the Greek notices of India, commencing with the accounts of the Asiatic campaign of Alexander the Great, have told us more about its political history and geography during the earlier times than have the Hindus themselves: and in fact, in mentioning Sandrokottos, i.e. Chandragupta, the grandfather of Aśōka, and in furnishing details which fix his initial date closely about 320 B.C., the Greeks gave us the first means of making a start towards arranging the chronology of India on accurate lines. It is in these circumstances, in the absence of any indigenous historical writings of a plain, straightforward, and authentic nature, that the inscriptions of India are of such great value. They are supplemented—and to an important extent for at any rate the period from the end of Aśōka’s reign in 227 B.C. to the commencement of the reign of Kaṅishka in 58 B.C., and again from about a century later to the rise of the Gupta dynasty in A.D. 320—by the numismatic remains. But the coins of India present no dates until nearly the end of the 2nd century A.D.; the case of Parthia, which has yielded dated coins from only 38 B.C., illustrates well the difficulty of arranging undated coins in chronological order even when the assistance of historical books is available; and what we may deduce from the coins of India is still to be put into a final shape in accordance with what we can determine from the inscriptions. In short, the inscriptions of India are the only sure grounds of historical results in every line of research connected with its ancient past; they regulate everything that we can learn from coins, architecture, art, literature, tradition, or any other source.

That is one reason why the inscriptions of India are so valuable; they fill the void caused by the absence of historical books. Another reason is found in the great number of them and the wide area that is covered by them. They come from all parts of the country: from Shāhbāzgarhī in the north, in the Yūsufzai subdivision of the Peshāwar district, to the ancient Pāṇḍya territory in the extreme south of the peninsula; and from Assam in the east to Kāṭhiāwār in the west. For the time anterior to about A.D. 400, we already have available in published form, more or less complete, the contents of between 1100 and 1200 records, large and small; and the explorations of the Archaeological Department are constantly bringing to light, particularly from underground sites, more materials for that period. For the time onwards from that point, we have similarly available the contents of some 10,000 or 11,000 records of Southern India, and of at any rate between 700 and 800 records of Northern India where racial antagonism came more into play and worked more destruction of Hindu remains than in the south.

Another reason is found in the fact that from the first century B.C. the inscriptions are for the most part specifically dated: some in various eras the nature and application of which are now thoroughly well understood, often with also a mention of the 623 year of the twelve-years or of the sixty-years cycle of the planet Jupiter; others in the regnal years of kings whose periods are now well fixed. And, in addition to usually stating the month and the day along with the year, the inscriptions sometimes give, under the influence of Hindu astrology, other details so exact that we can determine, even to the actual hour, the occurrence of the event registered by a particular record.

A final reason is found in the precise nature of the inscriptions. A certain proportion of them consists of plain statements of events,—recitals of the pedigrees and achievements of kings, records of the carrying out of public works, epitaphs of kings, heroes, and saints, compacts of political alliance, and so on; and some of these present, in fact, short historical compositions which illustrate well what the ancient Hindus might have done if they had felt any special call to write plain and veracious chronicles on matter-of-fact lines. But we are indebted for the great bulk of the inscriptions, not to any historical instinct, but to the religious side of the Hindu character, and to the constant desire of the Hindus to make donations on every possible occasion. The inscriptions devoted simply to the propagation of morality and religion are not very numerous: the most notable ones in this class are the edicts of Aśōka, which we shall notice again farther on. The general object of the inscriptions was to register gifts and endowments, made sometimes to private individuals, but more usually to gods, to priests on behalf of temples and charitable institutions, and to religious communities. And, as the result of this, in the vast majority of the inscriptional remains we have a mass of title-deeds of real property, and of certificates of the right to duties, taxes, fees, perquisites, and other privileges. Now, the essential part of the records was of course the specification of the details of the donor, of the donee, and of the donation. And we have to bear in mind that not only are the donative records by far the most abundant of all, but also, among them, by far the most numerous are those which we may call the records of royal donations; by which we mean grants that were made either by the kings themselves, or by the great feudatory nobles, or by provincial governors and other high officials who had the royal authority to alienate state lands and to assign allotments from the state revenues: also, that many of them register, not simply the gift of small holdings, but grants of entire villages, and large and permanent assignments from the public revenues. It is to these facts that we are indebted for the great value of the records from the historical point of view. The donor of state lands or of an assignment from the public revenues must show his authority for his acts. A provincial governor or other high official must specify his own rank and territorial jurisdiction, and name the king under whom he holds office. A great feudatory noble will often give a similar reference to his paramount sovereign, in addition to making his own position clear. And it is neither inconsistent with the dignity of a king, nor unusual, for something to be stated about his pedigree in charters and patents issued by him or in his name. The records give from very early times a certain amount of genealogical information. More and more information of that kind was added as time went on. The recital of events was introduced, to magnify the glory and importance of the donors, and sometimes to commemorate the achievements of recipients. And it was thus, not with the express object of recording history, but in order to intensify the importance of everything connected with religion and to secure grantees in the possession of properties conveyed to them, that there was gradually accumulated almost the whole of the great mass of inscriptional records upon which we are so dependent for our knowledge of the ancient history of India in all its branches.

Coming now to a survey of the inscriptions themselves, we must premise that India is divided, from the historical point of view, though not so markedly in some other respects, into two well-defined parts, Northern and Southern. A Survey of the inscriptions. classical name of Northern India is Āryāvarta, “the abode of the Āryas, the excellent or noble people.” Another name, which figures both in literature and in the inscriptions, is Uttarāpatha, “the path of the north, the northern road.” And, as a classical name of Southern India answering to that we have Dakshiṇāpatha, “the path of the south, the southern road,” from the first component of which name comes our modern term Deccan, Dekkan, or Dekhaṇ. Sanskṛit literature names as the dividing-line between Āryāvarta or the Uttarāpatha and the Dakshiṇāpatha, i.e. between Northern and Southern India, sometimes the Vindhya mountains, sometimes the river Nerbudda (Narmadā, Narbadā) which, flowing close along the south of the Vindhya range, empties itself into the gulf of Cambay near Broach, in Gujarāt, Bombay. The river seems, on the whole, to furnish the better dividing-line of the two. But it does not reach, any more than the range exactly extends, right across India from sea to sea. And, to complete the dividing-line beyond the sources of the Narbadā, which are in the Māikal range and close to the Amarkaṇṭak hill in the Rēwā State, Baghēlkhaṇḍ, we have to follow some such course as first the Maniārī river, from its sources, which are in that same neighbourhood but on the south of the Māikal range, to the point where, after it has joined the Seonāth, the united rivers flow into the Mahānadī, near Seorī-Nārāyan in the Bilāspūr district, Central Provinces, and then the Mahānadī itself, which flows into the bay of Bengal near Cuttack in Orissa. Even so, however, we have only a somewhat rough dividing-line between the historical Northern and Southern India; and the distinction must not be understood too strictly in connexion with the territories lying close on the north and the south of the line sketched above. In Western India, Kāṭhiāwār and all the portions of Gujarāt above Broach lie to the north of the Narbadā; but from the palaeographic point of view, if not so much from the historical, they belong essentially to Southern India. Our modern Central India lies entirely in Northern India, but has various palaeographic connexions with Southern India. Our Central Provinces extend in the Saugar district into Northern India; and that portion of them presents in ancient times both northern and southern characteristics. Eastern India may be defined as consisting of Bengal, with Orissa and Assam: it belongs to Northern India.

The inscriptional remains of India, as known at present, practically begin with the records of Aśōka, the great Maurya king of Northern India,—grandson of that king Chandragupta whose name was written by the Greeks as Sandrokottos,—who reigned 264 to 227 B.C. The state of the alphabets, indeed, in the time of Aśōka renders it certain that the art of writing must have been practised in India for a long while before his period; and it gives us every reason to hope that systematic exploration, especially of buried sites, will eventually result in the discovery of records framed by some of his predecessors or by their subjects. But those discoveries have still to be made; and matters stand just now as follows. From before the time of Aśōka we have an inscription on a relic-vase from a stūpa or relic-mound at Piprahwa in the north-east corner of the Bastī district, United Provinces, which preserves the memory of the slaughtered kinsmen of Buddha, the Śākyas of Kapilavastu according to the subsequent traditional nomenclature. We may perhaps place before his time the record on the Sōhgaurā plate, from the Gōrakhpūr district, United Provinces, which notifies the establishment of two public storehouses at a junction of three great highways of vehicular traffic to meet any emergent needs of persons using these roads. And we may possibly decide hereafter to refer to the same period a few other records which are not at present regarded as being quite so early. But, practically, the known inscriptions of India begin with the records of that king who calls himself in them “the king Dēvānaṁpiya-Piyadassi, the Beloved of the Gods, He of Gracious Mien,” but who is best known as Aśōka by the name given to him in the literature of India and Ceylon and in an inscription of A.D. 150 at Junāgaḍh (Junagarh) in Kāṭhiāwār. From his time onwards we have records from all parts in constantly increasing numbers, particularly during the earlier periods, from caves, rock-cut temples, and Buddhist stūpas. Many of them, however, are of only a dedicatory nature, and, valuable as they are for purposes of religion, geography, and other miscellaneous lines of research, are not very helpful in the 624 historical line. We are interested here chiefly in the historical records; and we can notice only the most prominent ones even among them.

Of this king Aśōka we have now thirty-five different records, some of them in various recensions. Amongst them, the most famous ones are the seven pillar-edicts and the fourteen rock-edicts, found in various versions, and in a more or less complete state, at different places from Shāhbāzgarhī in the Yūsufzai country in the extreme north-west, to Radhia, Mathia, and Rāmpūrwa in the Champāran district, Bengal, at Dhauli in the Cuttack district of Orissa, at Jaugada in the Gaňjām district, Madras, at Girnār (Junāgaḍh) in Kāṭhiāwār, and even at Sopāra in the Ṭhāṇa district, Bombay. These edicts were thus published in conspicuous positions in or near towns, or close to highways frequented by travellers and traders, or in the neighbourhood of sacred places visited by pilgrims, so that they might be freely seen and perused. And the object of them was to proclaim the firm determination of Aśōka to govern his realm righteously and kindly in accordance with the duty of pious kings, and with considerateness for even religious beliefs other than the Brāhmaṇical faith which he himself at first professed, and to acquaint his subjects with certain measures that he had taken to that end, and to explain to them how they might co-operate with him in his objects. But, in addition to mentioning certain contemporaneous foreign kings, Antiochus II. (Theos) of Syria, Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, Antigonus Gonatas of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander II. of Epirus, they yield items of internal history, in detailing some of Aśōka’s administrative arrangements; in locating the capital of his empire at Pāṭaliputra (Patna), and seats of viceroys at Ujjēni (Ujjain) and Takhasilā (Taxila); in giving the names of some of the leading peoples of India, particularly the Chōḷas, the Pāṇḍyas, and the Andhras; and in recording the memorable conquest of the Kaliṅga country, the attendant miseries of which first directed the thoughts of the king to religion and to solicitude for the welfare of all his subjects. Another noteworthy record of Aśōka is that notification, containing his Last Edict, his dying speech, issued by local officials just after his death, which is extant in various recensions at Sahasrām, Rūpnāth, and Bairāt in Northern India, and at Brahmagiri, Siddāpura, and Jaṭinga-Rāmēśvara in Mysore. Some three years before the end of his long reign of thirty-seven years, Aśōka became a convert to Buddhism, and was admitted as an Upāsaka or lay-worshipper. Eventually, he formally joined the Buddhist order; and, following a not infrequent custom of ancient Indian kings, he abdicated, took the vows of a monk, and withdrew to spend his remaining days in religious retirement in a cave-dwelling on Suvarnagiri (Sōngīr), one of the hills surrounding the ancient city of Girivraja, below Rājagṛiha (Rājgīr), in the Patna district in Behār. And there, about a year later, in his last moments, he delivered the address incorporated in this notification, proclaiming as the only true religion that which had been promulgated by Buddha, and expanding the topic of the last words of that great teacher: “Work out your salvation by diligence!” This record, it may be added, is also of interest because, whereas such of the other known records of Aśōka as are dated at all are dated according to the number of years elapsed after his anointment to the sovereignty, it is dated 256 years after the death of Buddha, which event took place in 483 B.C.

For the two centuries or nearly so next after the end of the reign of Aśōka, we have chiefly a large number of short inscriptions which are of much value in miscellaneous lines of research—palaeography, geography, religion, and so on. But historical records are by no means wanting; and we may mention in particular the following. From the caves in the Nāgārjunī Hills in the Gayā district, Bengal, we have (along with three of the inscriptions of Aśōka himself) three records of a king Daśaratha who, according to the Vishṇu-Purāna, was a grandson of Aśōka. From the stūpa at Bharaut in the Nāgōd state, Central India, we have a record which proves the existence of the dynasty of the Śuṅga kings, for whom the Purānas, placing them next after the line of Chandragupta and Aśōka, indicate the period 183 to 71 B.C. Two of the records from the stūpa at Bhaṭṭiprōlu in the Kistna district, Madras, give us a king of those parts, reigning about 200 B.C., whose name appears both as Kubiraka and as Khubiraka. From Bēsnagar in the Gwālior state we have an inscription, referable to the period 175 to 135 B.C., which mentions a king of Central India, by name Bhāgabhadra, and also mentions, as his contemporary, one of the Greek kings of the Punjab, Antalkidas, whose name is familiar from his coins in the form Antialkidas. From the Hāthigumphā cave near Cuttack, in Orissa, we have a record, to be placed about 140 B.C., of king Khāravēla, a member of a dynasty which reigned in that part of India. From a cave at Pabhōsā in the Allahābād district, United Provinces, we have two records which make known to us a short succession of kings of Adhichatrā, otherwise known as Ahichchhattra. From a cave at the Nānāghāt Pass in the Poona district, Bombay, we have a record of queen Nāyanikā, wife of one of the great Sātavāhana-Sātakarṇi kings of the Deccan. And from the stūpa No. 1 at Sāňchi in the Bhōpāl state, Central India, we have a record of a king Śrī-Sātakarṇi, belonging to perhaps another branch of the same great stock.

The historical records become more numerous from the time of the Kushan king Kaṇishka or Kāṇishka, who began to reign in 58 B.C., and founded the so-called Vikrama era, the great historical era of Northern India, beginning in that year.27 For the period of him and his immediate successors, Vāsishka, Huvishka and Vāsudēva, we have now between seventy and eighty inscriptions, ranging from 54 B.C. to A.D. 42, and disclosing a sway which reached at its height from Bengal to Kābul: we are indebted for some of these to the Buddhists, in connexion with whose faith the memory of Kaṇishka was preserved by tradition, but for most of them to the Jains, who seem to have been at that time the more numerous sect in the central part of his dominions.

The dynasty of Kaṇishka was succeeded by another foreign ruler, Gondophernēs, popularly known as Gondophares, whose coins indicate that, in addition to a large part of north-western India and Sind, his dominions included Kābul, Kandahār, and Sēistān. This king is well known to Christian tradition, in connexion with the mission of St Thomas the Apostle to the East. And the tradition is substantially supported by an inscription from Takht-i-Bahaī in the Yūsufzai country on the north-west frontier, which, like some of his coins, mentions him as Guduphara or Gunduphara, and proves that he was reigning there in A.D. 47.

Gondophernēs was followed by the Kadphisēs kings, belonging to another branch of the Kushan tribe, who perhaps extended their sway farther into India, as far at least as Mathurā (Muttra), and reigned for about three-quarters of a century. For their period, and in fact for the whole time to the rise of the Guptas in A.D. 320 we have as yet but scanty help from the inscriptions in respect of the political history of Northern India: we are mostly dependent on the coins, which tend to indicate that that part of India was then broken up into a number of small sovereignties and tribal governments. An inscription, however, from Panjtar in the Yūsufzai territory mentions, without giving his name, a Kushan king whose dominion included that territory in A.D. 66. And an inscription of A.D. 242 from Mathurā has been understood to indicate that some descendant of the same stock was then reigning there. The inscriptional records for that period belong chiefly to Southern India.

Meanwhile, however, in the south-west corner of Northern India, namely in Kāṭhiāwār, there arose another foreign king, apparently of Parthian extraction, by name Nahapāna, described in his records, whether by a family name or by a tribal appellation, as a Chhaharāta or Kshaharāta, in whom we have the 625 founder of the so-called Śaka era, the principal era of Southern India, beginning in A.D. 78: in respect of him we learn from the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea that he was reigning between A.D. 80 and 89, and from inscriptions that he was still reigning in A.D. 120 and 124: at the latter time, his dominions included Nāsik and other territories on the south of the Narbadā; and the Periplus names as his capital a town which it calls Minnagar, and which Ptolemy would locate in such a manner as to suggest that it may be identified with the modern Dōhad in the Paňch Mahāls district of Gujarāt, Bombay. Nahapāna was overthrown, and his family was entirely wiped out, soon after A.D. 125, by the great Sātāvahana king Gautamīputra-Śrī-Sātakarṇi, who thereby recovered the territories on the south of the Narbadā. On the north of that river, however, he was followed by a line of kings founded by his viceroy Chashṭana, son of Ghsamotika, to whom Ptolemy, mentioning him as Tiastanēs, assigns Ujjain as his capital: these names, again, show a foreign origin; but, from the time of his son Jayadāman, the descendants of Chashṭana became Hinduized, and mostly bore purely Indian appellations. The coins show that the descendants of Chashṭana ruled till about A.D. 388, when they were overthrown by the great Gupta dynasty of Northern India. Only a few of their inscriptional records have been discovered: but amongst them a very noteworthy one is the Junāgaḍh (Junagarh) inscription of Chashṭana’s grandson, Rudradāman, bearing a date in A.D. 150; it is remarkable as being the earliest known long inscription written entirely in Sanskṛit.

From Southern India we have, at Nāsik, inscriptions of the Sātavāhana king Gautamṕputra-Śrī-Sātakarṇi, mentioned just above, and of his son Vāsisṭhīputra-Śrī-Puḷumāyi, and of another king of that line named Gautamīputra-Śrī-Yajña-Sātakarṇi; and other records of the last-mentioned king come from Kaṇheri near Bombay, and from the Kistna district, Madras, and testify to the wide extent of the dominions of the line to which he belonged. The records of this king carry us on to the opening years of the 3rd century, soon after which time, in those parts at any rate, the power of the Sātavāhana kings came to an end. And we have next, also from Nāsik, an inscription of an Ābhīra king named Īśvarasēna, son of Śivadatta; in this last-mentioned person we probably have the founder of the so-called Kalachuri or Chēdi era, beginning in A.D. 248 or 249, which we trace in Western India for some centuries before the time when it was transferred to, or revived in, Central India, and was invested with its later appellation: we trace it notably in the records of a line of kings who called themselves Traikūṭakas, apparently from Trikūṭa as the ancient name of the great mountain Harischandragaḍ in the Western Ghauts, in the Ahmadnagar district.

We can, of course, mention in this account only the most prominent of the inscriptional records. Keeping for the present to Southern India, we have from Banawāsi in the North Kanara district, Bombay, and from Maḷavaḷḷji in the Shimoga district, Mysore, two inscriptions of a king Hārit putra-Sātakarṇi of the Viṇhukaḍḍa-Chuṭu family, reigning at Vaijayantī, i.e. Banawāsi, which disclose the existence there of another branch, apparently known as the Chuṭu family and having its origin at a place named Vishṇugarta, of the great stock to which the Sātavāhana-Sātakarṇis belonged. And another Maḷavaḷḷi inscription, of a king Śiva-Skandavarman, shows that the Sātakarṇis of that locality were followed by a line of kings known as the Kadambas, who left descendants who continued to rule until about A.D. 650. From the other side of Southern India, an inscription from the stūpa at Jaggayyapēṭa in the Kistna district, Madras, referable to the 3rd century A.D., gives us a king Māḍharīputra-Śrī-Vīra-Purushadatta, of the race of Ikshvāku. And some Prākṛit copperplate inscriptions from the same district, referable to the 4th century, disclose a line of Pallava kings at Kāňchī, the modern Conjeeveram near Madras, whose descendants, from about A.D. 550, are well known from the later records.

Reverting to Northern India, we have from the extreme north-west a few inscriptions dated in the era of 58 B.C. which carry us on to A.D. 322. The tale is then taken up chiefly by the records of the great Gupta kings of Pāṭaliputra, i.e. Patna, who rose to power in A.D. 320, and gradually extended their sway until it assumed dimensions almost commensurate with those of Aśōka and Kaṇishka: the records of this series are somewhat numerous; and a very noteworthy one amongst them is the inscription of Samudragupta, incised at some time about A.D. 375 on one of the pillars of Aśōka now standing at Allahābād, which gives us a wide insight into the political divisions, with their contemporaneous rulers, of both Northern and Southern India: it is also interesting because it, or another record of the same king at Éraṇ in the Saugar district, Central Provinces, marks the commencement of the habitual use of Sanskṛit for inscriptional purposes. The inscriptions of the Gupta series run on to about A.D. 530. But the power of the dynasty had by that time become much curtailed, largely owing to an irruption of the Hūṇs under Tōramāṇa and Mihirakula, who established themselves at Siālkōṭ, the ancient Śākala, in the Punjab. We have inscriptional records of these two persons, not only from Kura in the Salt Range, not very far from Siālkōṭ, but also from Éraṇ and from Gwālior. And next after these we have inscriptions from Mandasōr in Mālwā, notably on two great monolith pillars of victory, of a king Vishṇuvardhana-Yaśōdharman, which show that he overthrew Mihirakula shortly before A.D. 532, and, describing him as subjugating territories to which not even the Guptas and the Hūṇs had been able to penetrate, indicate that he in his turn established for a while another great paramount sovereignty in Northern India.

We have thus brought our survey of the inscriptions of India down to the 6th century A.D. There then arose various dynasties in different parts of the country: in Northern India, in Kāṭhiāwār, the Maitrakas of Valabhī; at Kanauj, the Maukharis, who, after no great lapse of time, were followed by the line to which belonged the great Harshavardhana, “the warlike lord (as the southern records style him) of all the region of the north;” and, in Behār, another line of Guptas, usually known as the Guptas of Magadha: in Southern India, the Chalukyas, who, holding about A.D. 625 the whole northern part of Southern India from sea to sea, then split up into two branches, the Western Chalukyas of Bādāmi in the Bijāpūr district, Bombay, and the Eastern Chalukyas of Veṅgī in the Godāvarī district, Madras; and, below them, the successors of the original Pallavas of Kāñchī (Conjeeveram). These all had their time, and passed away. And they and their successors have left us so great a wealth of inscriptional records that no further detailed account can be attempted within the limits available here. We must pass on to a few brief remarks about the language of the records and the characters in which they were written.

III. Greek Inscriptions

Etymologically the term inscription (ἐπιγραφή) would include much more than is commonly meant by it. It would include words engraved on rings, or stamped on coins,28 vases, lamps, wine-jar handles,29 &c. But Boeckh was clearly right in excluding this varia supellex from his Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, or only admitting it by way of appendix. Giving the term inscription a somewhat narrower sense, we still include within it a vast store of documents of the greatest value to the student of Greek civilization. It happens, moreover, that Greek inscriptions yield the historian a richer harvest than those of Rome. Partly from fashion, but partly from the greater abundance 627 of the material, the Romans engraved their public documents (treaties, laws, &c.) to a large extent on bronze. These bronze tablets, chiefly set up in the Capitol, were melted in the various conflagrations, or were carried off to feed the mint of the conqueror. In Greece, on the contrary, the mountains everywhere afforded an inexhaustible supply of marble, and made it the natural material for inscriptions. Some Greek inscribed tablets of bronze have come down to us,30 and many more must have perished in the sack of cities and burning of temples. A number of inscriptions on small thin plates of lead, rolled up, have survived; these are chiefly imprecations on enemies31 or questions asked of oracles.32 An early inscription recently discovered (1905) at Ephesus is on a plate of silver. But as a rule the material employed was marble. These marble monuments are often found in situ; and, though more often they were used up as convenient stones for building purposes, yet they have thus survived in a more or less perfect condition.33

Inscriptions were usually set up in temples, theatres, at the side of streets and roads, in τεμένη or temple-precincts, and near public buildings generally. At Delphi and Olympia were immense numbers of inscriptions—not only those engraved upon the gifts of victorious kings and cities, but also many of a more public character. At Delphi were inscribed the decrees of the Amphictyonic assembly, at Olympia international documents concerning the Peloponnesian cities; the Parthenon and Acropolis were crowded with treaties, laws and decrees concerning the Athenian confederation; the Heraeum at Samos, the Artemisium at Ephesus, and indeed every important sanctuary, abounded with inscriptions. It is a common thing for decrees (ψηφίσματα) to contain a clause specifying where they are to be set up, and what department of the state is to defray the cost of inscribing and erecting them. Sometimes duplicates are ordered to be set up in various places; and, in cases of treaties, arbitrations and other international documents, copies were always set up by each city concerned. Accordingly documents like the Marmor Ancyranum and the Edict of Diocletian have been restored by a comparison of the various fragments of copies set up in diverse quarters of the empire.

Greek inscribed marbles varied considerably in their external appearance. The usual form was the στήλη, the normal type of which was a plain slab, from 3 to 4 or even 5 ft. high,34 3 or 4 in. thick, tapering slightly upwards from about 2 ft. wide at bottom to about 18 in. at the top, where it was either left plain or often had a slight moulding, or still more commonly was adorned with a more or less elaborate pediment; the slab was otherwise usually plain. Another form was the βωμός or altar, sometimes square, oftener circular, and varying widely in size. Tombstones were either στῆλαι (often enriched beneath the pediment with simple groups in relief, commemorative of the deceased), or κίονες, pillars, of different size and design, or sarcophagi plain and ornamental. To these must be added statue-bases of every kind, often inscribed, not only with the names and honours of individuals, but also with decrees and other documents. All these forms were intended to stand by themselves in the open air. But it was also common to inscribe state documents upon the surface of the walls of a temple, or other public building. Thus the antae and external face of the walls of the pronaos of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene were covered with copies of the awards made concerning the lands disputed between Samos and Priene (see Gk. Inscr. in Brit. Mus. iii. § 1); similarly the walls of the Artemisium at Ephesus contained a number of decrees (ibid. iii. § 2), and the proscenium of the Odeum was lined with crustae, or “marble-veneering,” under 1 in. thick, inscribed with copies of letters from Hadrian, Antoninus and other emperors to the Ephesian people (ibid. p. 151). The workmanship and appearance of inscriptions varied considerably according to the period of artistic development. The letters incised with the chisel upon the wall or the στήλη were painted in with red or blue pigment, which is often traceable upon newly unearthed inscriptions. When Thucydides, in quoting the epigram of Peisistratus the younger (vi. 54), says “it may still be read ἀμυδροῖς γράμμασι,” he must refer to the fading of the colour; for the inscription was brought to light in 1877 with the letters as fresh as when they were first chiselled (see Kumanudes in Ἀθήναιον, vi. 149; I.G. suppl. to vol. i. p. 41). The Greeks found no inconvenience, as we should, in the bulkiness of inscriptions as a means of keeping public records. On the contrary they made every temple a muniment room; and while the innumerable στῆλαι, Hermae, bases and altars served to adorn the city, it must also have encouraged and educated the sense of patriotism for the citizen to move continually among the records of the past. The history of a Greek city was literally written upon her stones.

The primary value of an inscription lay in its documentary evidence (so Euripides, Suppl. 1202, fol.). In this way they are continually cited and put in evidence by the orators (e.g. see Demosth. Fals. Leg. 428; Aeschin. In Ctes. § 75). But the Greek historians also were not slow to recognize their importance. Herodotus often cites them (iv. 88, 90, 91, v. 58 sq., vii. 228); and in his account of the victory of Plataea he had his eye upon the tripod-inscription (ix. 81; cf. Thuc. i. 132). Thucydides’s use of inscriptions is illustrated by v. 18 fol., 23, 47, 77, vi. 54, 59. Polybius used them still more. In later Greece, when men’s thoughts were thrown back upon the past, regular collections of inscriptions began to be made by such writers as Philochorus (300 B.C.), Polemon (2nd century B.C., called στηλοκόπας for his devotion to inscriptions), Aristodemus, Craterus of Macedon, and many others.

At the revival of learning, the study of inscriptions revived with the renewed interest in Greek literature. Cyriac of Ancona, early in the 15th century, copied a vast number of inscriptions during his travels in Greece and Asia Minor; his MS. collections were deposited in the Barberini library at Rome, and have been used by other scholars. (See Bull. Corr. Hellén. i.; Larfeld in Müller’s Handbuch 1.2, p. 368 f.; Ziebarth, “de ant. Inscript. Syllogis” in Ephem. Epigr. ix.). Succeeding generations of travellers and scholars continued to collect and edit, and Englishmen in both capacities did much for this study.

The oldest extant Greek inscriptions appear to date from the middle of the 7th century B.C. During the excavations at Olympia a number of fragments of very ancient inscriptions were found (see Olympia, Textband v.); and Oldest Greek inscriptions. other very early inscriptions from various places, as Thera and Crete, have been published (see Röhl, op. cit.). But what is wanted is a sufficient number of very early inscriptions of fixed date. One such exists upon the leg of a colossal Egyptian statue at Abu-Simbel on the upper Nile, where certain Greek mercenaries in the service of King Psammetichus recorded their names, as having explored the river up to the second cataract (C.I.G. 5126; Röhl, 482; Hicks2, 3). Even if Psammetichus II. is meant, the inscription dates between 594 and 589 B.C. Another, but later, instance is to be found in the fragmentary inscriptions on the columns dedicated by Croesus in the Ephesian temple (c. 550 B.C.; Gk. Inscr. in the Brit. Mus. 518). Documents earlier than the Persian War are not very frequent; but after that period the stream of Greek inscriptions goes on, generally increasing in volume, down to late Byzantine times.

Greek inscriptions may most conveniently be classified under the following heads: (1) those which illustrate political history; (2) those connected with religion; (3) those of a private character.

IV. Latin Inscriptions

I. Latin or Roman Inscriptions (by which general name are designated, in classical archaeology, all non-literary remains of the Latin language, with the exception of coins, letters and journals) fall into two distinct classes, viz. (1) those which were written upon other objects of various kinds, to denote their peculiar purpose, and in this way have been preserved along with them; and (2) those which themselves are the objects, written, to be durable, as a rule, on metal or stone. The first class is that of inscriptions in the stricter sense of the word (styled by the Romans tituli, by the Germans Aufschriften); the second is that of instruments or charters, public and private (styled by the Romans first leges, afterwards instrumenta or tabulae, and by the Germans Urkunden).

No ancient Latin authors have professedly collected and explained or handed down to us Roman inscriptions. Some of 630 the orators and historians, such as Cicero, Livy, Pliny the elder, and Suetonius among the Latins, and Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Josephus among the Greeks, occasionally mention inscriptions of high historical interest. A few grammarians, as, for example, Varro, Verrius Flaccus and Valerius Probus of Berytus, quote ancient words or formulae from them, or explain the abbreviations used in them. Juridical instruments, laws, constitutions of emperors, senatus consulta and the like appear in the various collections of Roman jurisprudence.

Inscriptions (in the wider sense, as we shall henceforth call them without regard to the distinction which has been drawn) have been found in nearly every centre of ancient Roman life, but, like many other remains of antiquity, only seldom in their original sites. The great mass of them has to be sought for in the large European museums of ancient art, and in the smaller local collections of ancient remains which occur nearly everywhere in the European provinces of the former Roman empire as well as in the north of Africa, and also here and there in Asia Minor.

Only those copies of inscriptions are to be received with full confidence which are furnished by experienced and well-equipped scholars, or which have been made with the help of mechanical methods (casts, photographs, moist and dry rubbings), not always applicable with equal success, but depending on the position and the state of preservation of the monuments.36 From the first revival of classical learning in the Carolingian age attention was paid anew, by pilgrims to Rome and other places worth visiting, to epigraphic monuments also. In the time of the Renaissance, from the end of the 14th century downwards, some of the leading Italian scholars, like Poggio and Signorili, and the antiquarian traveller Cyriacus of Ancona, collected inscriptions, Greek and Latin.37 In the 15th century large collections of the inscriptions of all countries, or of limited districts, were made by Giovanni Marcanova, Fra Felice Feliciano, Fra Michele Ferrarino, Fra Giocondo the architect of Verona, Marino Sanudo the Venetian polyhistor, and others. At the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th, the first printed collections can be recorded (Spreti’s for Ravenna, 1489; Peutinger’s for Augsburg, 1508; Huttich’s for Mainz, 1520; Francesco degli Albertini’s for Rome, printed in 1521 by Jacopo Mazochi), while during the same century a long list of epigraphic travellers, like Pighius, Rambertus and Accursius, or antiquarian collectors, like Sigonius, Panvinius, Antonius Augustinus with his collaborators Ursinus and Metellus, and many others, were busy in augmenting the stock of epigraphic monuments. The series of printed epigraphic Corpora begins with that of Apianus (Ingolstadt, 1534), the only one arranged in geographical order, and is continued in those of Smetius (1558, but edited only after the author’s death by Justus Lipsius, 1588), Gruter (with Joseph Scaliger’s Indices, 1603, and re-edited by Graevius, 1707), Gudius (about 1660, edited by Hessel, 1731), Reinesius (1682), Fabretti (1699), Gori (1726), Doni (1731), Muratori (1739), Maffei (1749), Donati (1765-1775). These collections, manuscript and printed, will never altogether lose their value, as great numbers of inscriptions known to the ancient collectors have since been lost or destroyed. But, inasmuch as even towards the beginning of the 15th century, as well as afterwards, especially from the 16th down to a very recent period, all sorts of inaccuracies, interpolations and even downright falsifications, found their way into the Corpora, these can be employed only with the greatest caution. Modern critical research in the field of epigraphy began with the detection of those forgeries (especially of the very extensive and skilful ones of Pirro Ligorio, the architect to the house of Este) by Maffei, Olivieri and Marini. The last-named scholar opens a new era of truly critical and scientific handling of Roman inscriptions (especially in his standard work on the Atti dei fratelli arvali, Rome, 1795); his disciple and successor, Count Bartolomeo Borghesi (who died at San Marino in 1860), may be rightly called the founder of the modern science of Roman epigraphy.38 Orelli’s handy collection of Roman inscriptions (2 vols., Zurich, 1828) is a first attempt to make accessible to a larger scientific public the results of the researches of Marini and his successors; but it was not completed, (and thoroughly corrected) until nearly thirty years later, by Henzen (Orelli, iii., with the indispensable Indices, Zurich, 1856), who, with Mommsen and De Rossi, carried out the plan of a universal Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, previously projected by Maffei (1732), by Kellermann and Sarti (1832), with Borghesi’s help, and by Letronne and Egger (1843). After the appearance of Mommsen’s Inscriptiones regni Neapolitani Latinae (Leipzig, 1852) and his Inscriptiones confoederationis Helveticae Latinae (vol. x. of the publications of the Zurich Antiquarian Society, 1854), the publication of the C.I.L., following the similar work of the Greek inscriptions, was undertaken by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Berlin.

II. Information regarding the forms of letters used on Roman inscriptions will be found under the articles Latin Language, Palaeography and Writing (cf. Hübner, Exempla scripturae 631 epigraphicae Latinae, 1895). The forms of the single letters vary not inconsiderably according to the material of the monuments, their age and their origin. Carefully cut letters, especially when on a large scale, naturally differ from those scratched or painted on walls by non-professional hands, or hewn on rocks by soldiers; and small incised (or dotted) letters on metal or ivory and bone, and those painted on earthenware, or impressed on it or on glass before burning, are also necessarily of a different character. The letters, ordinarily drawn with minium on the monument before being cut (and also often painted, after having been cut, with the same colour), sometimes have been painted with a brush, and thence receive a peculiar form. To save space, on coins first and afterwards in inscriptions also, two or three or even more letters were joined, especially at the end of the lines, to a nexus or a ligatura. This system of compendious writing, very rare in the republican epoch, and slowly extending itself during the 1st century, became rather frequent in the 2nd and 3rd, especially in Spain and Africa. There is no constant system in these nexus litterarum, but generally the rule is observed that no substantial element of a single letter is to be counted for twice (thus e.g. is it or ti, not Titi). Numerals are usually distinguished from letters in the ancient period, down to the end of the republic, by a stroke drawn through them, as in ++VIR, duo(m) vir(om) ++S duo semis (sestertius), 500; it was afterwards put above them, as in ĪĪVIR, XVIR, VIR, duovir, decemvir, sevir.39

The direction of the writing is in the very oldest inscriptions from right to left and from left to right in alternate lines, an arrangement technically called βουστροφηδόν (D. Comparetti, Iscrizione arcaica del Foro Romano, Florence, 1900; H. Jordan, Hermes, vol. xv. p. 5, 1880), and in the Sabellic inscriptions similar arrangements are not infrequent. In all others it is from left to right. Each word is separated from the other by a sign of interpunction, which is not wanted, therefore, at the end of lines or of the whole text. Exceptions to this rule occur only in the later period (from the 2nd century downwards), and sometimes under special conditions, as when abridged words form the end of the line. Here and there even the different syllables of each word are separated by interpunction. The interpunction is formed by a single dot (except in some very ancient inscriptions, such as the recently found Forum inscription of the regal period and those of Pisaurum, where, as in Greek and other Italian monuments, three dots ∹ are used). According to the technical skill of the different periods in stone-cutting this dot is in some very ancient inscriptions quadrangular, or similar to an oblique cross (×), or oblong (as a bold stroke), but, as a rule, triangular, and never circular. This triangular dot changes, by ornamentation, into a hook () or a leaf (); the ivy-leaf-shaped dot is especially frequent in inscriptions from about the 2nd century downwards. The dot is always placed at the middle height of the letters, not, as now, at the foot of the line. In large texts of instruments the interpunction is often omitted; in the later period it is often entirely wanting; and in short texts, in the disposition of the lines, in the varying sizes of the letters employed, in the division of words at the end of the lines, &c., certain rules are observed, which cannot be detailed here. In some instances older inscriptions have been cancelled and more recent ones substituted (e.g. on milestones), especially in the case of the damnatio memoriae (in cases of high treason), in consequence of which the names of consuls and emperors are often cancelled; but in modern times also inscriptions have been deliberately destroyed or lost ones restored.

For understanding the texts of the inscriptions an accurate knowledge of the system of abbreviations used in them is necessary (see Cagnat, Cours d’épigraphie latine, 3rd ed., 1898). These are almost invariably litterae singulares; that is to say, the initial letter is employed for the entire word (in all its grammatical forms), or if one initial, as belonging to more than one word, is not sufficiently clear, the first two or even the first three letters are employed; rarely more than three. Abbreviations in the true sense of the word (by dropping some letters at the end) are to be found, in the older period, only at the end of lines, and not frequently. In the later period some instances of them have been observed. The litterae singulares, as Valerius Probus taught, are either generally employed (usus generalis) in all classes of written documents (and so in literature also), as, for instance, those of the individual names (the praenomina), the names of days and feasts (kal. for kalendae), and those of the chief magistrates (cos. for consul) and the like; or they belong chiefly (but not exclusively) to certain classes of documents, such as those used in juridical acts (l. for lex, h. for heres, s. d. m. for sine dolo malo, and so on), in sepulchral inscriptions (h. s. e., hic situs est) or in dedicatory inscriptions (v. s. l. m., votum solvit libens merito), &c.40

It may be observed here that the praenomina are, as a rule, always written in the universally known abbreviations (in the few instances where they are written in full it is a consequence of Greek influence or of peculiar circumstances). The gentilicia in -ius are abridged, in the republican period, in -i (in the nominative, perhaps for -is). In the always abbreviated indications of ancestors or patrons (in the case of slaves and freedmen), as C.f., Gai filius, M.l., Marci libertus (s. for servus is not frequent), the feminine gender is sometimes indicated by inversion of the letters. Thus . l. (or lib.) or W (an inverted M) l. designates a mulieris libertus; and are used for filia, pupilla. On the tribus and their abbreviations, and on the so-called military tribus (which are names of colonies collocated, for the sake of symmetry, at the place usually occupied, in the nomenclature, by the tribus), and on the other indications of origin used in the designation of individuals, the indexes to the above-named works give sufficient information; on the geographical distribution of the tribus see Grotefend’s Imperium Romanum tributim descriptum (Hanover, 1863). For the abbreviations of official charges, urban and municipal, and, in the imperial period, civil and military (to which, beginning with the 4th century, some Christian designations are to be added), see also the explanations given in the indexes. Among these abbreviations the first instances are to be found of the indication of the plural number by doubling the last letter; thus Augg., Caess., coss., dd. nn. (domini nostri), are used from the 3rd century downwards (see De Rossi’s preface to the Inscriptiones Christ. urbis Romae) to distinguish them from Aug., Caes., as designating the singular. In the later period, a dot or a stroke over the abridged word, like that upon numerals, here and there indicates the abbreviation.

INSECT, the anglicized form of the Late Lat. insectum, used by Pliny in his Natural History as the equivalent of the Gr. ἔντομον. Aristotle had included in one class “Entoma” the six-legged arthropods which form the modern zoological class of the Hexapoda or Insecta, besides the Arachnida, the centipedes and the millipedes. The word was introduced to English readers in a translation (1601) of Pliny’s Natural History by Philemon Holland, who defined “insects” as “little vermine or smal creatures which have (as it were) a cut or division betwene their heads and bodies, as pismires, flies, grashoppers, under which are comprehended earthworms, caterpilers, &c.” Few zoological terms have been more loosely used both by scientific and popular writers. The definition just quoted might include all animals belonging to the groups of the Arthropoda and Annelida, and U. Aldrovandi in De animalibus insectis (1602) almost contemporaneously distinguished between “terrestrial insects,” including woodlice, earthworms and slugs, and “aquatic insects,” comprising annelids and starfishes. Perhaps the widest meaning ever attached to the word was that of R.A.F. de Réaumur, who “would willingly refer to the class of insects all animals whose form would not allow them to be placed in the class of ordinary quadrupeds, in that of birds, or in that of fishes. The size of an animal should not suffice to exclude it from the number of insects.... A crocodile would be a terrible insect; I should have no difficulty, however, in giving it that name. All reptiles belong to the class of insects, for the same reasons that earthworms belong to it.”

The class Insecta of Linnaeus (1758) was co-extensive with the Arthropoda of modern zoologists. The general practice for many years past among naturalists has been to restrict the terms “Insecta” and “insect” to the class of Arthropods with three pairs of legs in the adult condition: bees, flies, moths, bugs, grasshoppers, springtails are “insects,” but not spiders, centipedes nor crabs, far less earthworms, and still less slugs, starfishes or coral polyps.

INSECTIVORA, an order of non-volant placental mammals of small size, with a dentition adapted to an insect-diet. In nearly all cases these creatures are nocturnal, and the majority are terrestrial, many burrowing in the ground, although a few are arboreal and others aquatic. They have plantigrade or partially plantigrade feet, that is to say, they apply the whole or the greater portion of the soles to the ground when walking; and there are generally five toes, each terminating in a claw, and the first never being opposable to the others in either the fore or hind limb. A full series of differentiated teeth, including temporary or deciduous milk-molars, is developed, and the cheek-teeth have distinct roots and are crowned with sharp cusps, which in some instances are three in number and arranged in a triangle. Very frequently the number of the teeth is the typical forty-four, arranged as i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 4⁄4, m. 3⁄3, but occasionally there is a fourth pair of molars, while the incisors may be reduced to two pairs above and one below, and the canine is frequently like an incisor or a premolar. The skull is of a primitive type, often with vacuities on the palate, as in marsupials, with a small brain-chamber, and the tympanic bone generally ring-like instead of forming a bladder-shaped bulla; except in the African Potamogale, clavicles, or collar-bones, are always present; the humerus generally has a perforation on the inner side of its lower extremity; and a centrale bone is usually present in the carpus. In the brain the smooth hemispheres are so short as to leave the cerebellum and sometimes even the corpora quadrigemina exposed. The uterus is two-horned; the placenta, so far as known, is deciduate and discoidal; the testes are abdominal or inguinal; and the teats usually numerous. The body in several instances is covered with sharp spines in place of hair.

The great majority of the Insectivora are nocturnal in their habits, and their whole structure indicates an extremely low grade of organisation, fully as low as that of marsupials. It is noteworthy that the dentition in several of the groups approximates to that of the extinct mammals of the Jurassic epoch (see Marsupialia), and exhibits more or less distinctly the primitive tritubercular type. Although the past history of the group is very imperfectly known, it seems probable that the Insectivora are nearly related to the original primitive mammalian stock. Indeed, it has been stated that were it not for the apparently advanced type of placenta, they might easily be regarded as the little modified descendants of the ancestors of most other mammals. Probably they are in some way related to the creodont carnivores (see Creodonta), but if, as has been suggested, the latter are akin to the primitive ungulates, the connexion would seem to be less close than has been sometimes supposed.

Representatives of this order are found throughout the temperate and tropical parts of both hemispheres, with the exception of South America (where only a few shrews have effected an entrance from the north) and Australia, and exhibit much variety both in organization and in habit. The greater number are cursorial, but some (Talpa, Chrysochloris, Oryzorictes) are burrowing, others (Limnogale, Potamogale, Nectogale, Myogale) aquatic, and some (Tupaiidae) arboreal. To the great majority the term insectivorous is applicable, although Potamogale is said to feed on fish, and the moles live chiefly on worms. Notwithstanding the nature of their food, much variety prevails in the form and number of the teeth, and while in many cases the division into incisors, canines, premolars and molars may be readily traced, in others, forming the great majority of the species, such as the shrews, this is difficult.

In most cases the brain-cavity is of small relative capacity, and in no instance is the brain-case elevated to any considerable extent above the face-line. The facial part of the skull is generally much produced, and the premaxillary and nasal bones well developed; but the cheek, or zygomatic arch, is usually slender or deficient, the latter being the case in most of the species, and post-orbital processes of the frontals are found only in the Tupaiidae and Macroscelididae. The number of dorsal vertebrae varies from 13 in Tupaia to 19 in Centetes, of lumbar from 3 in Chrysochloris to 6 in Talpa and Sorex, and of caudal from 639 the rudimentary vertebrae of Centetes to the 40 or more well-developed ones of Microgale.

The breast-bone, or sternum, is variable, but generally narrow, bilobate in front and divided into segments. The shoulder-girdle presents extreme adaptive modifications in the mole, in relation to the use of the fore-limbs in burrowing; but in the golden moles the fore-arm and fore-foot alone become specially modified. In Macroscelides the bones of the fore-arm are united at their lower ends, but in all other Insectivora the radius and ulna are distinct. The fore-foot has generally five digits; but in Rhynchocyon and in one species of Oryzorictes the first toe is absent, and in the moles it is extremely modified. The femur has, in most species, a prominent ridge below the greater trochanter presenting the characters of a third trochanter. In Tupaia, Centetes, Hemicentetes, Ericulus and Solenodon the tibia and fibula are distinct, but in most other genera united. The hind-foot consists usually of five digits (rarely four by reduction of the first), and in some, as in the leaping species (Macroscelides, Rhynchocyon), the tarsal bones are elongated. The form of the pelvis, and especially of the symphysis pubis, varies within certain limits, so that while in the Tupaiidae and Macroscelididae there is a long symphysis, in the Erinaceidae, Centetidae and Potamogalidae it is short, and in the Soricidae, Talpidae and Chrysochloridae there is none.

Owing to the similarity in the character of the food, the truly insectivorous species, forming more than nine-tenths of the order, present little variety in the structure of the digestive organs. The stomach is a simple, thin-walled sac; sometimes as in Centetes, with the pyloric and oesophageal openings close together; the intestinal canal has much the same calibre throughout, and varies from three (in the shrews) to twelve times (in the hedgehogs) the length of the head and body. In the arboreal Tupaia and the allied Macroscelididae, which probably feed on vegetable substances as well as insects most of the species possess a caecum. The liver is deeply divided into lobes, the right and left lateral being cut off by deep fissures; both the caudate and Spigelian lobes are generally well developed, and the gall-bladder, usually large and globular, is placed on the middle of the posterior surface of the right central lobe.

All the members of the order appear to be highly prolific, the number of young varying from two to eight in the hedgehog, and from twelve to twenty-one in the tenrec. The position of the milk-glands and the number of teats vary greatly. In Solenodon there is a single pair of post-inguinal teats, but in most species these organs range from the thorax to the abdomen, varying from two pairs in Gymnura to twelve in the tenrec. In the golden moles the thoracic and inguinal teats are lodged in deep cut-shaped depressions.

Scent-glands exist in many species. In most shrews they occur on the sides of the body at a short distance behind the axilla, and their exudation is probably protective, as few carnivorous animals will eat their dead bodies. In both species of Gymnura and in Potamogale large pouches are situated on each side of the rectum, and discharge their secretions by ducts, opening in the first-named genus in front of and in the latter within the margin of the vent. In the tenrec similarly situated glands discharge by pores opening at the bottom of deep pits.

The skin is thin, but in many species lined with well-developed muscles, which are probably more developed in hedgehogs than in any other mammals. In this family and in the tenrec most of the species are protected by spines implanted in the skin-muscle, or panniculus carnosus.

The Insectivora may be divided into two groups, according to the degree of development of the union between the two halves of the pelvis. The first group is characterized by the full development of this union, both pubis and ischium Tree-Shrews. entering into the symphysis. The tympanum remains as a ring within an auditory bulla; the orbit is either surrounded by bone, or separated from the hinder part of the skull by a post-orbital process of the frontal; the upper molars have broad 5-cusped crowns with a W-shaped pattern; and the intestine is generally furnished with a caecum. The first family of this group is the Tupaiidae, represented by the tree-shrews, or tupaias, of the Indo-Malay countries, characterized by the complete bony ring round the eye-socket, the freedom of the fibula from the tibia in the hind-limb, and the absence of any marked elongation of the tarsus. The dental formula is i. 2⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄3, m. 3⁄3, total 38. In appearance and habits tree-shrews are extremely like squirrels, although they differ, of course, in toto as regards their dentition. A large number of species are included as the typical genus Tupaia, which ranges from north-eastern India to the great Malay Islands. In these animals the tail has a fringe of long hairs on opposite sides throughout its length. In the pen-tailed, tree-shrew (Ptilocercus lowii), fig. 1, the only representative of its genus, and a native of Sumatra, Borneo and the Malay Peninsula, the fringes of long hair are confined to the terminal third of the tail. There are also differences in the skulls of the two genera. A third genus, Urogale, represented by U. cylindrura of the mountains of Mindanao, in the Philippines, and U. everetti, of Borneo, has been established for the round-tailed tupaias, in which the tail is uniformly short-haired, and the second upper incisor and the lower canines are unusually large, the third lower incisor being proportionately small, and also erect, while the second upper incisor resembles a canine. (See Tree-Shrew.)

Fig. 1. Pen-tailed Tree-Shrew (Ptilocercus lowii).

In Africa the tupaias are apparently represented by the jumping-shrews, or elephant-shrews (so called from their elongated muzzles), constituting the family Macroscelididae. From the Tupaiidae the members of this family are readily distinguished by the fact that the socket of the eye, in place of having a complete bony ring, is separated from the hinder part of the skull merely by a post-orbital process of the frontal bone, and also by the more or less marked elongation of the tarsus or lower portion of the hind-limb; another feature being the union of the lower ends of the tibia and fibula. As indicated by one of their names, the members of the group leap after the fashion of gerbils, or jerboas, and hence walk much more on their toes than the majority of the order. In the typical genus Macroscelides, which ranges all over Africa and has numerous specific representatives, the dental formula is i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 4⁄4, m. 2/(2 or 3), total 40 or 42; while there are five toes to each foot, and the lower ends of the radius and ulna are united. In Petrodromus (fig. 2) of East Africa, there are only four front-toes, and the hairs on the lower part of the tail form stiff bristles, with swollen tips; the dental formula being the same as that of those species of Macroscelides as have only two lower molars. A further reduction of the number of the digits takes place in the long-nosed jumping-shrews of the genus Rhynchocyon, which are larger animals with a much longer snout, only four toes to each foot, and a dental formula of i. (1 or 0)/3, c. 1⁄1, p. 4⁄4, m. 2⁄2, total 36 or 34. Some of the species, all of which are East African, differ from the members of the typical genus by the deep rufous brown instead of olive-grey colour of their coat. (See Jumping-Shrew.)

In the second group, which includes all the other members of the order, the pelvic symphysis is either lacking or formed merely by the epiphyses of the pubes; the orbit and temporal region of the skull are confluent; and, except in the Talpidae and Chrysochloridae, the tympanum is ring-like, the tympanic cavity being formed by the alisphenoid and basisphenoid bones. The upper molars are triconodont, being either of the typical or a modified 640 form of what is known as the tritubercular sectorial type. There is no caecum.

The first representatives of this group are the moles, or Talpidae, in which the lower ends of the tibia and fibula are united (fig. 3, t, fb), there is a descent of the testes, the tympanum forms a bladder-like bulla, the zygomatic, or cheek-arch, Moles. although slender, is complete, there is no pelvic symphysis, the upper molars are five-cusped, and the first upper incisor is simple, and the lower vertical. In habits the majority of the family are burrowing, but a few are aquatic; and all feed on animal substances. The distribution is limited to the temperate regions of Europe, Asia and North America.

Throughout the family the eyes are minute, and in some species are covered with skin; the ears are short and hidden in the fur; and the fore-limbs are generally more or less modified for digging.

Fig. 2.—Peter’s Jumping-Shrew (Petrodromus tetradactylus).

The true moles of the genus Talpa are the typical representatives of the first subfamily, or Talpinae, in which the clavicle (fig. 3, cl.) and humerus (h) are very short and broad, while there is an additional sickle-like bone (fc) on the inner side of the fore-foot. In Talpa itself the first upper incisor is but little larger than the second, the fore-foot is very broad, and the dental formula is i. 2⁄2, c. 1/(1 or 0), p. 3⁄3, 3⁄4, or 4⁄4, m. 3⁄3. There are about a dozen species, all confined to the Old World. The variation in the dental formula of some of the best known of these is as follows:—

i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄0, p. 4⁄4, m. 3⁄3 × 2 (T. wogura, robusta). i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 4⁄4, m. 3⁄3 × 2 (T. europaea, caeca, romana, longirostris, micrura). i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄4, m. 3⁄3 × 2 (T. leucura, leptura). i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄3, m. 3⁄3 × 2 (T. moschata).

Except in T. europaea, the eyes are covered by a membrane. In T. micrura the short tail is concealed by the fur. T. europaea extends from England to Japan.

T. caeca and T. romana are found south of the Alps, the remaining species are all Asiatic, two only—T. micrura and T. leucura—occurring south of the Himalaya.

The genus may be split up into subgenera corresponding with the above table; these subdivisions being sometimes accorded full generic rank. For instance the Japanese T. wogura and the Siberian T. robusta are often referred to under the ill-sounding titles of Mogera wogura and M. robusta.

Fig. 3.—Skeleton of Mole (Talpa europaea) (lower jaw removed to show base of skull).
c, Calcaneum. c.h, Clavicular articulation of the humerus. cl, Clavicle. e.c, External condyle of humerus. f, Femur. fb, Fibula. fc, Falciform bone (radial sesamoid). h, Humerus. i.c, Internal condyle of humerus. il, Left iliac bone. i.p, Ramus of the ilium and pubis. is, Ischium. l.d, Ridge of insertion of latissimus dorsi muscle. l.t, Lesser trochanter.	m, Manubrium sterni. o, Fourth hypapophysial sesamoid ossicle. ol, Olecranon. p, Pubic bone widely separated from that of the opposite side. pa, Patella. p.m, Ridge for insertion of pectoralis major muscle. pt, Pectineal eminence. r, Radius. rb, First rib. s, Plantar sesamoid ossicle corresponding to the radial sesamoid (os falciform) in the manus. sc, Scapula. s.h, Scapular articulation of the humerus. t, Tibia. u, Ulna.

Referring more fully to the European species, it may be mentioned that the mole exhibits in its organization perfect adaptation to its mode of life. In the structure of the skeleton striking departures from the typical mammalian forms are noticeable. The first sternal bone is so much produced as to extend forward as far as a vertical line from the second cervical vertebra, carrying with it the very short almost quadrate clavicles, which are articulated with its anterior extremity and externally with the humeri, being also connected ligamentously with the scapula. The fore-limbs are thus brought opposite the sides of the neck, and from this position a threefold advantage is derived:—in the first place, as this is the narrowest part of the body, they add little to the width, which, if increased, would lessen the power of movement in a confined space; secondly this position allows of a longer fore-limb than would otherwise be possible, and so increases its lever power; and, thirdly, although the entire limb is relatively short, its anterior position enables the animal, when burrowing, to thrust the claws so far forward as to be in a line with the end of the muzzle, the importance of which is evident. Posteriorly, we find the hind-limbs removed out of the way by approximation of the hip-joints to the centre line of the body. This is effected by inward curvature of the innominate bones at the acetabulum to such an extent that they almost meet in the centre, while the pubic bones are widely separated behind. The shortness of the fore-limb is due to the humerus, which, like the clavicle, is so reduced in length as to present the appearance of a flattened X-shaped bone, with prominent ridges and deep depressions for the attachments of powerful muscles. Its upper extremity presents two rounded prominences; the smaller, the true head of the bone, articulates as usual with the scapula; the larger, which is the external tuberosity rounded off, forms a separate joint with the end of the clavicle. This double articulation gives the rigidity necessary to support the great lateral pressure sustained by the fore-limb in excavating. The bones of the fore-leg are normal, but those of the fore-foot are flattened and laterally expanded. The great width of the fore-foot is also partly due to the presence of a peculiar bone on the inner side of the palm and articulating with the wrist.

The muscles acting on these modified limbs are homologous with those of cursorial insectivora, differing only in their relative development. The tendon of the biceps traverses a long bony tunnel, formed by the expansion of the margin of the bicipital groove for the insertion of the pectoralis major muscle; the anterior division of the latter muscle is unconnected with the sternum, extending across as a band between the humeri, and co-ordinating the motions of the fore-limbs. The teres major and latissimus dorsi muscles are of immense size, inserted into the prominent ridge below the pectoral attachment, and are the principal agents in the excavating action of the limb. The cervical muscles connecting the slender scapulae, and through them the fore-limbs, with the centre line of the neck and with the occiput are large, and the ligamentum nuchae between them is ossified. The latter condition appears to be due to the prolongation forwards of the sternum, preventing flexion of the head downwards; and accordingly, the normal office of the ligament being lost, it ossifies, 641 and affords a fixed point for the origins of the superficial cervical muscles.

The skull is long, with slender zygomatic arches; the nasal bones are strong and early become united, and in front of them the nostrils are continued forwards in tubes formed of thick cartilage, the septum between which becomes partially or wholly ossified beneath. There are 7 cervical, 13 dorsal, 6 lumbar, 6 sacral and 10-12 caudal vertebrae; of the dorsal and lumbar there may be one more or less. The sacral vertebrae are united by their expanded and compressed spinous processes, and all the others, with the exception of the cervical, are closely and solidly articulated together, so as to support the powerful propulsive and fossorial actions of the limbs. The upper incisors are simple chisel-edged teeth; the canine is long and two-rooted; then follow three subequal conical premolars, and a fourth, much larger, and like a canine; these are succeeded by three molars with W-shaped cusps. In the lower jaw the three incisors on each side are slightly smaller, and slant more forwards; close behind them is a tooth which, though like them, must, from its position in front of the upper canine, be considered as the canine; behind it, but separated by an interval, is a large double-rooted conical tooth, the first premolar; the three following premolars are like the corresponding teeth above, but smaller, and are succeeded, as above, by the three molars. See Mole.

Fig. 4.—Russian Desman (Myogale moschata).

In the other members of the Talpinae, which are North American, the first upper incisor is much taller than the second. They include the curious star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata), which has the typical series of 44 teeth and a series of fleshy appendages round the extremity of the snout; the species known as Scapanus townsendi and Parascalops americanus, each representing a genus by itself, and characterized by the absence of nasal appendages and the presence of only two pairs of lower incisors; and, finally, Scalops aquaticus, in which the dentition is further reduced by the loss of the lower canine, the total number of teeth thus being forty.

Forming a transition to the subfamily Myogalinae, in which the clavicle and humerus are typically of normal form, and there is no sickle-shaped bone in the fore-foot, is the Chinese mole (Scaptonyx piscicauda), characterized by having the clavicle and humerus of the true mole-type, but the foot like that of the under-mentioned Urotrichus. The relative proportions of the first and second upper incisors are also as in Talpa, but there are only two pairs of lower incisors.

Among the more typical Myogalinae, mention may be made of Dymecodon pilirostris, from Japan, representing a genus by itself; nearly allied to which are the shrew-moles, as represented by the small and long-tailed Urotrichus of Japan, with incisors 2⁄1 and premolars 4⁄3, and U. (Neurotrichus) gibbsi of North America, in which the premolars are ¾. A still more interesting form is the Tibetan Uropsilus soricipes, a non-burrowing species, with the external appearance of a shrew combined with the skull of a mole, the feet being much narrower than in Urotrichus, and the dental formula i. 2⁄1, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄3, m. 3⁄3.

The typical representatives of the subfamily are the two European desmans, Myogale moschata and M. pyrenaica, which are aquatic in habits and have the feet webbed and the full series of 44 teeth. The former is by far the largest member of the whole family, its total length being about 16 in. Its long proboscis-like snout projects far beyond the margin of the upper lip; the toes are webbed as far as the bases of the claws; and the long scaly tail is laterally flattened, forming a powerful instrument of propulsion when swimming. This species inhabits the banks of streams and lakes in south-east Russia, where its food consists of various aquatic insects. M. pyrenaica, living in a similar manner in the Pyrenees, is much smaller, has a cylindrical tail, and a relatively long snout.

The Shrew-mice, or, shortly, shrews (Soricidae), are closely related to the Talpidae, with which they are connected by means of some of the subfamily Myogalinae. They are, however, distinguished Shrews. by the ring-like tympanic, the incompleteness of the zygomatic arch, the tubercular-sectorial type of upper molar, the two-cusped first upper incisor, and the forward direction of the corresponding lower tooth. As a rule they are terrestrial, but a few are aquatic.

Fig. 5.—Skull and Dentition of a Shrew-mouse (Sorex-verae-pacis); i, first incisors; c in the upper jaw is the canine; and p-m the three premolars, behind which are the three molars; in the lower jaw c is the second incisor, and p the single premolar.

The dentition (fig. 5) is characteristic, and affords one of the chief means of classifying this exceedingly difficult group of mammals. There are no lower canines, and always six functional teeth on each side of the lower jaw, but in some rare instances an additional rudimentary tooth is squeezed in between two of the others. The first pair of teeth in each jaw differ from the rest; in the upper jaw they are hooked and have a more or less pronounced basal cusp; in the lower jaw they are long and project horizontally forwards, sometimes with an upward curve at the tip. Behind the first upper incisor comes a variable number of small teeth, of which, when all are developed, the first two are incisors, the third the canine, and the next two premolars; behind these, again, are four larger teeth, of which the front one is the last premolar, while the other three are molars. Thus we have in the typical genus Sorex (fig. 5) the dental formula i. 3⁄2, c. 1⁄0, p. 3⁄1, m. 3⁄3, total 32, or twenty upper and twelve lower teeth. The lower formula, as already stated, is constant, but the number of the upper series varies from the above maximum of twenty to a minimum of fourteen in Diplomesodon and Anurosorex, in which the formula is i. 2, c. 1, p. 1, m. 3. From the relation of the fourth upper tooth to the premaxillo-maxillary suture it has been supposed that shrews, like many polyprotodont marsupials, have four pairs of upper incisors; but this is improbable, and the formula is accordingly here taken to follow the ordinary placental type.

Shrews may be divided into two sections, according as to whether the teeth are tipped with brownish or reddish or are wholly white, the former group constituting the Soricinae and the latter the Crocidurinae.

In the red-tipped group is the typical genus Sorex, which ranges over Europe and Asia north of the Himalaya Mountains to North America. There are twenty upper teeth with the formula given above, the ears are well developed, the tail is long and evenly haired, and the aperture of the generative organs in at least one of the sexes is distinct from the vent. The common shrew-mouse (Sorex araneus) has a distribution co-extensive with that of the genus in the Old World, and the North American S. richardsoni can scarcely be regarded as more than a local race. A few species, such as Sorex hydrodomus of Alaska and S. palustris of the United States, have fringes of long hairs on the feet, and are aquatic in habit. The latter has been made the type of the genus Neosorex, but such a distinction, according to Dr J. E. Dobson, is unnecessary. The same authority likewise rejects the separation of the North American S. bendirei as Atophyrax, remarking that this species is an inhabitant of marshy land, and appears to present many characters intermediate between S. palustris and the terrestrial species of the genus, differing from the former in the absence of well-defined fringes to the digits, but agreeing with it closely in dentition, in the large size of the infra-orbital foramen, and in the remarkable shortness of the angular process of the lower jaw. In India and Burma the place of Sorex is taken by Soriculus, in which the upper teeth are generally 18, although rarely 20, and the generative organs have an opening in common with the vent after the fashion of the monotreme mammals. The latter feature occurs in the North American Blarina, which is characterized by the truncation of the upper part of the ear and the short tail, the number of upper teeth being 20 or 18. Another American genus, Notiosorex, in which the ear is well developed and the tail medium, has only 16 upper teeth. From all the rest of the red-toothed group the water-shrew, Neomys (or Crossopus) fodiens, of Europe and northern Asia, differs by the fringe of long hairs on the lower surface of the tail; the number of upper teeth being 18.

In the white-toothed, or crocidurine, group, the small African genus Myosorex, which has either 18 or 20 upper teeth, includes long-tailed and large-eared species in which the aperture of the generative 642 organs and the vent, although close together, are yet distinct. In the musk-shrews (Crocidura), on the other hand, which are common to Europe, Asia and Africa, the reproductive organs and the alimentary canal discharge into a common cloaca, the long tail is sparsely covered with long and short hairs, there are anal glands secreting a strong musky fluid, and the number of upper teeth is 16 or 18. Diplomesodon pulchellus of the Kirghiz steppes, has, on the other hand, only 14 upper teeth, and is further characterized by the moderately long tail and the hairy soles of the hind-feet. Another genus is represented by the Tibetan Anurosorex squamipes, which has the same dental formula, but a mole-like form, rudimentary tail and scaly hind-soles. Lastly, we have two Asiatic mountain aquatic species, Chimarrogale himalayaca of the Himalayas and Nectogale elegans of Tibet, which have fringed tails like the European water-shrew, and 16 upper teeth, the former characterized by the small but perfect external ears, and the latter (fig. 6) by the absence of the ears and presence of adhesive disks on the feet.

It will be seen that the red- and the white-toothed series have parallel representative forms, which may indicate that the division of the family into the two groups is one based rather on convenience than on essential differences. See Shrew.

From the shrews, the hedgehogs and gymnuras, or rat-shrews, collectively forming the family Erinaceidae, differ structurally by the broader ring made by the tympanic, the complete zygomatic arch, the five-cusped broad upper molars, and the presence of a short pubic symphysis. At the present day they are an exclusively Old World group.

Fig. 6.—The Tibetan Water-shrew (Nectogale elegans).

The typical group, or Erinaceinae, is represented only by the hedgehogs, with the one genus Erinaceus, easily recognized by their spiny coats, and further characterized by the rudimentary tail, the presence of vacuities in the palate, and the broad Hedgehogs. pelvis. Hedgehogs (Erinaceus) have the dental formula i. 2⁄2, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄2, m. 3⁄3, and are represented by over a score of species, distributed throughout Europe, Africa and the greater part of Asia, but unknown in Madagascar, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, the Malay countries, and, of course, Australia. All the species resemble one another in the armour of spines covering the upper surface and sides of the body; and all possess the power of rolling themselves up into the form of a ball protected on all sides by these spines, the skin of the back being brought downwards and inwards over the head and tail so as to include the limbs by the action of special muscles.

Curiously enough the European hedgehog (E. europaeus) is the most aberrant species, differing from all the rest in the peculiarly-shaped and single-rooted third upper incisor and first premolar (fig. 7, A), and in its very coarse harsh fur. The dentition of the long-eared Indian E. grayi (fig. 7, B) may, on the other hand, be considered characteristic of all the other species, the only important differences being found in the variable size and position of the second upper premolar, which is very small, external and deciduous in the Indian E. micropus and E. pictus. The former species, limited to South India, is further distinguished by the absence of the jugal bone. Of African species, E. diadematus, with long frontal spines, is probably the commonest, and E. albiventris has been made the type of a separate genus on account of the total absence of the first front-toe. See Hedgehog.

The members of the second subfamily, Gymnurinae, are more or less rat-like animals, confined to the Malay countries, and easily distinguished from the hedgehogs by the absence of spines among the fur and the well-developed tail. They also lack Rat-shrew. vacuities in the palate, and have a long and narrow pelvis. The typical representative of the family is the greater rat-shrew, or greater gymnura (Gymnura rafflesi) a creature which may be compared to a giant shrew, and whose colour is partly black and partly white, although a uniformly pale-coloured race. (G. r. alba) inhabits Borneo. In common with the next genus, it has the full series of 44 teeth; and its range extends from Tenasserim and the Malay Peninsula to Sumatra and Borneo, the island individuals being stated to be considerably larger than those from the mainland. In this species the length of the tail is about three-fourths that of the head and body; but in the lesser rat-shrew (Hylomys suillus), ranging from Burma and the Malay Peninsula to Java and Sumatra, the former dimension is only about one-sixth of the latter. In the Philippines the group is represented by Podogymnura truei, distinguished from the other genera by the great elongation of the hind-foot, the tail being likewise long. There are only three pairs of premolars in each jaw.

Fig. 7.—Fore-part of Skulls of Common Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), A, and Gray’s Hedgehog (E. grayi), B, much enlarged.

Fig. 8.—The Insectivorous Otter (Potagmogale velox).

In the remaining families of the Insectivora the tibia and fibula may be either separated or united at the lower end; there is no descent of the testes, except in Solenodon; a short symphysis is formed by the junction of the pubic epiphyses; Insectivorous Otter. and the upper molars are generally small, and triangular, with three cusps arranged in a V. The first family, Potamogalidae, is represented by the otter-like Potamogale velox of the rivers of West Africa (fig. 8), distinguished from all other members of the order by the absence of clavicles. The tibia and fibula are united interiorly, the skull has a ring-like tympanic, no zygomatic arch, and the upper molars are of the tuberculo-sectorial type, with broader crowns than in the following families. The dental formula is i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄3, m. 3⁄3, total 40. This animal inhabits the banks of streams in west equatorial Africa, and its whole structure indicates an aquatic life. It is nearly 2 ft. in length, the tail measuring about half. The long cylindrical body is continued uninterruptedly into the thick laterally compressed tail, the legs are very short, and the toes are not webbed, progression through the water depending wholly on the action of the powerful tail, while the limbs are folded inwards and backwards. The muzzle is broad and flat, and the nostrils are protected by valves. The fur is dark brown 643 above, the extremities of the hairs on the back being of a metallic violet hue by reflected light, beneath whitish.

Fig. 9.—Skull of the Tenrec (Centeles ecaudatus), somewhat reduced.

In the remaining groups the upper molars form narrow V’s of the true tritubercular type. The family, Centetidae, represented by the tenrec and a number of allied animals from Madagascar, is specially characterized by the ring-like tympanic, and Tenrec. the absence of a zygomatic arch and of any constriction of the skull behind the orbits, and the presence of teats on the breast as well as the abdomen. In the more typical members of the family the tibia and fibula are separate, and, as in hedgehogs, spines are mingled with the fur. The true or great tenrec (Centetes ecaudatus), alone representing the typical genus, has the dental formula i. (3 or 2)/3, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄3, m. (3 or 4)/(3 or 4), total 38, 40, 42 or 44. The fourth lower molar, when developed, does not appear till late in life. Of the long and sharp canines, the tips of the lower pair are received into pits in the upper jaw (fig. 9). The creature grows to a length of aoout a foot. The young have strong white spines arranged in longitudinal lines along the back, but these are lost in the adult which has only a crest of long rigid hairs on the nape of the neck. The lesser tenrecs, Hemicentetes semispinosus and H. nigriceps, are distinguished by the persistence of the third upper incisor and the form of the skull. The two species are much smaller than the great tenrec, and spines are retained in the adult on the body. The hedgehog-tenrec, Ericulus setosus, has the whole upper surface, and even the short tail, densely covered with close-set spines. The facial bones are much shorter than in the preceding genera, and the first upper incisors are elongated; while there are only two pairs of incisors in each jaw. Judging from the slight development of the cutaneous muscles compared with those of the hedgehog, it would seem that these creatures cannot roll themselves completely into balls in hedgehog-fashion. A second species of this genus, Ericulus (Echinops) telfairi, has two, in place of three, pairs of molars, thus reducing the total number of teeth to 32. Moreover, the zygomatic arches of the skull are reduced to mere threads. Here should perhaps be placed Geogale aurita, a small long-tailed Malagasy insectivore, with 34 teeth, and no spines; the tibia and fibula being separate. It has been classed in the Potamogalidae, but from its habitat such a reference is improbable. The absence of spines may entitle it to separation from the Centetinae, so that it should perhaps be regarded as representing a subfamily, Geogalinae, by itself.

Fig. 10.—Skull of the Lesser Tenrec (Hemicentetes spinosus).

The absence of spines coupled with the union of the tibia and fibula form the leading characteristics of the subfamily Oryzorictinae, typified by the rice-tenrecs Oryzorictes, of which there are several species. These creatures, which excavate burrows in the rice-fields of Madagascar, are somewhat mole-like in appearance, but have tails of considerable length. In the typical O. hova the fore-feet are five-toed, but in O. tetradactylus the number of front digits is reduced to four. The long-tailed tenrecs (Microgale) are represented by fully half-a-dozen species with tails of great length; that appendage in the typical M. longicaudata being more than double the length of the head and body, and containing no fewer than forty-seven vertebrae. The teeth are generally similar to those of Centetes, but are not spaced in front; their number being i. 3⁄3, c. 1⁄1, p. 3⁄3, m., 3⁄3, total 40, or the same as in Oryzorictes. Finally, Limnogale mergulus, a creature about the size of a black rat, has webbed toes and a laterally compressed tail, evidently adapted for swimming. See Tenrec.

Fig. 11.—Solenodon cubanus.

All the foregoing are natives of Madagascar. It has been suggested however, that two remarkable West Indian insectivores, namely Solendon cubanus of Cuba (fig. 11) and S. paradoxus of Hayti, should be regarded as representing merely a subfamily Solenodon. of Centetidae. It is true that the main features distinguishing these strange creatures from the Malagasy representatives of that family are the constriction of the skull behind the orbits, the descent of the testes into the perineum, and the post-inguinal position of the teats, and that none of these are of very great importance. But the geographical positions of the two groups are so widely sundered that it seems preferable to await further evidence before definitely assigning the two to a single family; and the family Solenodontidae may accordingly be retained for the West Indian animals. Solenodons, which look like huge long-nosed, parti-coloured rats, have the tibia and fibula separate, and the same dental formula as Microgale. Each of the two species (which differ in colour and the quality of the fur) has a long cylindrical snout, an elongated naked tall, feet formed for running, and the body clothed with long, coarse fur. The position of the teats on the buttocks is unique among Insectivora. The first upper incisors are much enlarged, and like the other incisors, canines and premolars, closely resemble the corresponding teeth of Myogale; the second lower incisors are much larger than the upper ones, and hollowed out on the inner side.

Fig. 12.—A Golden Mole (Chrysochloris obtusirostris) reduced.

The last family, Chrysochloridae, is represented by the golden moles of South and East Africa, which differ from the Centetidae and Solenodontidae by the development of a bulla to the tympanic, and the presence of a zygomatic arch to the Golden Mole. skull; the tibia and fibula being separate, and the symphysis of the pelvis formed merely by ligament. The skull is not constricted across the orbits. The teats, which are placed both on the breast and in the groin, are situated in shallow depressions. The ears are buried in the fur, and the eyes concealed beneath the skin; the feet are four-toed and provided with powerful claws for burrowing 644 in the fashion of the mole, but it is interesting to note that the skeleton is modified for the same purpose in a manner quite different from that obtaining in the latter animal. These animals derive their name from the metallic iridescence of the fur of most of the species. In the more typical species the dental formula is the same as in Microgale, that is to say, there are 40 teeth. In other species, which it has been proposed to separate as Amblysomus, there are, however, only 36 teeth, owing to the absence of the last pair of molars. The group is evidently nearly related to the Centetidae—most nearly perhaps to the Oryzorictinae.

Fossil Insectivora.

Some years ago Dr F. Ameghino, of Buenos Aires, described from the Tertiary formation of Santa Cruz, in Patagonia, the remains of an insectivore under the name of Necrolestes. The occurrence of a member of the Insectivora in these beds is remarkable, since this group is represented at the present day in South America only by a shrew or two which have wandered from the north. Dr Ameghino expressed his belief that the extinct Patagonian insectivore was nearly related to the golden moles, and although this opinion appears to have been withdrawn, Professor W. B. Scott states that he is convinced of the close affinity existing between Necrolestes and Chrysochloris. Although this view may not be accepted, it must be remembered that it represents the opinion of a palaeontologist who has had better opportunities than most of his fellow-workers of forming a trustworthy judgment. So convinced is Dr Scott of the closeness of the relationship between Necrolestes and the golden moles that he regards it as rendering probable the former existence of a direct land-connexion between Africa and South America. There is no reason, he says, to suppose that the track of migration could have been by way of Europe and North America, for no trace of the group has been found anywhere north of the equator. This supposed connexion between Africa and South America in Tertiary times has often been suggested, and is supported by many independent lines of evidence; and the presumed affinity between the two mammals here referred to adds to the weight of such evidence.

The discovery in the Oligocene Tertiary deposits of Dakota of the remains of a species of hedgehog is a fact of great interest, for the hedgehog-tribe (Erinaceidae) is at the present day an exclusively Old World group. The discovery of the fossil American species, which has been made the type of a new genus under the name of Protherix, serves to strengthen the view that the northern countries of the Western and Eastern hemispheres form a single zoological region; and that formerly there was comparatively free communication between them in the neighbourhood of Bering Sea, under climatic conditions which permitted of temperate forms passing from one continent to the other. As might have been expected, remains of hedgehog-like mammals have been obtained in the Tertiary deposits of Europe. Among these, Palaeoerinaceus, from the Upper Oligocene of France, seems scarcely separable from the existing genus. Necrogymnurus (Neurogymnurus) from the Lower Oligocene, of the same country, appears to be allied to Hylomys, which is itself the most generalised of the family, so that the extinct genus, of which Caluxotherium is a synonym, may represent the ancestral type of the Erinaceidae. The genus Galerix, or Lanthanotherium, of the Oligocene, which has the typical series of 44 teeth, a bony ring round the orbit, and conjoint tibia and fibula, has been regarded as representing the Tupaiidae and Macroscelididae, but is more probably referable to the Erinaceidae, being apparently akin to Gymnura. The moles are represented in the French Oligocene by Amphidozotherium and in the Miocene by Talpa, while in the North American early Tertiary we have the primitive Talpavus. Shrews are also known from the Lower Oligocene upwards both in the eastern and western hemispheres. Of the Lower Eocene Adapisorex, with the typical 22 lower teeth, Adapisoriculus and Orthaspidotherium, all from France, the affinities are quite uncertain. The American Oligocene Leptictis, with i. 2, c. 1, p. 4, m. 3 in the upper jaw, and Ictops, with i. 3⁄2, c. 1⁄1, p. 4⁄4, m. 3⁄3, may be insectivorous mammals, with affinities to the creodont Carnivora. It is, indeed, probable that not only is there a relationship between the Creodonta and the Insectivora, but also one between the latter and the Marsupialia, so that the marked similarity between the cheek-teeth of the insectivorous Chrysochloris and the Marsupial Notoryctes may be due to genetic relationship. That the bats and the flying-lemur are descendants of the Insectivora cannot be doubted.

Bibliography.—G. E. Dobson, “Monograph of the Insectivora” (London, 1883-1890); W. Leche, “Zur Morphologie des Zahnsystems der Insectivoren,” Anatom. Anzeiger (xiii. 1 and 514, 1897); C. J. Forsyth-Major, “Diagnoses of New Mammals from Madagascar.” Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 6. vol. xviii. pp. 318 and 461 (1896): A. A. Mearns, “Descriptions of New Mammals from the Philippine Islands,” Proc. U.S. Museum (xxviii. 425, 1905).

INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS. Insectivorous or, as they are sometimes more correctly termed, carnivorous plants are, like the parasites, the climbers, or the succulents, a physiological assemblage belonging to a number of distinct natural orders. They agree in the extraordinary habit of adding to the supplies of nitrogenous material afforded them in common with other plants by the soil and atmosphere, by the capture and consumption of insects and other small animals. The curious and varied mechanical arrangements by which these supplies of animal food are obtained and utilized are described under the headings of the more important plants.

The best known and most important order of insectivorous plants—Droseraceae—includes six genera: Byblis, Roridula, Drosera, Drosophyllum, Aldrovanda and Dionaea, of which the last three are monotypic, i.e. include only one species. The Sarraceniaceae contain the genera Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, Heliamphora, while the true pitcher plants or Nepenthaceae consist of the single large genus Nepenthes. These three orders are closely allied and form the series Sarraceniales of the free-petalled section (Choripetalae) of Dicotyledons. The curious pitcher-plant, Cephalotus follicularis, comprises a separate natural order Cephalotaceae, closely allied to the Saxifragaceae. Finally the genera Pinguicula, Utricularia, Genlisea and Polypompholix belong to the gamopetalous order Lentibulariaceae.

INSEIN, a town of British India, in the Hanthawaddy district of Burma, 10 m. N.W. of Rangoon; pop. (1901) 5350. It is an important railway centre, containing the principal workshops of the Burma railway company, also a government engineering school, a reformatory school and the largest gaol in the province.

INSOMNIA, or deprivation of sleep (Lat. somnus), a common and troublesome feature of most illnesses, both acute and chronic. It may be due to pain, fever or cerebral excitement, as in delirium tremens, or to organic changes in the brain. The treatment, when failure to sleep occurs in connexion with a definite illness, is part of the treatment of that illness. But there is a form of sleeplessness not occurring during illness to which the term “insomnia” is commonly and conveniently applied. It must not be confounded with occasional wakefulness caused by some minor discomfort, such as indigestion, nor with the “bad nights” of the valetudinarian. Real insomnia consists in the prolonged inability to obtain sleep sufficient in quantity and quality for the maintenance of health. It is a condition of modern urban life, and may be regarded as a malady in itself. It is a potent factor in causing those nervous breakdowns ascribed to “overwork.” It may occur as a sequel to some exhausting illness, notably influenza, which affects the nervous system long after convalescence. But it very often occurs without any such cause. Professional and business men are the most frequent sufferers. Insomnia is comparatively rare among the poor, who do little or no brain work. It may be brought on by some exceptional strain, by long-continued worry, or by sheer overwork. The broad pathology is simple enough. It has been demonstrated by exact observations that in sleep the blood leaves the brain automatically. The function is rhythmical, like all the vital functions, and the mechanism by which it is carried out is no doubt the vaso-motor system, which controls 645 the contraction and dilation of the blood-vessels. In sleep the vessels in the brain automatically contract, but when the brain is working actively a plentiful supply of blood is required, and the vessels are dilated. If the activity is carried to great excess the vessels become engorged, the mechanism does not act and sleep is banished. In insomnia this condition has become fixed.

When a breakdown has happened or is pending the only treatment is complete rest, combined, if possible, with change of air and scene; but if the mischief has gone far it will take very long to repair, and may never be repaired at all. In no matter of health is the importance of “taking it early” more pronounced. Delay is the worst economy. A few days’ holiday at the commencement of trouble may save months or years of enforced idleness. Sea-air sometimes acts like a charm. But if it is impossible to give up work and leave worry behind, even for a short time, sleep should be carefully wooed by every possible means. In the first place, plenty of time should be devoted to it, and no chance should be missed. That is to say, the night should not be curtailed at either end, and if sleepiness approaches in the daytime, as it often does, it should be encouraged. It is better to lie still at night and try to sleep than to give way to restlessness, and a few minutes snatched in the daytime, when somnolence offers the opportunity, has a restorative effect out of all proportion to the time occupied. Then all accidental causes of disturbance should be avoided. Lights and sounds should be excluded, comfort studied and digestion attended to. Fresh air is a great help. As much time should be spent out of doors as possible, and exercise, even to the point of fatigue, may be found helpful. But this requires watching: in some cases bodily exhaustion aggravates the malady. A little food (e.g. a glass of hot milk) immediately before going to bed is useful in inducing sleep, and persons who are apt to wake in the night and lie awake for hours may obtain relief by the same means. Hypnotic drugs, which have greatly multiplied of late years, should only be taken under medical advice. The real end to aim at is the restoration of the natural function, and the substitution of artificial sleep, which differs in character and effect; tends rather to prevent than to promote that end. It is often possible to induce sleep by rhythmic breathing.

INSPIRATION (Lat. inspirare, breathe upon or into), strictly the act of drawing physical breath into the lungs as opposed to “expiration.” Metaphorically the term is used generally of analogous mental phenomena; thus we speak of a sudden spontaneous idea as an “inspiration.” The term is specially used in theology for the condition of being directly under divine influence, as the equivalent of the Greek θεοπνευστία (the adjective θεόπνευστος is used of the Holy Scriptures in 2 Timothy iii. 16). Similar in meaning is ἐνθουσιασμός, enthusiasm (from ἐνθουσιάζω from ἔνθεος). Possession by the divine spirit (πνεῦμα) was regarded as necessarily accompanied by intense stimulation of the emotions. The possibility of a human being becoming the habitation and organ of a divinity is generally assumed in the lower religions. In the popular religion of China some of the priests, the Wu, claim to be able to take up into their body a god or a spirit, and thereby to give oracles. In wild frenzy they rush about half naked with hair hanging loose, wounding themselves with swords, knives, daggers, and uttering all kinds of sounds, which are then interpreted by people who claim to be able to understand such divine speech. The Maoris at the initiation of the young men into the tribal mysteries sing a song, called “breath,” to the mystic wind by which they believe their god makes his presence known. An Australian woman claimed to have heard the descent of the god as a rushing wind. In some savage tribes blood is drunk to induce the frenzy of inspiration; music and dancing are widely employed for the same purpose. Dionysus, the god of wine in Greece, was also the god of inspiration; and in their orgies the worshippers believed themselves to enter into real union with the deity. In Delphi the Pythia, the priestess who delivered the oracles, was intoxicated by the vapour which rose from a well, through a small hole in the ground. As the oracles were often enigmatic, they were interpreted by a prophet. In Rome the inspiration of Numa was derived from the nymph Egeria; and great value was attached to the books of the Cumaean Sibyl. In Arabia the kahin (priest) was recognized as the channel of divine communication. Inspiration may mean only possession by the deity, or it may mean further that the person so possessed becomes the channel through which the deity reveals his word and will. (See J. A. Macculloch’s Comparative Theology, chap. xv., 1902).

Prophecy in the Old Testament in its beginnings is similar to the phenomenon in other religions. Saul and his servant came to Samuel, the man of God, the seer, with a gift in their hands to inquire their way (1 Sam. ix. 8). The companies of prophets who went about the country in Samuel’s time were enthusiasts for Yahweh and for Israel. When Saul found himself among them he was possessed by the same spirit (1 Sam. x. 10, 11.). The prophesying in which he took part probably included violent movements of the body, inarticulate cries, a state of ecstasy or even frenzy. The phrase “holy spirit” in Acts, as applied to the Apostolic Church, probably indicates a similar state of religious exaltation; it was accompanied by speaking with tongues, inarticulate utterances, which needed interpretation (1 Corinthians xiv. 27). In every religious revival, when the emotions are deeply stirred, similar phenomena are met with. Such a movement was Montanism in the 3rd century. At the Reformation, while Luther was at the Wartburg, fanaticism broke out, and spread from Wittenberg; prophets went about declaring the revelations which they had received. The Evangelical Revival in the 18th century also had its abnormal religious features. The Revival in Scotland in 1860 was marked by one curious feature—the Gospel dance—when in their excitement men and women got up and spun round and round till they were exhausted. Spontaneous praise and prayer marked the revival in Wales in 1905-1906.

Prophecy, as represented by the writings of the prophets, arose out of this state of religious exaltation, but left behind many of its features. Yahweh was believed to guide and guard the history of His chosen people Israel; He controlled the action of the nations that came in contact with His people, so that, using them as His instruments, He might accomplish His purpose. The function of the prophets was to interpret the course of history so as to communicate God’s Word and will in judgment or in mercy. They were divinely endowed for this function by their inspiration. While these prophets seem to have continued in the exercise of all their normal faculties, which were stimulated and not suppressed, yet they do claim a distinctive divine activity in their consciousness, and distinguish with confidence their own thoughts from the revealed word. That abnormal psychic states, such as visions and voices, were sometimes experienced is not improbable; but the usual prophetic state seems to have been one of withdrawal of attention from the outer world, absorption of interest in the inner life, devout communion and intercession with God, and the divine response in a moral or a spiritual intuition rather than an intellectual ratiocination. Possession by the Spirit in its external manifestations is ascribed to Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Saul, Elijah; but even when the same language is used of the later prophets, it is probably such an inward state as has just been described which is to be assumed. A feature inseparable from this later phase of prophecy is prediction. For the warning or the encouragement of the people the prophet as Jehovah’s messenger declares what He is about to do. Thus the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C., the deliverance of Jerusalem in 701, the overthrow of the kingdom of Judah in 586, the return from exile in 537 were all heralded by prophecy. This prediction was no shrewd political conjecture, but an application to existing conditions of the permanent laws of God’s government. The abnormal phenomena of inspiration, the presence and operation of the Holy Spirit, in the Apostolic Church, have already been noticed. While Paul does not deny nor depreciate these charisms, as tongues, miracles, &c., he represents as the more excellent way the Christian life in faith, hope and love (1 Cor. xii. 31). The New Testament represents the Christian life as an inspired life. It is living communion with Christ, and therefore constant possession of the Holy Spirit. 646 Every Christian in the measure in which he has become a new creature in Christ is a prophet, because he knows by the enlightening of God’s Spirit “what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans xii. 2). An occasional state of divine possession in the other religions becomes in the prophets of Israel a permanent endowment for a few select agents of God’s revelation; but when that revelation is consummated in Christ, inspiration becomes the universal privilege of all believers.

While there is much superstition in the view of inspiration found in many religions, and much imposture in the claims to the possession of it, yet it would be illogical to conclude that this feature of religion is altogether human error and not at all divine truth. Man’s knowledge of God is conditional, and therefore limited by his knowledge of the world and himself, and has accordingly the same imperfection. The reality of a divine communion and communication with man is not to be denied because its nature has been imperfectly apprehended. We must estimate the worth of inspiration by the higher and not the lower stages, by the vision of an Isaiah or the consecration of a Paul; but at the same time we must be prepared to recognize its lowly beginnings.

In dealing with the inspiration of the Bible, to which the use of the term has in the Christian Church been largely restricted, it is important to remember that inspiration is primarily personal; and that it assumes varied forms and allows varying degrees.

Other religions besides Christianity possess their sacred scriptures. The value attached to the Sibylline writings in Rome has already been mentioned. In Greece, Homer and Hesiod were esteemed as authoritative exponents of the mythology; a distinction was made between the poet’s own words and the divine element, and what was offensive to reason, conscience or taste was explained allegorically. Hinduism distinguishes two classes of sacred writings, the S’ruti (hearing), which were believed to have been heard by inspired men from a divine source, and were endowed with supernatural powers, and the Smriti (recollection) derived from tradition. While the poets of the Rig-Veda, the oldest of the holy writings, do not claim inspiration, it is ascribed to them in the highest degree. Some of the Hindu sects—Vaishnavist and Saivist—regard some of the later writings, as also divine revelation. In Zoroastrianism, the books of the Zend-Avesta were conceived by later generations at least as having been eternally formed by Ormuzd, and revealed at the creation to his prophet Zoroaster, who, however, guarded the communication carefully in his mind until a very much later date in the world’s history. Ormuzd drove Ahriman back to hell by reciting one of the holy hymns. Buddhism has its Tripitaka (three baskets), and the reading, reciting and copying of the sacred scriptures is one of the surest means of acquiring merit. But as it ignores the gods, and places Buddha far above them, it does not claim divine inspiration for its writings. Buddha himself enlightens, but every man must save himself by walking in the true way which has been shown to him. Confucianism has its literature of absolute authority on manners, morals, rites and politics, but its claim does not rest on inspiration. These writings are revered as preserving the beliefs and customs of former ages, which are believed to have been more familiar than the present with the Way of Heaven. For the Koran very extravagant claims are made by orthodox Islam. Although Mahomet at first feared that his call to be a prophet was a deception of evil spirits, and wished to take his own life, yet afterwards he uttered his decisions on most trivial matters as divine oracles. God preserves the original text of the Koran in Heaven, and blots out what He wills and leaves what He wills. By the angel Gabriel God communicated this book word for word to the prophet, so that the Koran is a faithful copy of the heavenly book. The angels in heaven read the Koran. While the orthodox theology asserted the eternity of the Koran, the Mo’tazilite school denied this for the reason that the spoken sounds and the written signs in which alone a revelation could be given must have come to be in time. As Islam was not altogether independent of Christianity and Judaism, this doctrine of the Koran was probably intended as a reply to the claims of Jews and Christians for their holy writings.

The Pentateuch was accepted as authoritative law by the Jewish Church in 444 B.C. About two centuries later the Prophets (including the histories as well as the prophetic writings proper) were also acknowledged as sacred scriptures, although of inferior authority to the Law. In the century before the Christian era the Writings, including Psalms and Proverbs, were included in the Canon. Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism disagreed about the recognition of the books now known as the Apocrypha. The writers of the New Testament use the Old Testament as holy scriptures, as an authoritative declaration of the mind and will of God; but the inaccuracy of many of the quotations, together with the use of the Greek translation as well as the original Hebrew, forbid our ascribing to them any theory of verbal inspiration. By the middle of the 2nd century the four Gospels were probably accepted as trustworthy records of the life of Jesus. The Epistles were accepted as authoritative in virtue of apostolic authorship. By the end of the 3rd century the use and approval of the churches had established the present canon.

The doctrine of the inspiration of these writings in the Jewish and Christian Church now claims attention. Inspiration is first of all ascribed to persons to account for abnormal states, or exceptional powers and gifts; in this doctrine it is transferred to writings, and its effects in securing for these inerrancy, authority, &c., are discussed with little regard for the psychic state of the writers.

The New Testament affirms the inspiration of the Old Testament. Jesus introduced a quotation from the 110th Psalm with the words “David himself by the Holy Spirit said” (Mark xii. 36), and in appealing to the law against tradition He used the phrase “God said” (Matt. xv. 4). The author of the first Gospel describes a prediction as that “which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (Matt. i. 22), and so Peter refers to “the scripture which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David” (Acts i. 16). For Paul as for Peter the utterances of the Old Testament are “the oracles of God” (Romans iii. 2; 1 Peter iv. 11). The final appeal is to what is written. God spoke in the prophets (Romans ix. 25; Hebrews i. 1). The use of θεόπνευστος in regard to the Scriptures in 2 Timothy iii. 16 has already been noted. The Spirit of Christ is said to have been in the prophets (1 Peter i. 11); and it is affirmed that “no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter i. 21). The constant use of the Old Testament in the New confirms this doctrine of inspiration. Contemporary Jewish thought was in agreement with this view of the Old Testament. Philo describes Moses as “that purest mind which received at once the gift of legislation and of prophecy with divinely inspired wisdom” (De congr. erud. c. 24). Josephus again and again expresses his deep reverence for the holy Scriptures, and his belief that the authors wrote under the influence of the Spirit of God. According to Weber the doctrine of the Talmud is that “the holy scripture came to be through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and has its origin in God Himself, who speaks in it.” But the nature of this inspiration must be more closely defined, and hence have arisen a number of theories of inspiration.

The first theory is that of mechanical dictation, or verbal inspiration. The writers of the books of the Bible were God’s pens rather than His penmen; every word was given them by God. Their faculties were suppressed that God alone might be active in them. This conception is found in Plato, “God has given the art of divination, not to the wisdom, but to the foolishness of man. No man, when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession” (Timaeus, 71). Philo declares that “the understanding that dwells in us is ousted on the arrival of the Divine Spirit, but is restored to its own dwelling when that Spirit departs, for it is unlawful that mortal dwell with immortal” (Quis rer. div. haeres, c. 53). Athenagoras adopted this view 647 in regard to the prophets. “While entranced and deprived of their natural powers of reason by the influence of the Divine Spirit, they uttered that which was wrought in them, the spirit using them as its instrument, as a flute player might blow a flute.” Other figures used are these; the inspired writer was the lyre, and the Holy Spirit the plectrum, or the writer was the vase, and the Holy Spirit filled it. The extravagances of Montanism threw some discredit on this conception, and we find Miltiades writing a treatise with the title That the Prophet ought not to speak in Ecstasy. But Gregory the Great called the writers of Scripture the calami of the Holy Spirit. After the Reformation the Protestant Scholastics revived this view. Gerhard, Calovius and Quenstedt agree in ascribing to the Scriptures absolute infallibility in all matters, and describe the writers as “amanuenses of God, or Christ,” “hands of the Spirit,” “clerks,” “secretaries,” “manus et Spiritus sive.” The Formula consensus Helvetica probably reaches the extreme statement, when it declares that the Old Testament was “tum quoad consonas, tum quoad vocalia, sive puncta ipsa, sive punctorum saltem potestatem, et tum quoad res, tum quoad verba θεόπνευστος.” Seeing that the vowel-point system was introduced by Jewish scribes centuries after the books were written, this statement shows how recklessly theory may override fact. Of this theory, which has now few advocates, it is sufficient to say that it ignores all the data the Bible itself offers. On the one hand it is impossible to maintain the inerrancy of the Bible in matters of science, philosophy, history, and even in doctrine and morals there is progress; on the other hand the personal characteristics, the historical circumstances, the individual differences of the writers are so reproduced in the writings that the action of the human factor must be frankly and fully recognized as well as the divine activity.

The second theory is that of dynamic influence or degrees of inspiration. While the Spirit controls and directs, the human personality is not entirely suppressed. Even Philo recognized that all portions of Scripture were not equally inspired, and assigned to Moses the highest degree of inspiration. The Jewish rabbis placed the Law, the Prophets and the Writings on a descending scale of inspiration. “The schoolmen followed them, and some distinguished four degrees of influence: superintendence, which saved from positive error; elevation, which imparted loftiness to the thought; direction, which prompted the writer what to insert and what to omit; and suggestion, which inspired both thoughts and words” (M. Dods, The Bible, its Origin and Nature, p. 118, 1905). The co-operation of the divine and the human factors is recognized in Augustine’s saying about the authors: “Inspiratus a Deo, sed tamen homo.” It is interesting to note that Plutarch had to account for the same human peculiarities and imperfections in the Pythian responses as the Christian apologist in the Bible, and he offers a similar explanation. “If she were obliged to write down, and not to utter the responses, we should not, I suppose, believe the handwriting to be the god’s, and find fault with it, because it is inferior in point of calligraphy to the imperial rescripts; for neither is the old woman’s voice, nor her diction, nor her metre the god’s; but it is the god alone who presents the visions to this woman, and kindles light in her soul regarding the future; for this is the inspiration” (op. cit. p. 119). While degrees of inspiration must be recognized, the distinction must be made objectively, and not subjectively. We may say that where the revelation is the clearest, there inspiration is the fullest, that nearness to the perfect fulfilment in Christ of God’s progressive purpose determines the degree of inspiration; but we cannot formulate any elaborate theory of the operation of the Spirit from the standpoint of the psychic states of the writers. While subjectively we cannot separate the divine and the human spirit in the process, so objectively we cannot distinguish the divine substance and the human form in the product of inspiration. This theory neither helps us to explain the origin of the writings nor guides us in estimating the contents.

The third theory, which is a modification of the second, is that of essential inspiration, which distinguishes matters of doctrine and conduct as closely related to God’s purpose in the Scriptures from the remaining contents of the Scripture, and claims for the Bible only such inspiration as was necessary to secure accuracy in regard to these. The theology and the morality of the Bible are inspired, but not its history, science, philosophy. This distinction is already anticipated in Thomas Aquinas’ theory of two kinds of inspiration, “the direct, which is to be found where doctrinal and moral truths are directly taught, and the indirect, which appears in historical passages, whence the doctrinal and moral can only be indirectly evolved by the use of allegorical interpretation.” This view has the support of such names as Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Richard Baxter, W. Paley and J. J. I. von Döllinger. It is to be observed that it lays emphasis on the necessity of correct views about doctrine and conduct; and this is an intellectualist standpoint which is not in accord either with the character or the influence of the Bible. Further, it does not explain how the same human mind can by divine inspiration obtain infallible knowledge in some matters, and yet be left prone to err in others. Again it does not take account of the fact that the teaching of the Old Testament as regards belief and morals is progressive; and that the imperfections of the earlier stages of the development are corrected in the later. That it is an advance on the other theories must be acknowledged, as from this standpoint errors in history or science are no difficulties to the believer in the Bible as so inspired. It is necessary here to add that this emphasis on the infallibility of the knowledge of doctrine and morals communicated by the Scriptures had as its legitimate inference in the patristic and medieval period the claim that the Church alone was the infallible interpreter of the Scriptures.

The fourth theory—that of the Reformers (though not of their successors, the Protestant scholastics)—might be called that of vital inspiration, as its emphasis is on religious and moral life rather than on knowledge. While giving to the Scriptures supreme authority in all matters of faith and doctrine, the Reformers laid stress on the use of the Bible for edification; it was for them primarily a means of grace for awakening and nourishing the new life in the hearts of God’s people. By the enlightening work of the Spirit of God the World of God is discovered in the Scriptures: it is the testimonium Spiritus Sancti in the soul of the Christian that makes the Bible the power and wisdom of God unto salvation. By thus laying stress on this redemptive purpose of the divine revelation, the Reformers were delivered from the bondage of the letter of Scripture, and could face questions of date and authorship of the writings frankly and boldly. Hence a pioneer of the higher criticism in Great Britain, W. Robertson Smith, was able to appeal to this Reformation doctrine. “If I am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word of God, and as the only perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the fathers of the Protestant Church, ‘Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God, because in the Bible alone I find God drawing near to man in Christ Jesus, and declaring to us in Him His will for our salvation. And this record I know to be true by the witness of His Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none other but God Himself is able to speak such words to my soul’” (in Denney’s Studies in Theology, p. 205). The Reformers’ application of this theory to the Bible was necessarily conditioned by the knowledge of their age; but it is a theory wide enough to leave room for our growing modern knowledge of the Bible.

Briefly stated, these are the conclusions which our modern knowledge allows. (1) Inspiration, or the presence and influence of the Divine Spirit in the soul of man, cannot be limited to the writers of the Scriptures; but, comparing the Bible with the other sacred literature of the world, its religious and moral superiority cannot be denied, and we may, therefore, claim for it as a whole a fuller inspiration. (2) As different writings in the Bible have more or less important functions in the progressive divine revelation, we may distinguish degrees of inspiration. (3) This inspiration is primarily personal, an inward enlightening and quickening, both religious and moral, of the writer, finding an expression conditioned by his individual characteristics in 648 his writing. (4) The purpose of inspiration is practical; the inspired men are used of God to give guidance in belief and duty by declaring the word and will of God as bearing on human life. (5) As revelation is progressive, inspiration does not exclude defects in doctrine and practice in the earlier stages and their correction in the later stages of development. (6) As the progressive revelation culminates in Christ, so He possesses fullest inspiration; and it varies in others according to the closeness of their contact, and intimacy of their communion with Him. (7) As the primary function of Christ is redemptive, so the inspiration of the Bible is directed to make men “wise unto salvation.” (8) It is the presence and influence in the souls of men of the same Spirit of God as inspired the Scriptures which makes the Bible effective as a means of grace; and only those who yield themselves to the Spirit of God have the witness in themselves that the Bible conveys to them the truth and the grace of God.

INSTALLATION, the action of installing or formally placing some one in occupation of an office or place. The med. Lat. installare meant literally “to place in a seat or stall” (stallum), and the word, as now, was particularly used of the ceremonial induction of an ecclesiastic, such as a canon or prebendary, to his stall in his cathedral choir. Similarly knights of an order of chivalry are ceremonially led to their stalls in the chapel of their order. The term is transferred to any formal establishment in office or position. From a French use of installer and installation, the word is frequently applied in a transferred sense to the fixing in position and making ready for use of a mechanical, particularly electrical, apparatus or plant.

INSTALMENT (for earlier stallment or estallment, from Fr. estaler, to fix, arrange; the change is probably due to the influence of the verb “install”), the payment of a sum of money at stated intervals and in fixed portions instead of in a lump sum; hence the sums of money as they fall due at the periods agreed upon. For the system of purchase by deferred payments or instalments see Hire-Purchase Agreement.

INSTERBURG, a town in the kingdom of Prussia, situated at the point where the Angerapp and Inster join to form the Pregel, 57 m. E. of Königsberg by the railway to Eydtkuhnen, and at the junction of lines to Memel and Allenstein. Pop. (1900) 27,787. It has four Evangelical churches, of which the town church is celebrated for its fine wood carvings, a Roman Catholic church, a synagogue, several schools and a park. Besides flax-spinning and iron-founding, Insterburg has manufactures of machinery, shoes, cement, leather and beer, along with a considerable trade in cereals, vegetables, flax, linseed and wood, while horse-breeding is extensively carried on in the neighbourhood. Close to the town lies the demesne of Georgenburg, with an old castle which formerly belonged to the Teutonic order. Insterburg, the “burg” on the Inster, was founded in the 14th century by the knights of the Teutonic order. Having passed to the margraves of Brandenburg, the village which had sprung up round the castle received civic privileges in 1583. During the next century it made rapid advances in prosperity, partly owing to the settlement in it of several Scottish trading families. In 1679 it was besieged by the Swedes; in 1690 it suffered severely from a fire; and in 1710-1711 from pestilence.

INSTINCT. It is in the first place desirable to distinguish between the word “instinct” (Lat. instinctus, from instinguere, to incite, impel) as employed in general literature and the term “instinct” as used in scientific discourse. The significance of the former is somewhat elastic, and is in large measure determined by the context. Thus in social relationships we speak of “instinctive” liking or distrust; we are told that the Greeks had “instinctive” appreciation of art; we hear of an instinct of reverence or “instinctive” beliefs. We understand what is meant and neither desire nor demand a strict definition. But in any scientific discussion the term instinct must be used within narrower limits, and hence it is necessary that the term should be defined. There are difficulties, however, in framing a satisfactory definition. That given by G. J. Romanes in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica runs as follows: “Instinct is a generic term comprising all those faculties of mind which lead to the conscious performance of actions that are adaptive in character but pursued without necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained.” This has been criticized both from the biological and from the psychological standpoint. From the biological point of view the reference of certain modes of behaviour, termed instinctive, to faculties of mind for which “instinct” is the generic term is scarcely satisfactory; from the psychological point of view the phrase “without necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the end attained” is ambiguous. (See Intelligence of Animals.) In recent scientific literature the term is more frequently used in its adjectival than in its substantive form; and the term “instinctive” is generally applied to certain hereditary modes of behaviour. Investigation thus becomes more objective, and this is a distinct advantage from the biological point of view. It is indeed sometimes urged that instinctive modes of behaviour should be so defined as to entirely exclude any reference to their psychological concomitants in consciousness, which are, it is said, entirely inferential. But as a matter of fact no small part of the interest and value of investigations in this field of Conscious concomitant. inquiry lies in the relationships which may thereby be established between biological and psychological interpretations. Fully realizing, therefore, the difficulty of finding and applying a criterion of the presence or absence of consciousness, it is none the less desirable, in the interests of psychology, to state that truly instinctive acts (as defined) are accompanied by consciousness. This marks them off from such reflex acts as are unconsciously performed, and from the tropisms of plants and other lowly organisms. There remains, however, the difficulty of finding any satisfactory criterion of the presence of consciousness. We seem forced to accept a practical criterion for purposes of interpretation rather than one which can be theoretically defended against all adverse criticism. We have reason to believe that some organisms profit by experience and show that they do so by the modification of their behaviour in accordance with circumstances. Such modification is said to be individually acquired. To profit by individual experience is thus the only criterion we possess of the existence of the conscious experience itself. But if hereditary behaviour is unaccompanied by consciousness, it can in no wise contribute to experience, and can afford no data by which the organism can profit. Hence, for purposes of psychological interpretation it seems necessary to assume that instinctive behaviour, including the stimulation by which it is initiated and conditioned, affords that naive awareness which forms an integral part of what may be termed the primordial tissue of experience.

We are now in a position to give an expanded definition of instinctive behaviour as comprising those complex groups of co-ordinated acts which, though they contribute to experience, are, on their first occurrence, not determined by individual experience; which are adaptive and tend to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race; which are due to the co-operation of external and internal stimuli; which are similarly performed by all members of the same more or less restricted group of animals; but which are subject to variation, and to subsequent modification under the guidance of individual experience.

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If a brief definition of instinct, from the purely biological point of view be required, that given in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology may be accepted: “An inherited reaction of the sensori-motor type, relatively complex Definitions. and markedly adaptive in character, and common to a group of individuals.” Instinctive behaviour thus depends solely on how the nervous system has been built through heredity; while intelligent behaviour depends also on those characters of the nervous system which have been acquired under the modifying influence of individual relation to the environment.

Such definitions, however, are not universally accepted. Wasmann, for example, divides instinctive actions under two groups: (1) those which immediately spring from the inherited dispositions; (2) those which indeed proceed from the same inherited dispositions but through the medium of sense experience. The first group, which he regards as instinctive in the strict acceptance of the term, seem exactly to correspond to those which fall under the definition given above. The second group, which he regards as instinctive in the wider acceptance of the term, nearly, if not quite, correspond to those above spoken of as intelligent—though he regards this term as falsely applied (see Intelligence of Animals). By using the term instinctive in both its strict and its wider significance, Wasmann includes under it the whole range of animal behaviour.

It will be seen that from the biological standpoint there fall under the stricter definition those hereditary modes of behaviour which are analogous to hereditary forms of structure; and that a sharp line of distinction is drawn between the behaviour which is thus rendered definite through heredity, and the behaviour the distinguishing characteristics of which are acquired in the course of individual life. What in popular usage are spoken of as the instincts of animals, for example, the hunting of prey by foxes and wolves, or the procedure of ants in their nests, are generally joint products of hereditary and acquired factors. Wasmann’s comprehensive definition so far accords with popular usage. But it tends to minimize the importance of the distinction of that which is prior to individual experience and that which results therefrom. It is the business of scientific interpretation to disentangle the factors which contribute to the joint-products. It is indeed by no means easy to distinguish between what is dependent on individual experience, and what is not. Only the careful observation of organisms throughout the earlier phases of their life-history can the closely related factors be distinguished with any approach to scientific accuracy. By the patient study of the behaviour of precocious young birds, such as chicks, pheasants, ducklings and moorhens, it can be Examples from bird life. readily ascertained that such modes of activity as running, swimming, diving, preening the down, scratching the ground, pecking at small objects, with the characteristic attitudes expressive of fear and anger, are so far instinctive as to be definite on their first occurrence—they do not require to be learnt. No doubt they are subsequently guided to higher excellence and effectiveness with the experience gained in their oft-repeated performance. Indeed it may be said that only on the occasion of their initial performance are they purely instinctive; all subsequent performance being in some degree modified by the experience afforded, by previous behaviour of like nature and the results it affords. It should be remembered that such comparatively simple activities, though there is little about them to arrest popular attention, are just the raw material out of which the normal active life of such organisms is elaborated, and that for scientific treatment they are therefore not less important than those more conspicuous performances which seem at first sight to call for special treatment, or even to demand a supplementary explanation. The instincts of nest-building, incubation and the rearing of young, though they occur later in life than those concerned in locomotion and the obtaining of food, are none the less founded on a hereditary basis, and in some respects are less rather than more liable to modification by the experience gained by the carrying out of hereditarily definite modes of procedure. Here the instinctive factor probably predominates over that which is experiential. But in the “homing” of pigeons there is little question that the experiential factor predominates. The habit results mainly from the modification of the higher nerve-centres through individual and intelligent use. In the migration of birds we are still uncertain as to the exact nature and proportional value of the instinctive and intelligent factors. The impulse to migrate, that is to say, the calling forth of specific activities by climatal or other presentations, appears to be instinctive; whether the direction of migration is in like manner instinctive is a matter of uncertainty; and, if it be instinctive, the nature of the stimuli and the manner in which they are hereditarily linked with responsive acts is unexplained. To say that it is due to hereditary experience is generally regarded as inadmissible. For modern interpretation hereditary modes of behaviour afford experience; in no other sense can it be said that experience is inherited.

A good example of the methods of recent investigation is to be found in Dr G. W. and Mrs Peckham’s minute observations on the habits and instincts of the solitary wasps. They enumerate the following primary types of instinctive Examples from insect life. behaviour: the manner of attacking and capturing a particular kind of prey which alone affords the requisite presentation to sense; the manner of conveying the prey to the nest; the general style and locality of the nest; the method and order of procedure in stocking the nest with food for the unseen young. It is noteworthy, however, that although the manner in which the prey is stung (for example) is on the whole similar in the case of the members of any given species—that is to say, all the wasps of the species behave in very much the same manner—yet there are minor variations in detail. This outcome of prolonged and careful observation is of importance. It affords a point of departure for the interpretation of the genesis of existing instincts. Furthermore, the observations on American wasps render it probable that the earlier accounts of the instinctive behaviour of such wasps are exaggerated. Romanes thought that the manner of stinging and paralysing their prey might be justly deemed the most remarkable instinct in the world. Spiders, caterpillars and grasshoppers are, he said, stung in their chief nerve-centres, in consequence of which the victims are not killed outright, but rendered motionless and continue to live in this paralysed condition for several weeks, being thus available as food for the larvae when these are hatched. Of course, he adds, the extraordinary fact which stands to be explained is that of the precise anatomical, not to say the physiological, knowledge which appears to be displayed by the insect in stinging only the nerve-centres of its prey. But the Peckhams’ careful observations and experiments show that, with the American wasps, the victims stored in the nests are quite as often dead as alive; that those which are only paralysed live for a varying number of days, some more, some less; that wasp larvae thrive just as well on dead victims, sometimes dried up, sometimes undergoing decomposition, as on living and paralysed prey; that the nerve-centres are not stung with the supposed uniformity; and that in some cases paralysis, in others death, follows when the victims are stung in parts far removed from any nerve-centre. It would seem then that by the stinging of insects or spiders their powers of resistance are overcome and their escape prevented; that some are killed outright and some paralysed is merely an incidental result.

Granted that instinctive modes of behaviour are hereditary and definite within the limits of congenital variation, the question of their manner of genesis is narrowed to a clear issue. Do they originate through the natural selection of Mode of origin. those variations which are the more adaptive; or do they originate through the inheritance of those acquired modifications which are impressed on the nervous system in the course of individual and intelligent use? Romanes, taking up the inquiry where Darwin left it, came to the conclusion that some instinctive modes of behaviour which he termed “primary” are due to the operation of natural selection alone; that others, which he termed “secondary,” and of which he could give few examples, were due to the inheritance of acquired modifications from which, in the phrase of G. H. Lewes, the intelligence had 650 lapsed; while others, which he termed “blended,” were partly due to natural selection and partly resulted from the inheritance of acquired habit. There has been a prolonged controversy between the school of interpretation, commonly spoken of as Lamarckian, which advocates a belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and the school, with Weismann as their leader, which questions the evidence for, or the probability of, such inheritance. The trend of modern opinion appears to be in the direction of the Weismannian interpretation. And it must be regarded as questionable, if not improbable, that instinctive modes of behaviour are in any degree directly due to the inheritance of habits intelligently acquired. That intelligent habits may secure the survival of those organisms whose germ-plasm bears the seeds of favourable congenital variations is not improbable. But in that case intelligent procedure only contributes to the survival and not to the origin of hereditary variations.

To test the hypothesis that natural selection is an essential condition to the genesis of instinctive behaviour it should be the aim of investigation to find crucial cases. This is, however, no easy task. We ought to be able to adduce Crucial observations. cases in which, where the incidence of natural selection is excluded, acquired habits do not become instinctive. But it is difficult to do so. It seems, however, that in young chicks drinking from still water is a habit acquired through imitation of the acts of the hen-mother. The presentation of such water to sight does not evoke the appropriate instinctive response, while the presentation of water taken into the bill does at once evoke a characteristic response. Now it would seem that in the former case, since the hen “teaches” all her chicks to peck at the water, she shields them from the incidence of natural selection. But though the hen can lead her young to peck at the water, she cannot “teach” them how to perform the complex movements of mouth, throat and head required for actual drinking. In this matter they are not shielded from the incidence of natural selection. Thus it would seem that, where natural selection is excluded, the habit has not become congenitally linked with a visual stimulus; but where natural selection is in operation, the response has been thus linked with the stimulus of water in the bill.

If this interpretation be correct we have here an example of the manner in which imitation plays an important part in the formation of habits which though oft-repeated are not transmitted as hereditary instincts. But the Imitation. imitative act is itself instinctive. The characteristic feature of the imitative act, at the instinctive level, is that the presentation to sight or hearing calls forth a mode of behaviour of like nature to, or producing like results to, that which affords the stimulus. The nature of instinctive imitation needs working out in further detail. But it is probable that what we speak of as the imitative tendency is, in any given species, the expression of a considerable number of particular responses each of which is congenitally linked with a particular presentation or stimulus. The group of instincts which we class as imitative (and they afford only the foundations on which intelligent imitation is based) are of biological value chiefly, if not solely, in those species which form larger or smaller communities.

The study of instinct is in the genetic treatment of evolutionary science a study in heredity. The favouring bionomic conditions are those of a relatively constant environment under which relatively stereotyped responses are advantageous. Relation to heredity If the environment be complex, there is a corresponding complexity in instinctive behaviour. But adjustment to a complex environment may be reached in two ways; by instinctive adaptation through initially stereotyped behaviour; or by plastic accommodation by acquired modifications. The tendency of the evolution of intelligence is towards the disintegration of the stereotyped modes of response and the dissolution of instinct. Natural selection which, under a uniform and constant environment, leads to the survival of relatively fixed and definite modes of response, under an environment presenting a wider range of varying possibilities leads to the survival of plastic accommodation through intelligence. This plasticity is, however, itself hereditary. All intelligent procedure implies the inherited capacity of profiting by experience. Instinctive in the popular sense, it does not fall within the narrower definition of the term; it is more conveniently described as innate. It is important to grasp clearly the distinction thus drawn. A duckling only a few hours old if placed in water swims with orderly strokes. The stimulus of water on the breast may be regarded as a sensory presentation which is followed by a definite and adaptive application of behaviour. But this specific application is dependent upon a prolonged racial preparation of the organism to respond in this particular way. Such response is instinctive. It is wholly due, as such, to racial preparation. Compare the case of a boy who learns to ride a bicycle. This is not wholly due, as such, to racial preparation, but is also partly due to individual preparation. The boy no doubt inherits a capacity for riding a bicycle, otherwise he could never do so. But he has to learn to ride none the less. Individual experience is a condition which without the innate capacity cannot take effect. Instinct involves inherited adaptation; intelligence, an inherited power, embodied in the higher nerve-centres, of accommodation to varying circumstances.

INSTITUTE (from Lat. instituere, to establish or set up), something established, an institution, particularly any society established for an artistic, educational, scientific or social purpose. The word seems to have been first applied in English to such institutions for the advancement of science or art as were modelled on the great French society, the Institut National (see Academies). It is thus the name of such societies as the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Imperial Institute and the like. It is extended to similar organizations, particularly to educational, on a smaller or local scale, such as Mechanics’ or Workmen’s Institutes, and is sometimes applied to charitable foundations. In the United States the word is, in a particular sense, applied to periodic classes giving instruction in the principles of education to the teachers of elementary and district schools. The term “institute” is often used to translate the Lat. institutio, in the sense of a treatise on the elements of any subject, and particularly of law or jurisprudence; thus the compilation of the principles of Roman law, made by order of the emperor Justinian, is known as Justinian’s Institutes, and hence Coke’s treatise on English law, of which the first part is better known as Coke upon Littleton, is called The Institute. The same title is borne by Calvin’s work on the elements of the Christian doctrine. In Scots law “institute” is the person named, in a settlement or testament to whom an estate is first limited; those who follow, failing him, are termed “substitutes.”

INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH, the name generally applied both in the British Isles and in America to a type of church which supplements its ordinary work by identifying itself in various ways with the secular interests of those whom it seeks to influence. The idea of such extension of function grew out of the recognition of the fact that the normal activities of church work entirely failed to retain the interest of a large class of the population to whom the ritual formality of ordinary services was unacceptable. Various attempts were made to overcome this deficiency, e.g. by modifying the form of service or of some services, by the addition to the ordinary services of more or less informal meetings (e.g. the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon services), by specially excusing persons from wearing the normal church-going attire in holiday resorts, and by holding services out of doors. The principle underlying all these changes is systematized in the Institutional Church which, in addition to its main building for 651 specifically religious services, provides other rooms or buildings which during the week are open for the use of members and friends. Lectures, concerts, debates and social gatherings are organized; there are reading rooms, gymnasiums and other recreations rooms; various clubs (cycling, cricket, football) are formed. The organization of the whole is subdivided into special departments managed by committees. By these various means many persons are attracted into the atmosphere of the church’s work who could not be induced to attend the formal services.

This expansion of normal church work may be traced back in England to at least as early as 1840, but the full development of the Institutional Church belongs only to the latter years of the 19th century. The chief example in England is Whitefield’s Central Mission in Tottenham Court Road, London, a church which, in addition to an elaborate organization on the lines above described, has an official journal. In the United States the movement may be said to date from about 1880. The name “Institutional” was first applied to Berkeley Temple, Boston, by Dr William Jewett Tucker, then president of Dartmouth College. The obvious criticism that this epithet emphasizes the administrative and secular side to the exclusion of the spiritual led to the tentative adoption of other titles, e.g. the “Open Church,” the “Free Church,” the former of which is the more commonly used. In 1894 was formed the “Open and Institutional Church League” at New York, which held a number of conventions and served as a headquarters for the numerous separate churches. In connexion with this league was formed the “National Federation of Churches and Christian Workers,” which held a convention in 1905.

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from instruere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare), that which can be used as a means to an end, hence a mechanical contrivance, implement or tool; the word is more particularly applied to the implements of applied science, in mathematics, surgery, surveying, &c., while those of the handicrafts are generally known as “tools.” A specific use of the term is for the various contrivances used to produce musical sounds, “musical instruments.”

In law an “instrument” is any formal or written document by which expression is given to a legal act or agreement. This is a classical use of the Lat. instrumentum, a document, record. The term may be used in a wide sense, as a mere writing, meant only to form a record, or in a particular sense with reference to certain statutes. For example, the Stamp Act 1891 defines an instrument as an expression including every written document; for the purposes of the Forgery Act 1861 a post-office telegram accepting a wager has been defined as an instrument. In expressions such as “deed, will, or other written instrument” the word means any written document under which a right or liability, legal or equitable, exists.

INSTRUMENTATION. “Instrumentation” is the best term that can be found for that aspect of musical art which is concerned with timbre. The narrower term “orchestration” is applied to the instrumentation of orchestral music. Since the most obvious differences of timbre are in those of various instruments, the art which blends and contrasts timbre is most easily discussed as the treatment of instruments; but we must use this term with philosophic breadth and allow it to include voices. Instrumentation is in all standard text-books treated as a technical subject, from the point of view of practical students desirous of writing for the modern orchestra. And as there is no branch of art in which mechanical improvements, and the consequent change in the nature of technical difficulties, bear so directly upon the possibilities and methods of external effect, it follows that an exclusive preponderance of this view is not without serious disadvantage from the standpoint of general musical culture. There is probably no other branch of art in which orthodox tradition is so entirely divorced from the historical sense, and the history, when studied at all, so little illuminated by the permanent artistic significance of its subjects. When improvements in the structure of an instrument remove from the modern composer’s memory an entire category of limitations which in classical music determined the very character of the instrument, the temptation is easy to regard the improvement as a kind of access of wisdom, in comparison with which not only the older form of the instrument, but the part that it plays in classical music, is crude and archaic. But we should do better justice to improvements in an instrument if we really understood how far they give it, not merely new resources, but a new nature. And, moreover, those composers who have done most to realize this new nature (as Wagner has done for the brass instruments) have also retained, to an extent unsuspected by their imitators, the definite character which the instrument had in its earlier form.

As it is with mechanical improvements, so is it to a still greater degree with changes in the function of timbre in art. Throughout the 19th century so fatal was the hold obtained on the popular mind by the technical expert’s view of instrumentation, that it was impossible to hear the works of Handel and Bach without “additional accompaniments” conceived in terms of art as irrelevant to those of 18th-century polyphonys as the terms of Turnerian landscape are irrelevant to the decoration of the outside walls of a cathedral. There is some reason to hope that the day of these misconceptions is passed; although there is also some reason to fear that on other grounds the present era may be known to posterity as an era of instrumentation comparable, in its gorgeous chaos of experiment and its lack of consistent ideas of harmony and form, only to the monodic period at the beginning of the 17th century, in which no one had ears for anything but experiments in harmonic colour. We do not propose to concern ourselves here with those technical subjects which are the chief concern of standard treatises on instrumentation. Our task is simply to furnish the general reader with an account of the types of instrumentation prevalent at various musical periods, and their relation to other branches of the art.

The Vocal Style of the 16th Century.—In the 16th century instrumentation was, in its normal modern sense, non-existent; but in a special sense it was at an unsurpassable stage of perfection, namely, in the treatment of pure vocal harmony. In every mature period of art it will be found that, however much the technical rules may be collected in one special category, every artistic category has a perfect interaction with all the others; and this is nowhere more perfectly shown than when the art is in its simplest possible form of maturity. Practically every law of harmony in 16th-century music may be equally well regarded as a law of vocal effect. Discords must not be taken unprepared, because a singer can only find his note by a mental judgment, and in attacking a discord he has to find a note of which the harmonic meaning is at variance with that of other notes sung at the same time. Melody must not make more than one wide skip in the same direction, because by so doing it would cause an awkward change of vocal register. Two parts must not move in consecutive octaves or fifths, because by so doing they unaccountably reinforce each other by an amount by which they impoverish the rest of the harmony. Thus we justify, on grounds of instrumentation, laws usually known as laws of harmony and counterpoint. Apart from such considerations, 16th-century vocal harmony shows in the hands of its greatest masters an inexhaustible variety of refinements of vocal colour. A volume might be written on Orlando di Lasso’s art of so crossing the voices as to render possible successions of chords which, on a keyed instrument where such crossing cannot be expressed, would be a horrible series of consecutive fifths; the beauty of the device consisting in the extreme simplicity of the chords, combined with the novelty due to the fact that these chords cannot be produced by any ordinary means without incorrectness.

Decorative Instrumentation.—In the 17th century the use of instruments became a necessity; but there were at first no organized ideas for their treatment except those which were grounded on their use as supporting and imitating the voice. 652 The early 17th-century attempts at their independent use and characterization are historically interesting, but artistically almost barbarous. Sometimes they achieve rare beauty by accident. Heinrich Schütz’s Lamentatio Davidi is written for a bass voice accompanied by four trombones and organ. The trombone parts are on exactly the same material as the voice, which in fact forms with them a five-part fugue-texture. The effect is magnificent, and admirably suited to the dignity of the trombone. Moreover, the opening theme is formed of slow arpeggios; and the more modern harmonic elements, though technically chromatic, consist, from the modern point of view, rather in swift changes between nearly related keys than in chromatic blurring of the main key. All this, especially in a writer like Schütz, who is saturated with every progressive tendency of the time, seems to point to a deep sense of the appropriate style of trombone writing. Yet, so insensible is Schütz to the euphony of his own work, that he proposes, as an alternative for the first and second trombones, two violins an octave higher, the other parts remaining unaltered! Imagination boggles at the vileness of this effect.

The chief work done in instrumentation in the 17th century is undoubtedly that of the Italian writers for the violin, who developed the technique of that instrument until it proved not only more resourceful but more artistically organized than that of the solo voice, which by the time of Handel had become little better than an acrobatic monstrosity. In the art of Bach and Handel, instrumentation, as distinguished from choral writing, has attained a definite artistic coherence. Choral writing itself has become different from what it was in the 16th century. The free use of discords and of wider intervals, together with the influence of the florid elements of solo-singing, enlarged the bounds of choral expression almost beyond recognition, while they crowded into very narrow quarters the subtleties of 16th-century music. These, however, by no means disappeared; and such devices as the crossing of parts in the second Kyrie of Bach’s B Minor Mass (bars 7, 8, 14, 15, 22, 23, 50) abundantly show that in the hands of the great masters artistic truths are not things which a change of date can make false.

But the treatment of instruments in Bach and Handel has a radical difference from that of the art which was soon to succeed it. It has precisely the same limitation as the treatment of form and emotion; it cannot change as the work proceeds. Its contrasts are like those of an architectural scheme, not those of a landscape or a drama. It admits of the loveliest combinations of timbre, and it can alternate them in considerable variety. Modern composers have often produced their most characteristic orchestral effects with fewer contrasting elements than Bach uses in his Trauer-Ode, in the pastoral symphony in his Christmas Oratorio, in the first chorus of the cantata Liebster Gott, wann werd’ ich sterben, and in many other cases; but the modern instrumental effects are as far outside Bach’s scope as a long passage of preparation on the dominant leading to the return of a first subject is beyond the scope of a gigue in a suite. Bach’s conception of the function of an instrument is that it holds a regular part in a polyphonic scheme; and his blending of tones is like the blending of colours in a purely decorative design.

Those instruments of which the tones and compass are most suitable for polyphonic melody are for the most part high in pitch; a circumstance which, in conjunction with the practice (initiated by the monodists and ratified by science and common sense) of reckoning chords upwards from the bass, leads to the conclusion that the instruments which hold the main threads in the design shall be supported where necessary by a simple harmonic filling-out on some keyed instrument capable of forming an unobtrusive background. The chords necessary in this part, which with its supporting bass is called the continuo, were indicated by figures; and the evanescent and delicate tones of the harpsichord lent themselves admirably to this purpose where solo voices and instruments were concerned. For the support of the chorus the more powerful organ was necessary. It is in the attempt to supply the place of this continuo (or figured bass) by definite orchestral parts that modern performances, until the most recent times, have shown so radical an incapacity to grasp the nature of 18th-century instrumentation. The whole point of this filling-out is that, the polyphonic design of the main instruments being complete in itself, there is no room for any such additional inner parts as can attract attention. In the interest of euphony some harmonious sound is needed to bridge the great gap which almost always exists between the bass and the upper instruments, but this filling out must be of the softest and most atmospheric kind. Bach himself is known to have executed it in a very polyphonic style, and this for the excellent reason that plain chords would have contrasted so strongly with the real instrumental parts that they could not fail to attract attention even in the softest tones of the harpsichord or the organ, while light polyphony in these tones would elude the ear and at the same time perfectly bridge over the gap in the harmony. There seems no good reason why in modern performances the pianoforte should not be used for the purpose; if only accompanists can be trained to acquire the necessary delicacy of touch, and can be made to understand that, if they cannot extemporize the necessary polyphony, and so have to play something definitely written for them, it is not a mass of interesting detail which they are to bring to the public ear. A lamentable instance of the prevalent confusion of thought on this point is shown by the vocal scores of the Bach cantatas corresponding to the edition of the Bach Gesellschaft (which must not be held responsible for them). In these Bach’s polyphonic designs are often obliterated beneath a mass of editorial counterpoint (even where Bach has carefully written the words “tasto solo,” i.e. “no filling out”). The same comments apply to the attempts sometimes made to fill out the bare places in 18th-century clavier music. There is no doubt that such filling out was often done on a second harpsichord with stops of a very light tone; but, if it cannot be done on the modern pianoforte in a touch so light as to avoid confusion between it and the notes actually written as essential to the design, it certainly ought not to be done at all. The greater richness of tone of the modern pianoforte is a better compensation for any bareness that may be imputed to pure two-part or three-part writing than a filling out which deprives the listener of the power to follow the essential lines of the music. The same holds good, though in a lesser degree, of the resources of the harpsichord in respect of octave-strings. To sacrifice phrasing, and distinctness in real part-writing, to a crude imitation of the richness produced mechanically on the harpsichord by drawing 4-ft. and 8-ft. registers, is artistically suicidal. The genius of the modern pianoforte is to produce richness by depth and variety of tone; and players who cannot find scope for such genius in the real part-writing of the 18th century will not get any nearer to the 18th-century spirit by sacrificing the essentials of its art to an attempt to imitate its mechanical resources by a modern tour de force.

Symphonic Instrumentation.—The difference between decorative and symphonic instrumentation is admirably shown by Gluck. In the famous dedicatory letter of his Alceste he mentions among other conceptions on which his reform of opera was to be based, that the co-operation of the instruments ought to be regulated in proportion to the interest and the passion, a doctrine of which the true significance lies in its connexion with other conditions of opera which are incompatible with the polyphonic treatment of instruments as threads in a decorative scheme. The date of this famous letter was 1767, but after Alceste Gluck was still able to use material from earlier work; and the overture to Armide is adapted from that of Telemacco, written in the year of Bach’s death (1750).

To write an account of symphonic instrumentation in any detail would be like attempting a history of emotional expression; and all that we can do here is to point out that the problem which was, so to speak, shelved by the polyphonic device of the continuo, was for a long time solved only by methods which, in any hands but those of the greatest masters, were very inartistic conventions. In the new art the concentration of attention upon form, as a more important source of dramatic interest and climax than texture, resulted in a neglect of polyphony which 653 seriously damaged even Gluck’s work, and which always had the grave inconvenience that while the new methods of blending and contrasting instruments stimulated an increase in the variety, if not in the size of orchestras, there was at the same time extreme difficulty in finding occupation for the members of the lower middle class of the orchestra in ordinary passages. On the other hand, it is significant how everything in the development of new instruments seems to suggest, and be suggested by, the new methods of expression. The invention of the damper-pedal in the pianoforte epitomizes the difference between polyphony and symphonic art, for it is the earliest device by which sounds are produced and prolonged in a way contrary to the spirit of “real” part-writing. It is possible to conceive of any number of notes struck and sustained by the fingers as consisting of so many quasi-vocal parts; but when a series of single sounds is played and each sound continues to vibrate by means of a pedal which prevents the dampers from falling on the strings, then we are conscious that the sounds have been produced as from one part, and that they nevertheless combine to form a chord; and this is as remote from the spirit of polyphonic part-writing as modern English is from classical Greek.

The pianoforte trios of Haydn are perhaps the only works of first-rate artistic importance in which there is no doubt that the earlier stages of the new art do not admit of sufficient polyphony to give the instruments fair play. Haydn finds the pianoforte so completely capable of expressing his meaning that he is at a loss to find independent material for any accompanying instruments; and the violoncello in his trios has, except perhaps in four passages in the whole collection of thirty-three works, not a note to play that is not already in the bass of the pianoforte; while the melodies of the violin are, more often than not, doubled in the treble. Yet there is a certain difference between this and the work of a poor artist whose designs are threadbare. It would be impossible to add a note to Haydn’s trio; the only question is how to account for the superfluity of much of the string parts and how to make the trios effective in performance. It is sometimes suggested that the ’cello part is best omitted and these works played as violin sonatas. But experiment shows that in this condition much of the violin part sounds incomplete; and the truth appears to be that Haydn is thinking, like any modern composer, of the opposition of two solid bodies of tone—the pianoforte and the stringed instruments. And it will be found that the method of performance which most nearly justifies the instrumental effect of these otherwise beautiful works is that in which the pianoforte player regards himself as frequently doubling the stringed instruments, and not vice versa. He should therefore in all such passages play extremely lightly, so as to give the violin and ’cello the function of drawing the main outline. In the time of Bach such writing was beautifully suited to enliven the dry glitter of the harpsichord, and Bach’s duets for clavier and violin seem to have been sometimes played as trios with a violoncello playing from the clavier bass. But this was ineffective with the pianoforte, and is only explicable in Haydn as a survival. His trios were, indeed, published under the title of “pianoforte sonatas with accompaniment of violin and violoncello”; but this in no way militates against the above remarks as to their proper method of performance nowadays, when we take into consideration the greater strength of tone of the modern pianoforte, especially in the bass, and the fact that in no case could a violinist consent to play as an accompaniment such melodies as that at the beginning of the G major trio known as No. 1.

For Mozart there never was any such embarras de richesse in any combination of instruments. His music is highly polyphonic, and modern in its instrumental treatment throughout. It was lucky for the development of instrumentation (as in all branches of music during the change from polyphonic to formal design) that whenever the texture is not polyphonic the natural place for melody is on the surface: in other words, when the accompaniment is simple the tune is generally on the top. Haydn, when he was not tempted by the resources of an instrument so complete in itself as the pianoforte, soon learnt to write artistically perfect string quartets in which the first violin, though overwhelmingly the most important part, is nevertheless in perfect balance with the other members of the scheme, inasmuch as they contribute exactly what their pitch and the little polyphonic elaboration admissible by the style will enable them to give. In the treatment of the orchestra volumes might be written about Haydn’s and Mozart’s sense of fitness, as shown in Haydn’s experiments and Mozart’s settled methods. Where they consent to any practical custom from practical necessity they also consent because it is artistically right for them, and if it had not been artistically right they would have soon swept it away. For example, it has often been said that the extent to which their orchestral viola parts double the basses is due, partly to bad traditions of Italian opera, and partly to the fact that viola players were, more often than not, simply persons who had failed to play the violin. This was in many cases true, and it is equally true that Mozart and Haydn often had no scruple in following the customs of very bad composers. But, when we look at the many passages in which the violas double the basses, we shall do well to consider whether there is room in the harmonic scheme for the violas to do anything else, and whether the effect would not be thin without them. As music becomes more polyphonic the inner parts of the orchestra become more and more emancipated. Already Mozart divides his violas into two parts quite as often as he makes them play with the basses. In Beethoven’s orchestration there is almost always room for an independent viola part. There is not room for one together with an independent violoncello part; the wonderful use of muted solo violoncellos in the slow movement of the Pastoral Symphony being a special effect, like the earlier instance in Haydn’s 12th Salomon Symphony. Otherwise, when Beethoven has anything special for the violoncellos to say, he invariably softens and deepens their singularly incisive cantabile tones by doubling them with the violas. In the orchestras of his day this was perhaps the only safe proceeding for players unaccustomed to such responsibilities, and that may have been one of Beethoven’s reasons for it. But it is equally certain that the pure violoncello tone in large masses belongs to a distinctly different region of orchestral effect. Haydn’s numerous examples of independent violoncello melodies are almost all either marked solo or written for such small orchestras that they would be played as solos.

Similar principles apply in infinite detail to the treatment of wind instruments, and we must never lose sight of them in speculating as to the reasons why the genius of Beethoven was able to carry instrumentation into worlds of which Haydn and Mozart never dreamt, or why, having gone so far, it left anything unexplored. A subject so vast and so incapable of classification cannot be discussed here, but its aesthetic principles may be illustrated by the extreme case of the trumpets and horns, which in classical times had no scale except that of the natural harmonic series. This could be fixed, within certain limits, at whatever pitch suited the composition; but on the horn it could be only very partially filled out by notes of a muffled quality produced by inserting the hand into the bell of the instrument, a device impossible on the trumpet. These instruments thus produced, in Haydn’s and Beethoven’s times, a very remarkable but closely limited series of effects, which, as Sir George Macfarren pointed out in the article “Music” in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, gave them a peculiar character and function in strongly asserting the main notes of the key. An instance of this characteristic function, specially remarkable because the composer has taken exceptional measures for it, is Beethoven’s overture to Fidelio. It is in E major, while Beethoven chooses to use trumpets in C. The only note which these can play in E major is the tonic, to which they are accordingly confined until the recapitulation of the second subject. This is unexpectedly placed in C major, the remotest key reached in the overture, and one that had already appeared in an impressive passage in the introduction which foreshadows the reference in the first act to the hero in his dungeon (“Der kaum mehr lebt und wie ein Schatten schwebt”). In this key the trumpets blaze out with an effect which entirely depends upon their 654 restricted part hitherto. On a sufficient acquaintance with the work this would probably have revealed the essential nature of the instrument to a hearer unacquainted with technicalities, and revealed it rather as a characteristic than as a limitation. A still more remarkable instance will be found in the third statement of the theme of the finale of the 9th symphony. When the trumpets take it up they make a remarkable change at its 11th bar, for no other reason than that one of the notes, though perfectly within their scale, and, indeed, already produced by them in the very same bar, is so harmonized as to suggest the freedom of an instrument with a complete scale. This passage shows that if Beethoven had had the modern trumpet at his disposal, while he would no doubt freely have used its resources, he would nevertheless have maintained its character as an instrument founded on the natural scale, and would have agreed with Brahms that the nobility and purity of its tone depends upon its faithful adherence, at least within symphonic limits, to types of melody suggestive of that scale.

This brings us to the latest radical change effected in instrumentation, the change from symphonic to dramatic principles. It will be convenient to take one supreme composer as the artist who has dealt so consistently with the essentials of the new style that he may be conveniently regarded as its creator. Even with this limitation the subject is too vast for us to enter into details.

Dramatic Instrumentation.—There is hardly one of Wagner’s orchestral innovations which is not inseparably connected with his adaptation of music to the requirements of drama; and modern conductors, in treating Wagner’s orchestration, as the normal standard by which all previous and contemporary music must be judged, are doing their best to found a tradition which in another fifty years will be exploded as thoroughly as the tradition of symphonic additional accompaniments is now exploded in the performances of Bach and Handel. The main difference between symphonic and modern dramatic orchestration depends on this: that in a symphony any important incident will probably be heard again within five minutes, in every circumstance of formal symmetry and preparation that can attract the attention. This being so, it is absurd in a symphony to use only such orchestral colours as would be fit for dramatic moments which are not likely to recur for an hour or two, if they recur at all. Such a passage as bars 5 to 8 in the first movement of Beethoven’s 8th symphony is as unintelligible from the point of view of Wagnerian opera as the opening of the Rheingold is unintelligible from the point of view of symphony. But both are quite right. The modern Wagnerian conductor is apt to complain that Beethoven, in his four-bar phrase, drowns a melody which lies in the weakest register of the clarinet by a crowd of superfluous notes in oboes, horns and flutes. The complainer entirely overlooks the fact that this is the kind of music in which such a phrase will certainly be heard again before we have time to forget it; and as a matter of fact the strings promptly repeat it fortissimo in a position which nothing can overpower. A crowd of instruments that seemed at first to overwhelm it in sympathetic comments is perfectly dramatic and appropriate on the symphonic scale. On the operatic scale established by Wagner such detail is simply lost. Far greater polyphonic detail of another kind is no doubt possible, but it requires far longer time for its expression. It cannot change so rapidly. It engages the ear more exclusively, and therefore it needs an accuracy and an elaboration of paraphernalia quite irrelevant to symphonic art. The accuracy and the paraphernalia are equally exemplified in all Wagner’s additions and alterations of the classical orchestral scheme, for these all consist in completing the families of instruments so that each timbre can be presented pure in complete harmony. But the greatness of Wagner is shown in the fact that with all the effect his additions have in revolutionizing the resources of orchestration, he never regards his novelties as substitutes for the natural principles of instrumental effect. His brass instruments have lost nothing of their ancient nobility. In his gigantic designs it inevitably happens that instrumental resources are strained to their utmost, and there is, perhaps, hardly anything which the makers and players of instruments can be trained to do which is too remote to be demanded by some extreme dramatic necessity in Wagner’s scheme. But it is always some such extreme necessity that demands it, and never an appetite too jaded for natural resources. The crucial example of this is what Richard Strauss has ingeniously called the “al fresco” treatment of instruments in large orchestral masses (Berlioz-Strauss, Instrumentationslehre, edition Peters). Experience shows that in the modern orchestra there is safety in numbers, and that passages may with impunity be written for thirty-two violins which no single player can execute clearly. Whether this justifies Wagner’s successors and imitators in showing a constant preference for passages of which not even the general outline is practicable; whether it justifies a state of things in which the normal compass of every instrument in an advanced 20th-century score would appear to be about a fifth higher than any player of that instrument will admit; whether it proves that it is artistically desirable that when there are eight horns in the orchestra their material should be indistinguishable from pianoforte writing, and that, in short, the part of every instrument should look exactly like the part of every other—such questions are for posterity to decide. At present we can only be certain that the criterion according to which Brahms, being a symphonic writer, has no mastery of orchestration whatever, is not a criterion compatible with any sense of symphonic style. It is therefore not a criterion which can do justice to the principles of Wagner’s non-symphonic art, for its appreciation thereof is inevitably one-sided. Least of all can it conduce to the formation of sound critical standards for the new instrumentation which is now in process of development for the future forms of instrumental music. These, we cannot doubt, will be as profoundly influenced by Wagner as the sonata style was influenced by Gluck.

Finally it must be remembered that musical euphony and emotional effect are inseparable from considerations of harmony and polyphony. Timbre itself is, as Helmholtz shows, a kind of harmony felt but not heard. Not even the imagination and skill of Berlioz could galvanize into permanent artistic life an instrumentation based exclusively upon instruments, however suggestive his wonderful orchestral effects may have been to contemporary and later artists, who realize that artistic effects must proceed from artistic causes.

Chamber-music—The instrumentation of solo combinations is one of the largest and most detailed subjects in the art of music. Something has been said above as to its earlier aspects in the time of Haydn. Before that time it was based exclusively on the use of the harpsichord either as a means of supporting the other instruments or its also contributing principal parts to the combination. Thus there were no string-quartets before Haydn—at least none that can be distinguished from symphonies for string-band.

Richard Strauss, in his edition of Berlioz’s works on Instrumentation, paradoxically characterizes the classical orchestral style as that which was derived from chamber-music. Now it is true that in Haydn’s early days orchestras were small and generally private; and that the styles of orchestral and chamber-music were not distinct; but surely nothing is clearer than that the whole history of the rise of classical chamber-music lies in its rapid differentiation from the coarse-grained orchestral style with which it began. Orchestral wind-parts have been discovered belonging to Haydn’s string-quartet Op. 1, No. 5; his quartet in D minor, Op. 9, No. 4, is already in a style which not even the most casual listener could mistake for anything orchestral. On this differentiation of styles rests the whole aesthetics of chamber-music; but the subject is very subtle, and there is much, as for example in Schubert’s quartets and his C major quintet, that is inspired by orchestral ideas without in the least vitiating the chamber-music style; though, judged by its appearance on paper, it seems as unorthodox as the notoriously orchestral beginnings of Mendelssohn’s quartet in D and quintet in B♭. The beginning of Mendelssohn’s F minor quartet is, 655 again, a case usually, but perhaps wrongly, condemned for its orchestral appearance on paper. Such matters cannot be decided off-hand by the mere fact that tremolos are characteristic of orchestras: the question is whether in individual cases they have not a special character when played by single players. Where this is so there need be no confusion of style; but the danger of such confusion is great, and with the rise of modern dramatic instrumentation it may be doubted whether there are any standards of criticism in current use for chamber-music of other than the sonata style. The development of pianoforte technique since Beethoven has been in some ways even more revolutionizing than that of the brass instruments; and pianoforte instrumentation, both in solo and in chamber-music, is a study for a lifetime.

Orchestral Schemes Typical of Different Periods.

INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT, the name given to the decree, or written constitution, under which Oliver Cromwell as “lord protector of the commonwealth” governed England, Scotland and Ireland from December 1653 to May 1657.

The Long Parliament was expelled in April 1653 and the council of state dissolved; the Little, or Nominated, parliament which followed ended its existence by abdication; and Cromwell, officially lord general of the army, with a new council of state, remained the only recognized authority in the country. It was in these circumstances that the Instrument of Government, drawn up by some officers in the army, prominent among whom was John Lambert, was brought forward. The document appears to have been under consideration since the middle of October 1653, but Ludlow says it was “in a clandestine manner carried on and huddled up by two or three persons,” a remark probably very near the truth. The nominated parliament abdicated on the 12th of December 1653, and after certain emendations the Instrument was accepted by Cromwell on the 16th. Consisting of forty-two articles, the Instrument placed the legislative power in the hands of “one person, and the people assembled in parliament”; the executive power was left to the lord protector, whose office was to be elective and not hereditary, and a council of state numbering from thirteen to twenty-one members. The councillors were appointed for life; 656 fifteen were named in the Instrument itself; and Cromwell and the council were empowered to add six. To fill vacancies parliament must name six persons, of whom the council would select two, the choice between these two being left to the protector. A parliament was to meet on the 3rd of September 1654, and until that date the protector with the consent of the council could make ordinances which would have the force of laws. After the meeting of parliament, however, he had no power of legislation, nor had he any veto upon its acts, the utmost he could do being to delay new legislation for twenty days. A new parliament must be called “once in every third year,” elaborate arrangements being made to prevent any failure in this respect, and for five months it could not be dissolved save with its own consent. The parliament, composed of a single chamber, was to consist of 460 members—400 for England and Wales, and 30 each for Scotland and Ireland—and the representative system was entirely remodelled, growing towns sending members for the first time, and many small boroughs being disfranchised. A large majority of the English members, 265 out of 400, were to be elected by the counties, where voters must possess land or personal property of the value of £200, while in the boroughs the franchise remained unaltered. In Scotland and Ireland the arrangement of the representation was left to the protector and the council. Roman Catholics and all concerned in the Irish rebellion were permanently disfranchised and declared incapable of sitting in parliament, and those who had taken part in the war against the parliament were condemned to a similar disability during the first four parliaments. The protector was empowered to raise a revenue of £200,000 in addition to a sum sufficient to maintain the navy and an army of 30,000 men, and religious liberty was granted “provided this liberty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy.” The chief officers of state were to be chosen with the consent of parliament, and a parliament must be summoned at once in case of war. The practical effect of the Instrument was to entrust the government of the three countries to the parliament for five months out of every three years, and to the protector and the council for the remainder of the time. Although the Instrument bristled with possibilities of difference between parliament and protector, “it is impossible,” as Gardiner says, “not to be struck with the ability of its framers.”

Having issued many ordinances and governed in accordance with the terms of the Instrument, Cromwell duly met parliament on the 3rd of September, and on the following day he urged the members to give it the force of a parliamentary enactment. Many representatives objected to the provision placing the supreme power in the hands of a single person and of parliament, a discussion which was futile, as clause XII. of the Instrument declared that “the persons elected shall not have power to alter the government as it is hereby settled in one single person and a parliament.” The proceedings were soon stopped by Cromwell, who on the 12th of September explained that there was a difference between “fundamentals” which they might not, and “circumstantials” which they might, alter. He concluded by stating that they would be excluded unless they subscribed a recognition to be true to the protector and the commonwealth, and to respect the terms of clause XII. Over three hundred members took the required step; but they proceeded to alter the Instrument in other ways, and over the question of the control of the army they were soon in sharp conflict with the protector. At length, on the 22nd of January 1655, Cromwell, counting twenty weeks as five months, dissolved parliament.

Regarding the Instrument as still in force the protector sought for a time to rule in accordance with its provisions; but new difficulties and growing discontent forced him to govern in a more arbitrary fashion. However, in July 1656 he issued writs for a second parliament which met in the following September. Many members, men of advanced views, were excluded by the council of state, acting on the strength of clause XVII., which declared that those elected must be “persons of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation.” The remainder discussed the question of the future government of the country, and in May 1657 Cromwell assented to the Humble Petition and Advice, which supplanted the Instrument of Government. Gardiner says the Instrument was “the first of hundreds of written constitutions which have since spread over the world, of which the American is the most conspicuous example, in which a barrier is set up against the entire predominance of any one set of official persons, by attributing strictly limited functions to each.”

INSUBRES (Ἲσομβρες, Ἲνσουβροι), a Celtic people of upper Italy, the most powerful in Gallia Transpadana, inhabiting the country between the Adda, the Ticinus and the Alps. According to Livy (v. 34) they appear to have been a branch of the Aedui in Gallia Transalpina, though others assume that they were Umbrians, a view to some extent supported by the form Is-ombr-es. Livy states that Bellovesus and his Gauls, having crossed the Alps and defeated the Etruscans near the Ticinus, found themselves in the territory of the Insubres (also the name of a pagus of the Aedui). Here they built a city and called it Mediolanum (Milan), after the name of a village in their home in Gallia Transalpina. The name Insubres thus appears applied to the inhabitants (1) of the Aeduan pagus, (2) of the territory in Gallia Transpadana occupied by Bellovesus, (3) to the founders of Mediolanum. From 222 to 195 B.C. the Insubres were frequently at war with the Romans. In 222 they were defeated at Clastidium by M. Claudius Marcellus, who gained the spolia opima by slaying with his own hand their king Viridomarus (Virdumarus), and in 194 they were finally subdued by L. Valerius Flaccus.

INSURANCE, a term meaning generally “making oneself safe against” something, but specially used in connexion with making financial provision against certain risks in the business of life. The terms Assurance and Insurance are in ordinary usage synonymous, but in the profession “assurance” is confined to the “life” business, and “insurance” to fire, marine and other miscellaneous risks. Assurance was the earlier term, and was used of all forms of insurance indiscriminately till the end of the 16th century. Insurance—in its earlier form, “ensurance”—was first applied to fire risks (see note s.v. “Insurance” in the New English Dictionary).

I. General History

During the latter half of the 19th century the practice of insurance extended with unprecedented rapidity, partly in novel forms. While its several branches, such as life insurance, casualty insurance and others, have each had an independent and characteristic development, all these together form an institution peculiar to the modern world, the origin and growth of which attest a remarkable change in men’s ideas and habits of thought.

The simplest and most general conception of insurance is a provision made by a group of persons, each singly in danger of some loss, the incidence of which cannot be foreseen, that when such loss shall occur to any of them it shall be distributed over the whole group. Its essential elements, therefore, are foresight and co-operation; the former the special distinction of civilized man, the latter the means of social progress. But foresight is possible only in the degree in which the consequences of conduct are assured, i.e. it depends on an ascertained regularity in the forces of nature and the order of society. To the savage, life is a lottery. In hunting, rapine and war, all his interests are put at hazard. The hopes and fears of the gambler dominate his impulses. As nature is studied and subdued, and as society is developed, the element of chance is slowly eliminated from life. In a progressive society, education, science, invention, the arts of production, with regular government and civil order, 657 steadily work together to narrow the realm of chance and extend that of foresight. But there remain certain events which may disturb all anticipations, and in spite of any man’s best wisdom and effort may deprive him of the fruits of his labour. These are mainly of two classes: (1) damage to property by the great forces of nature, such as lightning and hail, by the perils of the sea and by fire; (2) premature death. A useful life has an economical value. But no skill can make certain its continuance to its normal close. In the reasonable expectation that it will last until a competence is gained or the family ceases to be dependent, young men marry; but some will die too soon, and in the aggregate multitudes are left destitute. Both classes of loss are alike, in that they fall on individuals in the mass who are not known beforehand nor selected by any traceable law. But the sufferers are ruined, while the same pecuniary loss, if distributed over the whole number, would be little felt. Wherever the sense of community has existed this has been discerned, and some effort made to act upon it. Thus in feudal Europe it was customary for the houses of vassals to be restored after fire at the cost of the estate. In England in the 17th century the government practised a method of relief after accidental fires. When such a loss was proved to the king in council, the chancellor sent a king’s brief to churches, sheriffs and justices, asking contributions, and trustees for the sufferers administered the funds collected. But under the last two Stuarts gross frauds resulted, and the system fell into disrepute and disuse. At best, the voluntary relief provided by charity after losses are incurred is but sporadic and irregular. Insurance begins when the liability to loss is recognized as common, and provision is made beforehand to meet it from a common fund. The efficient organization of communities or groups for this purpose is an essentially modern achievement of social science. But the history of the conception in its formative stages is extremely obscure.

Its first appearance in business life is often sought in the marine loans of the ancient Greeks, fully described by Demosthenes. Money was advanced on a ship or cargo, to be repaid with large interest if the voyage prosper, but not repaid at all if the ship be lost, the rate of interest being made high enough to pay not only for the use of the capital, but for the risk of losing it. Loans of this character have ever since been common in maritime lands, under the name of bottomry and respondentia bonds. (See below, Marine Insurance.) But the direct insurance of sea-risks for a premium paid independently of loans began, as far as is known, in Belgium about A.D. 1300. During the next century the risks of insurance for the usual voyages between London and European ports were carefully considered, and customary rates became established. In his address in opening Elizabeth’s first parliament in 1559, Sir Nicholas Bacon said, “Doth not the wise merchant in every adventure of danger give part to have the rest assured?” In 1601 parliament created a commission to decide disputes under contracts for marine insurance, and the preamble of the act (43 Eliz. ch. 12) expresses the best thought of the British mind in that day upon the subject. Thus the business of marine insurance was intelligently and wisely practised three centuries ago. But the underwriters were private persons, acting independently, so that the insured lacked the benefit of large aggregations of capital to make his contract safe; while the insurer, who took one or a few risks, was without the security of large averages and might be crushed by an exceptional loss. A partial remedy was gradually reached in London. Men who had capital to employ in this hazardous business used to meet at fixed hours when shipowners and merchants could negotiate with them. The higgling of the open market, in view of all the circumstances of each risk—as the character and condition of the ship, its crew and cargo, the length and route of the voyage, the season, the current rate of interest and profits—determined the rate of premium; and when this obtained general assent, the written agreement was signed by each underwriter for that part of the risk which he assumed. Towards the end of the 17th century these meetings were held in Lloyd’s coffee-house, and their simple practice gradually grew into the complete and complicated system of marine insurance now general. The underwriters together evolved rules and improved methods, but continued for generations to insure severally, without corporate powers or common responsibility, so that the name Lloyd’s became throughout the commercial world the symbol of marine insurance. More recently the name has been adopted in the United States by associations of private or individual underwriters as distinguished from insurance corporations.

Although the underwriters at Lloyd’s often considered and assumed other than marine risks, and made contracts some of which were merely wagers on public or private events, there is no record of insurances by them against fire on land. But fire insurance, it is vaguely known, had previously been practised, in a crude form, in several European cities. In 1635, and again in 1638, citizens of London petitioned Charles I. for a patent of monopoly to insure houses at the rate of one shilling yearly for each £20 of rent, the association to repair or rebuild those burned, to maintain a perpetual fire-watch in the streets, and to pay £200 yearly towards rebuilding St Paul’s cathedral until finished. The attorney-general approved the project, but in the disorders of the kingdom it was forgotten. The Great Fire of 1666 revived interest in the subject, and led to practical measures. In May 1680 a private fire office was opened “at the back side of the Royal Exchange” to insure houses in London, by assuming the risk of loss to a fixed amount for a fixed premium, namely, 2½% of the yearly rent for brick houses and 5% for frame houses, the rent being always assumed to be one-tenth of the value of the fee. The estimates of the promoters are interesting. In the fourteen years since the Great Fire 750 houses had been burned in London, with an average loss of £200. A fund of £40,000 subscribed as guaranty was to be increased by £20,000 for every 10,000 houses insured, and the interest of the fund alone therefore might be expected to meet all losses and leave a surplus. Thus the security was perfect and the promise of profit great. Meagre as was the basis of facts for the calculations, and crude as was the statistical method employed, the insurance offered met a general want and the business grew rapidly. Within a year a strong demand was heard that the city of London should itself insure the houses of its citizens, and the common council voted to do so at lower rates than the fire office. But the courts put a speedy end to this movement, holding that the charter conferred on the city no power to transact such business. Thus the socialistic theory that insurance is properly a branch of government is almost as old as the business itself, though it has never found favour or been practically tested on a large scale in Great Britain or America.

The next notable step in the evolution of modern methods was the organization of mutual insurance associations. In 1684 the Friendly Society was organized. Each member paid a small entrance fee for expenses, made a cash deposit as a reserve for emergencies, to be returned at the end of his term, and agreed to meet equitable assessments for current losses. Payments were computed on the assumption that one house in 200 is burned every fifteen years. The rivalry between the proprietary and the mutual systems began at once, and has continued till now. In 1686 “the Fire Office at the back side of the Royal Exchange” petitioned for a patent of the fire insurance policy and a monopoly of its issue for thirty-one years. The Friendly Society opposed the grant. The most eminent lawyers for both were heard by the king in council, and on the 30th of January 1687 King James II. decided the case. No charter was granted, but the Fire Office might continue its business, having a monopoly for one year. Thereafter the Friendly Society might for three months sell policies, but must then suspend for three months, and so on for alternate quarters. But the Fire Office must pay the ordinance service for its work in extinguishing fires, the amount to be fixed for each fire by the king. This was the first appearance of the plan, so widely prevalent in after years, of imposing on insurance companies the support of fire departments; that is, of taxing the prudent who insure to protect the reckless who do not.

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After 1688 the atmosphere of England was freer, and underwriting was soon practised without special licence. In 1704 the societies began to insure household goods and stocks in trade, and the insurance of personal property rapidly became as important as that of buildings. In 1706 the Sun Fire Office was founded, and began to issue policies on both real and personal property in all parts of England. Other associations arose in quick succession of which the Union Fire Office, dating from 1714, and the Westminster from 1717, still survive. Before 1720 both fire and marine insurance had become general in all great centres of trade. But life insurance was as yet hardly conceived. Sporadic evidences that it was needed, and that men were feeling after it, occur in very early records. It was a medieval custom to advance to a mariner goods or money, to be restored with large additions, but only in case of safe return; or to contract, for a sum in hand, to ransom him if captured by pirates, or to pay a fixed amount to his family if he were lost. To evade the usury laws life annuities were often sold at a low rate, redeemable for a stipulated sum. Life estates were sold upon some guess at their probable duration; and leases, especially of church lands, were made for one, two or three lives on rude and conventional estimates of the time they would run. Thus there was a commercial and social pressure for some intelligent method of valuing life contingencies. But the direct insurance of life, as a means of reducing the element of chance in human affairs, was hardly thought of. Indeed, such contracts were commonly regarded as mere forms of gambling, and were prohibited in France as against good morals.

The earliest known policy of life insurance was made in the Royal Exchange, London, on the 18th of June 1583, for £383 6s 8d. for twelve months, on the life of William Gibbons. Sixteen underwriters signed it, each severally for his own share, and the premium was 8%. The age of the insured is not referred to, nor was it then considered, except when far advanced, in fixing the premium. Gibbons died on the 29th of May 1584. The underwriters refused to pay, alleging that twelve months, in law, are twelve times twenty-eight days, and that Gibbons had survived the term. The court, of course, enforced payment. A few instances of similar contracts are found, mostly in judicial records, during the 17th century; but every such transaction was justly regarded as a mere wager, at least on the part of the insurer. It could not be otherwise until the principles of probability and the uniformity of large averages were understood and trusted. A few great thinkers were groping for principles which were profoundly to modify the practical reasoning of after-generations. But their work first obtained wide recognition upon the publication of the Ars Conjectandi, the posthumous treatise of Jacques Bernoulli, in 1713. Meanwhile the social need for insurance continued to express itself in empirical efforts, which at least helped to make clearer the problems to be solved. Thus in 1699 “The Society of Assurance for Widows and Orphans” was founded in London, a crude form of what is now called an assessment company. Each of 2000 healthy men under fifty-five years of age was to pay 5s. as entrance fee, 1s. quarterly for expenses, and 5s. at the death of another member; and at his own death his estate should receive £500, less 3%. On default in any payment his interest was forfeited. The society lasted about eleven years, and the accounts of its eighth year are preserved, showing the payment of £5200 upon twenty-four claims. The economic significance of this society lies in its distinct recognition of the principle of association for the distribution of losses. Together with the Friendly Society, it shows that this principle had now been so widely grasped by business men that, when embodied in a practical venture, it found substantial support.

The conception of a corporation as an artificial person to hold property and support obligations uninterrupted by the death of individuals was found in Roman law and custom. Its first use in modern business enterprise was perhaps the Bank of St George in Genoa, about A.D. 1200, a joint-stock company with transferable shares, whose owners were liable only to the amount of their shares. In England the crown, itself the chief and type of corporations sole, was the source of chartered rights, and from about 1600 the principle steadily gained recognition, the advantages of incorporation being attested by the successes of the great trading companies. Experience showed that the corporate form was the obvious remedy for the chief difficulties in the practice of insurance. Single risks were but speculative wagers; a great number must be taken together to obtain a trustworthy average. A larger capital than an average private fortune was demanded as a guaranty, and this capital must not be exposed to the dangers of trade, but set aside for the special purpose. Individual underwriters may die or fail; only a permanent institution can be trusted in long contracts. Several projects were devised on this basis. Early in the 18th century, indeed, the English government refused a charter for marine insurance, declaring that corporate insurance was an untried and needless experiment, while private underwriting was satisfactory and sufficient. But in 1720, when two sets of promoters offered £300,000 each for a charter, exclusive of other associations though not of individuals, to insure marine risks, parliament chartered the Royal Exchange and the London Assurance Company with a monopoly to this extent. The business disappointed its projectors at first, and the government accepted half the price rather than revoke the grant. In 1721 the companies extended their operations to fire insurance throughout England.

Thus the principle of insurance had now become a distinct part of the common stock of thought in enlightened nations, and gradually, by association with successive new ideas, plans and methods, was developed into a business or trade, which before the middle of the 18th century already formed an essential element of the social scheme. Most of the modern forms of insurance against the elements were known, and at least crudely practised. But there was no scientific basis for the business. Premiums were fixed, not by computation from known facts or reasonable assumptions, but by guess and the higgling of the market. Only the competition of capital checked the extortionate demands of underwriters. The first important steps towards a scientific valuation of hazards were taken in dealing with the class of risks hitherto so much neglected, those which depend upon human mortality. Marine and fire insurance had their origin in the pressure of need. The practice began before a theory existed. But life insurance had its origin in the scientific study of the facts of human mortality. Both marine and fire insurance became general before there was any intelligent study of the risks by statistical or mathematical methods, nor can it be said that much progress has since been made towards establishing a scientific basis for the valuation of risks in these classes. But life insurance may be said to have been impossible until the theory of probabilities had become a recognized part of the common stock of ideas.

The value of insurance as an institution cannot be measured by figures. No direct balance-sheet of profit and loss can exhibit its utility. The insurance contract produces no wealth. It represents only expenditure. If a thousand men insure themselves against any contingency, then, whether or not the dreaded event occurs to any, they will in the aggregate be poorer, as the direct result, by the exact cost of the machinery for effecting it. The distribution of property is changed, its sum is not increased. But the results in the social economy, the substitution of reasonable foresight and confidence for apprehension and the sense of hazard, the large elimination of chance from business and conduct, have a supreme value. The direct contribution of insurance to civilization is made, not in visible wealth, but in the intangible and immeasurable forces of character on which civilization itself is founded. It is pre-eminently a modern institution. Some two centuries ago it had begun to influence centres of trade, but the mass of civilized men had no conception of its meaning. Its general application and popular acceptance began within the first half of the 19th century, and its commercial and social importance have multiplied a hundred-fold within living memory. It has done more than all gifts of impulsive charity to foster a sense of human brotherhood and of 659 common interests. It has done more than all repressive legislation to destroy the gambling spirit. It is impossible to conceive of our civilization in its full vigour and progressive power without this principle which unites the fundamental law of practical economy, that he best serves humanity who best serves himself, with the golden rule of religion, “Bear ye one another’s burdens.”

II. Casualty and Miscellaneous Insurance

Before proceeding with an account of the standard institutions of fire and life insurance, it is proper to glance at the modern vast extension of casualty insurance, and to notice certain novel applications of the insurance principle to other special classes of events. The novelty of these enterprises, however, is not in the general idea underlying each of them. In almost every instance in which insurance has been extended, so as successfully to cover new kinds of risks, it will be found that the suggestion is nearly as old as the practice of life insurance. Many more kinds of insurance than are even now found useful were attempted more than a century ago. But no statistical basis then existed for determining the probability of loss from various casualties, nor had the methods of canvassing, accounting, proving and checking losses, reached the perfection now recognized as necessary for efficiency and safety. The various branches of business which, in distinction from the great standard institutions of life, fire and marine insurance, are commonly treated as miscellaneous insurance, differ widely in their subjects and methods. The most general of them, and that most widely known, is insurance against personal injury by accidents of every kind. Much has already been done by the companies in collecting and analysing facts, so as to determine the average risk of injury and disablement among different classes of men. But there is as yet no such union of effort among them to combine their resources for such purposes as among the life companies, nor does the subject admit of treatment so exact as that of human mortality. Hence it is impossible to speak of a theory of accident insurance in a scientific sense; and in its practice premiums and necessary reserves are determined by the trained business judgment of individual managers rather than by the calculations of actuaries from statistical collections of facts.

The insurance of railway travellers against injury upon trains was the first form of accident insurance which proved widely acceptable. This is still practised as a special business by several companies, tickets, entitling the purchaser or his family to a fixed compensation in case of his injury or death, being offered for sale with the railway tickets. But the development of insurance against personal injuries, which is most characteristic of the times, is the wholesale insurance of the employer against liability to the employed for accidental injuries sustained in his service. This was first undertaken on a large scale by the “Employers’ Liability Assurance Corporation of London,” founded for the purpose in 1880, immediately after the passage of the Employers’ Liability Act by parliament, which made employers of labour liable for injuries sustained in their service to an extent unknown to the common law. The Workmen’s Compensation Act 1906 greatly extended the classes of employers liable for accidents to their servants, and the number of companies devoting themselves to accidents and workmen’s compensation has greatly increased, while practically every fire insurance office has taken up the business. The policies are issued to employers of labour, agreeing to indemnify them for any loss to which they may be subjected, at common law or by statute, in consequence of bodily injuries suffered by any employee while engaged in their service. In some cases the insurance company undertakes the investigation and settlement of each claim within the limits prescribed by the policy, and conducts any litigation which may result. The adjustment of damages can be made with more economy and skill by the companies than is usually possible for the employer, and the danger of fraudulent claims is largely reduced by methods experience has taught them. The price charged for such insurance is either a small percentage of the aggregate wages paid during the term, or a standard rate for each particular class of employment, or (in the case of large employers of labour) an “all-round” rate designed to cover every class of employee.

III. Fire Insurance

The growth of the business of fire insurance since 1880 or thereabouts has been commensurate with the increase of wealth and of commercial activity in the foremost nations, while the practice of it has also become general in countries in which it was formerly little known. The statistics of the subject have in recent years become far more full and more accessible than formerly; partly because many governments require detailed reports of resources, receipts and expenditures from all companies permitted to establish agencies within their jurisdiction, and periodically publish summaries of the returns; but also largely because the companies seek the widest publicity as their best means of advertising. It is to be regretted that there is as yet no uniformity of method in these returns; while some of the most important elements of the subject are not sufficiently illustrated for the student in the published statistics. Many companies of the United Kingdom transact business throughout a great part of the world, and there is no means of determining how much of their receipts or their losses must be referred to Great Britain. Further, they fail to give classified amounts at risk, so that it is impossible to estimate with any confidence the total sum for which any kind of property, such as dwellings, factories, household goods, stocks of merchandise or wares in transit, is insured. The returns of the London Fire Brigade, however, which is in part maintained by regular contributions from the fire underwriters at the rate of £35 for each £1,000,000 of risks assumed by them within the metropolitan district, continue to exhibit a regular growth. The aggregate amount insured in the metropolis was reported as follows:—

It appears probable that the rate of increase here shown is not greater than the actual growth of insurable property during the same period, so that it may be reasonably supposed that the custom of protecting all exposed property by insurance was already general in London many years ago. But the transactions of the British fire offices have grown much more rapidly, and indicate that, outside of the metropolitan district, the practice of insurance has extended greatly. The returns show that there is a tendency to concentrate the business in the control of large capital and experience, for practically all the premiums received and losses paid were shared by thirty-one companies, although there are at the same time a greater number of corporations of foreign countries with agencies for fire insurance in the United Kingdom; but many of these do but a nominal amount of business, and twenty-three of them are exclusively or chiefly engaged in re-insurance. This tendency has been a marked feature in the later history of fire insurance everywhere. The companies which are now in the field are the survivors of tenfold as many projected enterprises which have failed. The records of about two thousand organizations for the purpose, in America alone, which have undertaken the work and disappeared within fifty years, show the dangers to which inadequate skill and capital are exposed. But a small proportion of these failures were the direct result of sweeping disasters, though about seventy of them followed the memorable fires in Chicago and Boston in 1871 and 1872. Many more, nearly one-half of the whole, have followed a short career, in which the helplessness of inexperience to compete with long training and complete organization was demonstrated. Many hundreds of these projects were mere speculations or even frauds from the beginning; and the better education of the community at large in the principles and methods of insurance has been the chief agent in checking such enterprises, aided by the stringent legislation of several countries and of the United States in America and by the criticism of the press.

The Mutual principle has a strong attraction for many insurers and projectors. When a large number of pieces of property, so distributed that a single fire cannot destroy a considerable proportion of the whole, are yet owned Mutual system. and controlled by persons who can fully trust one another, both for financial responsibility and for good faith, there may be no need of a large capital in hand, nor of much of the costly machinery required for general competition. A contract for the assessment on all the property of losses as they occur, at rates fixed by the estimated exposure, may form a safe basis for an association. The fixed payments may be limited to necessary expenses, with a moderate reserve for emergencies, all excess of collections to be returned to the insured. This simple conception of an insurance association, with such modifications as experience indicates, has been accepted for a time as ideal in almost every civilized community, and attempts are continually made to realize it, but in the vast majority of instances with complete failure as the result. Like every other product of human skill, insurance is, for the most part, best supplied to the market by those who make it their calling to produce it for gain. But while the mutual plan has proved poorly adapted to the general service of the commercial world, in some communities, and especially among the owners of certain classes of property, it has achieved great and apparently permanent success. This is particularly true of manufacturing districts, in which numbers of mills and factories are exposed to peculiar danger of fire by the nature of their own operations. The best safeguard they can have is by employing great skill in the construction, arrangement and conduct of their works. A group of such properties, associated for the prevention of loss, is naturally stimulated to highest efficiency when the whole group undertakes to bear all losses which are not prevented, and thus every member has a strong interest in making the protection complete. It is in associations of this character that the mutual plan of fire insurance has rendered its greatest services. The mutual plan has been widely adopted also in local associations for the insurance of dwellings and farm improvements, where the individual risks are small, and where technical classification and special safeguards against fraud are not considered necessary, often with the result of affording satisfactory protection at low rates. But the ratio of this part of the business to that conducted by joint-stock companies diminishes from year to year, even in the agricultural and rural districts of the United States. According to the reports of the insurance departments of the states, as summarized in the 661 Spectator Company’s Year-Book, more than half of the cash premiums of mutual insurance companies are collected in the two manufacturing states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

It is, after all, only within a very limited field that the mutual principle can be adopted. The essential principle of fire insurance is the distribution of loss. It does not aim, directly at least, at the prevention and only in a secondary way even at the minimizing of loss; but what it seeks to accomplish is that such losses shall not fall exclusively, and possibly with overwhelming effect, on the owner of the property destroyed, but shall be borne in easy proportions by a large number of persons who are all alike exposed to the risk of a similar catastrophe. To work out the equitable solution of such a problem an amount of technical skill and extended experience is required which few bodies or communities possess. Certainly, experience in Great Britain has shown that the one system of fire insurance which has contributed most to the public benefit is that which is conducted by joint-stock companies, offering to the insured the guarantee of their capital and other funds, and looking to make a profit by the business. In France, Belgium, Holland, Russia and Norway, also, the joint-stock plan is almost exclusively employed.

The earliest plan of insurance which was successful as a business was that practised at Lloyd’s Coffee-house (see Lloyd’s) in London, and there applied almost exclusively to marine risks. Although the association known as Lloyd’s. Lloyd’s has been for generations a strong financial institution, with every modern safeguard, and since 1871 has been a chartered corporation with large funds, yet its name has become accepted as the symbol of the primitive practice of combined underwriting by individuals, each upon his own credit, for a share of the risk and without common liability.

The rate of premium varies with the supposed risk, but certain descriptions of property are specially and more elaborately rated. This has been done to a considerable extent by common agreement amongst the offices, and the arrangements are known as the “tariff system,” which requires here a few words of explanation.

We may suppose the question to arise, What ought to be paid for insuring a cotton-mill, or a flax or woollen mill, or a weaving factory, or a wharf or warehouse in some large city? The experience of any one office scarcely affords adequate data, and a rate based on the combined experience of many offices has a greater chance of being at once safe and fair. The problem, indeed, is a more complicated one than what has been already said would indicate. The property to be insured may consist of several distinct buildings and the contents of them: one building may be devoted to operations involving in a high degree the risk of fire; in another the processes carried on may be more simple and safe; a third may be used only for the storage of materials having little tendency to burn. Fairly to measure these various hazards it has been found necessary that the experience and skill at the command of many companies shall be combined, and that the rates shall be the result of consultation and a common understanding.

Now it is clear that no office will contribute its skill and experience to such a common stock if the effect is to be that other offices may avail themselves of the information in order to undersell it. Consultation about rates and a common understanding necessarily involve a reciprocal obligation to charge not less than the rates thus agreed on; in other words, a tariff of rates is developed to which each office binds itself to adhere. The system tends to restrain and moderate the competition for business which inevitably and to some extent properly exists among the companies, and its value to them is manifest. But it is also of service to the insuring public. At first sight it might seem that free competition would suit the public best, and that a combination among the offices must tend to keep up rates, and to secure for the companies excessive profits, but a little consideration will show that this is a mistake.

It is an unquestionable truth, though one often lost sight of, that all losses by fire must ultimately be borne by the public. The insurance companies are the machinery for distributing these losses, nothing more. If the losses fell on them, their funds, large as they are, would speedily be exhausted, and the service which they render to the public would come to an end. To those who require insurance against loss by fire it must be a manifest advantage that they should have many sound and prosperous offices ready to accept their business, and no less able than desirious to earn or to retain the public favour by fair and liberal conduct. A necessary condition of this state of things is that the rates of premium paid for insurance should be remunerative to the offices, and the main object of the tariff system is to secure such remunerative rates.

This it endeavours to do by two methods—by an agreement as to what rates are to be charged, and by affixing such a penalty to dangerous constructions, substances and processes as to induce, if possible, a lessening of the danger. In other words, and reversing the order, it seeks to diminish the risk of fire, and to secure adequate payment for what risk remains. On the supposition that the offices are correct in their estimate of risks, the effect, and indeed the intention, of their rule is not so much to put money into their own coffers as to lessen the danger, and 662 to save themselves in the first instance, and the owners of property ultimately, from the consequences of preventible fires.

The Tariff system has steadily developed in minuteness of classification and in adaptation to wider experience, as well as to the changes in the character of many classes of risks by improvements in building and by the introduction Tariff difficulties. of new kinds of goods and machinery. The estimates of risk and the determination of premiums are largely governed by individual opinion and by competition, no amount of experience furnishing a statistical basis on which trustworthy predictions of average loss can be made. Hence it is only by constant co-operation among insuring institutions in the exchange and combination of their observations that justice can be done to them and to the public. The proper extent of this co-operation is easily attained where the business is free from all restrictions except those of the common law, as in Great Britain, and the competition of capital for profits is keen enough to keep the rates within reasonable limits. But in countries in which the government regulates the business in a more paternal spirit, and meddles with all its details for the avowed purpose of securing the safest and best public service, many difficulties arise. This is increasingly the case in several of the nations of Europe, notably in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.

The direction in which fire insurance as a social institution calls most pressingly for improvement is the extension of the principle of co-insurance. The importance of this can only be understood by remembering that the Need of co-insurance. aggregate losses of the community by fire are chiefly made up of innumerable small fires and not of sweeping conflagrations. The experience of every company confirms the general truth, that the number of fires in which a building is totally destroyed, or in which the loss amounts to the greater part of the property exposed under the same risk, is comparatively very small. It may be asserted with confidence that, in the grand aggregate of the business, much more than three-fourths of the loss occurs in fires in which less than one-tenth of the insurable value at risk is destroyed. The practical result is obvious. If fires destroy a million of dollars’ worth in property insured for its full value, and a million’s worth more in property insured for one-tenth of its value, the insurers will pay $1,000,000 upon the first group and more than $750,000 upon the second. But if all the insurance is taken at the same rate the insurers will have received premiums ten times as great on the former group as upon the latter. This rough illustration shows that in an equitable adjustment of rates the amount insured as compared with the value exposed is a prime element, and that premiums might justly form a scale, highest on the smallest fractions of 663 value, and diminishing rapidly as the percentage of insurance increases. Such a scale is, however, impracticable for many reasons, apart from the endless complications which, even if it could be constructed, it would introduce into the classification of risks. Any scientific plan of insurance, therefore, must provide another method for maintaining the proportion between amounts of premiums paid and the share in its benefits obtained for them. This is the purpose of what are generally called average or co-insurance clauses. The principle is, that when a proper rate for a class of risks is found, then the insured may protect at that rate any percentage of such a risk, and in case of fire shall be indemnified for the same percentage of his loss. When once clearly grasped, this principle largely simplifies and rectifies the business. It is in universal use in marine insurance under the name of “average,” and is there recognized as indispensable. It is embodied in all fire policies in France, Germany and several other countries of Europe, and in 1826 was made compulsory in Great Britain by law in all “floating policies,” those, that is, which cover stocks of goods distributed in several places and in fluctuating amounts. But it has not yet become general in Great Britain or America, although every writer of authority on the subject, and every practical underwriter of large experience, approves it. Systematic attempts have been made since about 1892 to extend its application in the United States with much success, but they have been met by strong opposition, which shows a widespread misunderstanding of its true bearing.

The varying attitude of several civilized governments towards the institution of insurance has found significant expression in their tax laws. In Great Britain a stamp duty of 6d. was imposed in 1694 upon “every piece of vellum or Taxation of insurance. parchment or sheet of paper upon which any policy of insurance should be engrossed or written,” and was doubled in 1698. It was further increased (reaching 3s. 10d. per policy in 1713) and varied by many subsequent acts, under some of which the percentage duty on fire insurance was also made payable by stamps upon policies. But in 1865 the stamp tax was finally reduced to the nominal sum of 1d. upon each policy. A far heavier burden, however, was imposed upon insurers by the measure of Lord North in 1782, charging all fire insurances in force with an annual duty of 1s. 6d. for every £100 insured. In 1815 the general rate was made 3s. per £100, but was collected once for all upon the policy when issued; and it so remained until reductions began in 1864. The duty was wholly abolished in 1869. The revenue from this source reached its highest point in 1863, when it was £1,714,622, presumably representing insurances effected in that year to the amount of £1,143,081,333. There are no data for determining the amount of premium receipts or of losses realized on the same volume of insurance; but the tax was recognized by economists as well as by all parties to the policy contracts as an excessive burden. In many instances it more than doubled the cost of insurance. Its effect in discouraging the prudent custom of insuring against fire was very serious, and after its abolition this custom extended so rapidly that it soon became, and continues, practically universal in Great Britain. Upon the continent of Europe fire insurance is generally taxed quite heavily; most so in France, where the direct duties on the premiums, together with the registry and stamp taxes paid by the companies, have been estimated to add one-fourth, or perhaps one-third, to the cost of insurance.

In the United States the companies are taxed, each by the state in which it is domiciled, upon their real estate, and often upon their capital, surplus of profits, and are required in other states to pay fees to the insurance departments, and commonly an excise of from 1 to 2½% of their premiums. An elaborate table is prepared each year by a committee of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, showing the aggregate amount of taxes paid by the companies operating in New York in comparison with their receipts and profits. The statement received and published by the board in 1900 contained the following:—

In qualification of this statement, it may be said that the reported expenses appear to include taxes, and that the additions charged, to liability are to some extent theoretical and flexible. It also appears from the state reports that upon the entire capital and net surplus of $191,000,000 employed in the business in the United States by 316 joint-stock companies, dividends to the amount of $8,000,000, or 4.2%, were paid in 1899 to shareholders. Nevertheless it is true that competition among the companies, together with unfriendly legislation, has reduced the profit upon their aggregate capital near the vanishing point, and that the taxes, the average rate of which increased 50% within the period 1891-1899, are heavier in many states than can be justified by public policy or by the analogy of other corporate interests. The true principle, doubtless, is that while the capital employed 664 in insurance for gain ought to contribute to the state the same share of its profits as other capital, yet the premiums, agencies, policies and entire machinery representing only losses, and providing for their distribution, should be exempted, as far as the necessities of the public treasury permit.

The most complete statistics of the fire insurance business collected in any country are those presented in the United States to the National Board Statistics. of Fire Underwriters at each annual meeting. The following summary of part of the information submitted by the committee on statistics, 10th May 1900, giving the amount of fire risks insured in the United States, premiums received for them, and losses paid upon them, by all joint-stock fire insurance companies for the year 1899 will serve as an example:—

Fire Insurance in the United Slates. Joint-Stock Companies.

These returns do not include mutual companies. The compilers of the Insurance Year-Book, however, obtain from the several state departments of insurance the reports of all companies made to them of the business done within each state; and from these it appears that in 1899, for example, 160 mutual companies assumed fire risks to the amount of $1,119,772,848. Many small local associations have made no returns, but their operations are too limited to materially affect the aggregate. It is noteworthy that while mutual companies transact less than 6% of the business of the whole country, yet in the state of Rhode Island, a densely peopled manufacturing community, they have more than 78%, and in Massachusetts nearly 24%; and that, while less than one-ninth of the insured property of the United States is situated in these two states, they contain nearly two-thirds of that which is insured by mutual associations.

In the United Kingdom the statistics of fire insurance are less accessible and less complete, no official records being made of the local distribution of the property insured, while the published accounts of the companies are not sufficiently uniform and detailed to make a trustworthy summary of the entire business possible. Much of it is done by foreign companies, of whose British business we have no separate statement. A statement of the revenue accounts of the various British companies insuring against fire will be found in the annual Insurance Blue Book and Guide.

In the Dominion of Canada the insurance companies make detailed reports to the government bureau, and the statistics of the business are full and accurate. The following table shows the aggregate business of five companies in the Dominion in 1869 and 1907:—

Upon the continent of Europe the fire insurance business is conducted partly by local companies in each country and partly by the great international offices of Great Britain and Germany. The local associations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland are of three classes—public assurance organizations connected with local governments, private mutual companies and joint-stock companies. It is impossible to obtain balance-sheets of all, nor is any information available concerning the local distribution of the risks, or the whole amount of property insured. The capital employed by stock corporations in this business in each country, and the aggregate premium receipts and payments for losses in the last year of which a report is available will be found in the annual Post Magazine Almanack.

While most of the fire insurance business in the Australian colonies is in the hands of British companies, local institutions for the purpose have had a considerable development on the same general lines as in Great Britain and with similar freedom from interference by the governments. But no accounts of the receipts and losses are available, most of the companies conducting a marine or life insurance business, or both, under the same general management.

665

IV. Life Insurance

Guesses at the probable length of life for the purpose of valuing or commuting life-estates, leases or annuities were made even by the ancients, and crude estimates of the number of years’ purchase such interests are worth occur in History. Roman law and in many medieval writings. In 1540 the English parliament enacted that an estate for a single life should be valued as a lease of seven years, one for two lives as a lease of fourteen years, and for three lives as a lease of twenty-one years. More than a century later The Cambridge Tables for renewing of Leases and purchasing Liens, a standard work in England, with the certificate of Sir Isaac Newton to its accuracy, proposed, as a remedy for the inequity of this fanciful rule, to make the increase for each additional life less by one year, so that, valuing a single life at ten years, two lives shall be reckoned as nineteen years and three lives as twenty-seven years. No distinction of ages was recognized, and the results, tabulated to decimal parts of months, are worthless. Thus the foremost minds of the world had as yet no apprehension of a true method of reasoning on the subject. The first clear insight into the character of the problem appears in Natural and Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality, published in 1661 under the name of John Graunt, a haberdasher and train-band captain of London. Graunt recognized the principle of uniformity in large groups of vital and social facts, and actually prepared, from the mortality registers of London, what he calls a “Table showing of one hundred quick conceptions, how many die within six years, how many the next decade, and so for every decade till 76.” This was the earliest crude suggestion of a table of mortality, and Graunt’s interest in the inquiry was scientific, without definite practical purpose. But a little later the sale of annuities was pressed upon governments as a method of discounting future revenues. In 1671 John de Witt, grand pensionary of Holland, reported to the states general a plan for such sales upon a scientific method, the insight and skill of which, had he possessed proper statistical data, would have anticipated results only reached by later generations. The report, however, was buried in the Dutch archives and forgotten for nearly two centuries. It was unknown in England when, in 1692, the government undertook the sale of annuities. A loan of £1,000,000 was offered, each £100 paid in to purchase a life annuity of £14, without distinction of age. A table accompanied the offer, purporting to show how many of 10,000 persons now living, old and young taken together at random, are likely to die in each year from one to ninety-nine. The purchasers, though without clear understanding of the principle, were instinctively shrewd enough to select healthy young lives for annuitants, and the nation paid enormously for the error. This speculation of the public treasury led the eminent mathematician and astronomer, Dr Edmund Halley, to examine the subject. In 1693 he presented to the Royal Society a study of “The degrees of mortality of mankind.” The parish registers of England took no note of age at death, and Halley, perceiving that the average duration Halley’s Table. of life in large groups of persons can only be determined when ages at death are known, sought in vain a statistical basis for such an inquiry in his own and in many other countries. But it happened that the city of Breslau in Silesia had kept such records, and he succeeded in obtaining the registers for five years, 1687-1691, including 6193 births and 5869 deaths. No census of the city having been taken, Halley made the best estimate he could of the population, and computed how many of a thousand children taken at the age of one year will die in each succeeding year. Arranging the results in three parallel columns, showing in successive lines the age, the number living at that age, and the number of deaths during the year, he formed the first mortality table. The arrangement was itself a discovery, exhibiting at a glance the essential data for valuing life-risks, and suggesting solutions for problems which had puzzled the ablest students. This general form of the mortality table remains in use as the natural and best for such collections of facts. The method of using such a table in calculating the values of life contingencies was also discovered by Dr Halley. He showed that where a payment is to be made at a future date, if a named person be then alive, its present value is the sum which compounded at interest during the interval will amount to that payment multiplied by the fraction representing the probability that the person will survive. These two elements, compound interest and the probability of life or death, are the foundations of the theory of life contingencies.

From Halley’s time the progress of the theory has been in three directions: first, in accumulating facts from which averages are deduced, and analysing the data so as to eliminate disturbing influences, that is, in constructing trustworthy tables of mortality; secondly, in extending the inferences from such tables, and multiplying their applications to needs of practical life; and thirdly, in facilitating the calculations which these applications require. But while Halley thus firmly and lastingly drew, in outline, the theory of life contingencies, the numerical results attained by him were grossly imperfect. Forced by the lack of data to assume that the population was stationary, and to rely on a rude estimate of its numbers, he well knew that his conclusions were but provisional. Yet they were far in advance of the general mind of his time. As late as 1694, and even in 1703, parliament substantially re-enacted the old law for valuing leases at seven years for each life. The meagre Breslau Table long remained the only serious attempt to utilize actual observations of mortality for scientific purposes. In 1746 A. de Parcieux (1703-1768), a mathematician of Paris, published an Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine, in which he presented mortality tables formed by himself, one from the records of certain Tontine associations, and five others from those of several religious orders in Paris. The Tontine experience table was a much closer approximation to the true course of mortality, as shown by later investigations, than any of its predecessors, and indeed now appears, despite the crude manner in which the materials were treated, to have been more accurate and more trustworthy than the Northampton or even the Carlisle Table of much later date. The essay of de Parcieux was an important source of information to advanced students in France and Germany, but attracted no general or popular interest, nor was it followed up by progressive researches of the same character in continental Europe, while it remained almost unnoticed in England.

Throughout the 18th century the customary treatment of life annuities was as chaotic and fanciful as before, though some writers of eminence, most notably Dr Thomas Simpson of London (1752), treated the theory of the subject with great intelligence, and in 1753 James Dodson of London (great-grandfather of Augustus de Morgan) projected a life insurance company in which the premiums should be accommodated justly to the ages of the insured. But life insurance as a business really began with the Equitable Society of London, founded in 1762. The associates petitioned for a charter, but the law officers of the crown refused it, saying that the scheme depended for success on the truth of certain tables of life and death, “Whereby the Chance of Mortality is attempted to be reduced to a certain standard. This is a mere speculation, never tried in practice.” The society was organized as a voluntary association, and began business in 1765. Its premiums were computed from the Breslau Table, with some corrections from the London Bills of Mortality, and were far higher than any now in use. But the managers, in face of actual business, needed more light. Dr Richard Price, a student of the new science of life contingencies, was consulted, and soon devised tests of the society’s experience and measures of the financial results, which are in principle those still practised. He also aspired to construct a more accurate table of mortality, and discovered data in certain parish registers of Northampton which promised to represent the average of life in England. Northampton Table. From these he formed in 1780 the Northampton Table of Mortality, and computed a new and largely reduced scale of premiums for the society. The historical importance of the Northampton Table lies in the profound impression it made on the general mass of intelligent persons. 666 Although mortality had long been recognized by special inquirers as a promising theme for statistical inquiry, its actual treatment, except in the narrow school founded by Johann Süssmilch in Germany (1746), and in the isolated and almost prophetic work of de Parcieux in France, had been speculative and vague. Demoivre handled it with mathematical acuteness, but framed his scale of mortality (about 1750) on a hypothesis of his own, not on known facts. Out of each group of eighty-six deaths, according to this scale, one dies on the average each year till all are gone; so that x being the present age, the probability of death within a year is always 1/(86-x). This conjecture, which, during middle life, served as a rough approximation to the truth, almost as well as some of the early tables of repute, long found remarkable acceptance among men of science. Dr Price’s researches first brought to general apprehension the conviction that a large basis of observed facts is the only source of real knowledge. The government of the day felt the influence of the movement. In 1786 Pitt, then chancellor of the exchequer, consulted Dr Price on plans for the conversion of debt, and in 1789 the government first showed knowledge that in granting annuities ages must be distinguished, and that the prospective life at ninety and that at twenty-five are not to be estimated as equal. About 1808 a conversion of 3% into annuities was planned. The Northampton Table was adopted, and Morgan computed rates from it which were used for twenty years. It proved to represent a mortality far in excess of the average, and in 1821 John Finlaison, being made actuary to the debt commissioners, protested against the rates in use. But not until 1828, when the treasury had lost two millions of pounds by selling annuities too cheap, was the law repealed. Finlaison then constructed a new and less wasteful scale for conversions, but singular results followed. At the age of ninety, for instance, £100 would purchase an annuity of £62. Combinations were formed to purchase annuities on the lives of old people selected for their vigour; 675 of these were taken, with a further loss of at least a million to the treasury. The Northampton Table, in fact, like the earlier Breslau Table, was formed without a census, and upon the false assumption that the population was stationary. Dr Price’s estimate, founded on the recorded baptisms, was much too low, many of the people being of a sect which rejected infant baptism. His table represents an average life of twenty-four years, whilst subsequent inquiries indicate a true average of about thirty years at that time in the same parishes. The actual mortality in the Equitable Society proved to be less by one-third than that anticipated by the table. The error had consequences of vast moment. The immediate and dazzling prosperity of the societies founding rates on this supposed scientific basis excited the public imagination, stimulated the business exceedingly, and led to many extravagant projects, followed by fluctuations and failures which impaired its healthy growth and usefulness.

In spite of gross defects, the Northampton Table remained for a century by far the most important table of mortality, employed as the basis of calculation by leading companies in Great Britain, and adopted by the courts Recent actuarial progress. as practically a part of the common law. Parliament, followed by some state legislatures and many courts in America, even made it the authorized standard for valuing annuity charges and reversionary interests. But in life insurance practice it is now wholly antiquated. Like its most famous successor, the Carlisle Table of Joshua Milne, it rested upon observations of the population of a town. How far this limited and peculiar group represented the nation was still doubtful; no less so how far the rate of mortality among applicants for insurance, accepted by the offices, would correspond with that of the urban citizens or of the whole body. As soon as the companies had sufficient records of their own experience the work began of striving to construct, for business use, tables which should truly express it. This branch of research has ever since been prosecuted with all the resources they could command of industry, practical judgment and mathematical skill; and the successive achievements in it may be accepted as in general the sum and measure of the progress of actuarial science. Now the recognition of an ascertainable uniformity in human mortality has become part of the general stock of thought. But actuarial science, which originated in Great Britain, was long the peculiar and almost exclusive possession of British students, and even till now has been practised most fruitfully in its first home, mainly by the actuaries of life insurance institutions, but with important contributions from other inquirers, especially those in the service of the registrar-general. The most complete storehouse of technical and practical learning on the general theory and on all its applications to life insurance practice is found in the successive volumes of the Journal of the Institute of Actuaries. The tables published by the Institute in 1872, founded on the experience to 1863 of twenty companies (see Annuity), still remain the most authoritative expression of the mortality of insured lives, and have largely replaced all earlier standards in the valuations of the British companies, more than three-fourths of which, in their latest returns to the Board of Trade, compute their reinsurance reserves by the Hm. and Hm.5 tables. But for several years a committee of the Institute and of the Scottish Faculty of Actuaries has been engaged in collecting and arranging for investigation the far vaster experience which has now accumulated in the hands of sixty companies, including the records of more than a million policies. The large basis of facts thus obtained will be treated with special reference to different classes of risks, and will throw much light on difficult questions of selection, which have hitherto been treated speculatively, or at least without the conclusive evidence of large averages, and are still more or less in controversy. Some of these will require more detailed notice hereafter.

Elaborate efforts have been made by several governments to employ the machinery of census bureaus for determining the general rate of mortality, and it has been the worthy ambition of able actuaries to devise trustworthy methods of utilizing the census returns for this purpose. The British Statistical Office under Dr William Farr and his successors, and, later, the Swiss Federal Bureau of Statistics have accomplished Rates of mortality. the best work in this direction, and the series of “English Life Tables,” founded on successive decennial censuses, interpreted by the registered deaths during the intervals, are the most useful data now available for the average value of civilized life. But all such general tables are as yet but tentative and provisional. The imperfections of mortuary registries and of census returns are great, and corrections are largely conjectural. Until more complete methods of collecting the facts are practised, the experience of life insurance companies promises to furnish the only mortality tables having claim to authority. It is already becoming evident that the general rate of mortality, and in particular the rate at each age of life, not only differs widely in different communities, but undergoes important changes in successive generations. A multitude of forces are at work in civilized society which must influence the average duration of life, such as the extension and concentration of many industries, the vast growth of cities, the progress of medical and hygienic science, the increase of wealth, comfort and luxury, the changes in the frequency and destructiveness of war. It is plausibly maintained, on the one hand, that these and other causes have already added some years to the average lifetime of civilized man; and, on the other hand, that their combined effect has been to lessen the sharpness of the struggle for existence, to rescue the weaklings from destruction and enable them to multiply, and so to weaken society at large. The final decision of the question will be found in the gradual modifications of the true table of mortality through successive epochs.

For the purposes of life insurance the future of mortality tables looks to less ambitious problems. The business calls for exact equity in determining the value of all life contingencies, and therefore for the most precise forecast attainable of the dates at which the amounts assured must be paid. Some idea of the historical progress of this inquiry may be gathered from the accompanying table, which epitomizes the general characteristics of a number of typical tables of mortality, showing at ages which are multiples of five years the annual death-rate indicated by each of them. The comparison will be found interesting in many ways, most strikingly, perhaps, as suggesting what is confirmed by a detailed examination of the facts, that insured life on the average in Great Britain is decidedly inferior to that in the United States, but superior to that upon the continent of Europe, and especially in Germany. From a careful investigation of the published experience, Dr McClintock concludes: “It is an ascertained fact that after the first five years of insurance the probability of death,” in Great Britain, “is fully one-fifth greater at any given age than the corresponding probability shown by American experience”; while “the average value of assured life in Germany is as much inferior to that shown in the Hm. experience as that in America has been found to be superior.”1

Table showing the number of Persons who will die in a year out of 100,000 who have attained the given Age, according to several Tables of Mortality.

No final explanation has been given, and there is no proof that the average life in America is longer than in England or Germany. Dr McClintock inclines to believe that one potent cause of the great difference in the insured experience Problems of selection. is that, while European offices have generally awaited applications, which are commonly prompted by some sense of need for insurance, the custom of American companies is actively to solicit business through agents. On the average, lives which are only induced by persuasion to insure are better than those which voluntarily apply. That this suggestion points 668 out a real and perhaps an important differentiating influence upon groups of risks is not doubted, but the measure of its effects has not yet been determined. The question is one of many which yearly assume more prominence, and which, as a class, are conventionally termed problems of selection. Assuming that the general rate of mortality is precisely known, any deviation from it occurring in a special group of insured lives, as the result of some influence peculiar to that group, is called the effect of selection. If insurance were offered on equal terms to all, the feeble and dying would apply in disproportionate numbers, and the mortality would be excessive. To avoid this danger careful medical examinations are required, excluding risks which appear to be impaired; and this selection by the insurer uniformly reduces the mortality below the general average during the earliest years of insurance. During these years large numbers of the insured withdraw, either from inability or from indisposition to pay their premiums, but the motive to do so is weakest with lives which have become impaired. The average vitality is lowered by the loss on the whole of a superior class, and the average mortality of those who persist rises. The extent of this influence varies widely with the proportionate number of lapses and the motives which induce them, increasing in a startling degree when lapses multiply in a discredited company, and remaining small, or even at times doubtful, under very favourable conditions; so that the ascertainment of its amount in different circumstances, and for different groups of the insured, is a problem of extreme complication. Its importance is increased by two tendencies which have grown stronger in the practice of recent years: first, to permit at all times the withdrawal by any policyholder of a substantial part of the technical or average reserve upon his assurance, a privilege which legislation and public opinion in the United States have extorted from the companies; and, secondly, the extensive introduction, under competition for public favour, of forms of policies which grant the option, at fixed dates in the future, between withdrawing the entire “accumulations,” or technical reserve and surplus, and continuing the insurance. It is well known that at the maturity of these options the motive is strong for impaired lives to remain insured, and that the cash withdrawals are so largely of superior lives that the subsequent rate of mortality is much increased. Other problems in selection arise from varieties in the forms of policies. It is commonly recognized that there are general and marked differences between the mortality experienced upon assurances issued at low and those at high premium rates. Policies for short terms, on which the computed net rates are the lowest, have been found so unprofitable to the insurers that they are rarely granted, and only with a very heavy loading of the tabular value. Upon those insured for life, with annual premiums, there is a large and constant excess of death losses above the endowment assurances, while groups of policies with tontine or cumulative features or reserved bonuses, available only after surviving a term of years, uniformly experience a low mortality.

It is also to be remarked that it is found in general that the average amount of policies matured by death is higher than the average of all policies in force; and some actuaries incline to believe that tables of pecuniary loss might, for practical use, take the place of tables of mortality, since the actual claims are in units of money, not of lives. The vast field of inquiry opened to actuaries by these and many more special questions of selection promises to engross more and more of their attention and labour. The technical methods of reducing and treating the data of mortality have been brought to a high degree of perfection, but the necessity for a better classification of the data themselves, with reference to special groups of lives or policies, differentiated by social or local circumstances, by business methods, by forms of contract, by race or personal characteristics, must assume ever greater prominence. It is conceivable that, at some period hereafter, the practical reliance of the offices will be more upon tables to be computed for such special groups, from select experience, than upon those drawn from vast aggregates without discriminating among their somewhat incongruous divisions.

The mortality tables in common use, however, have been proved by a vast experience to furnish a safe and fairly equitable basis for the business of assuring lives. Assuming that the table shows how many of a large group now The interest factor. assured may be expected to end in each succeeding year, the present value of the claims upon them depends exclusively upon the rate of interest at which funds will accumulate. Exact foresight of this rate being impossible, the insurer must assume a rate which can with certainty be realized. The difficult problem of determining the limits of safety in this assumption attracts the more attention now, because of the recent persistent decline in the average productiveness of invested capital. The actuary is forced to observe that the interest factor in his calculations is much less definitely fixed by known facts than the mortality factor. The longer a contract has to run, the greater the effect of the difference in rate. The value of a payment to be made in thirty years is greater by above one-half with interest taken at 3% than at 4½%, and one to be made in thirty-six years is more than twice as great. Hence the most careful study of the forces determining for long periods the average rate of interest is fundamental in life insurance. The tendency of opinion is to hold that a progressive lowering of interest rates must result from the accumulation of wealth. In support of this belief it is pointed out that from 1872 nearly to the present time there has been a general and somewhat uniform decline in the yield of invested capital, as represented by government stocks, mortgage loans, savings bank deposits and discounts in all commercial nations. The movement has been disguised by wide fluctuations, temporary or local, but has been on the whole world-wide and continuous, when great masses of capital, such as the investments of life companies, are kept in view. The fall has been greatest, too, in countries where rates were formerly highest, suggesting that as the great financial markets of the world become more intimately connected the normal rate of interest assumes a more cosmopolitan character, with an increasing tendency to equality among them. These considerations have had an important influence upon the computations of life insurance companies. In Great Britain, and commonly in continental Europe, the leading offices from the first assumed lower rates of interest than those in America, usually 3½ or 3%; and the reductions in their estimates have as yet been moderate, only thirty-one out of seventy-four British offices having lowered the interest basis in their valuations reported to the Board of Trade.

There are not wanting, however, indications that the protracted decline in rates of interest in the world’s markets may have been checked, and even that a reverse movement has begun. Rates of discount everywhere, interest on government loans except in America, and on mortgage loans in Europe, have on the whole advanced, the minimum average rates having been reached, after twenty-five years of gradual reduction, in 1897. These facts are entirely consistent with the conclusions suggested by the history of the subject. No uniform or secular tendency to reduction in the average rate of interest, which is the index of the average productiveness of capital, not of its amount, can be found to have prevailed. Fluctuations in the average rate are found, quite independent of the local and temporary fluctuations, which are often extreme; and these long tidal waves of change have at times, for generations together, risen and fallen with some approach to periodicity. The prevailing rate has been a little 669 lower on the average in the 19th century than in the 18th, but was lower through the middle decades of the 18th century than through those of the 19th. On the whole, it seems clear that the accumulation of wealth in itself has no necessary tendency to diminish the productiveness of capital; that this productiveness, on the general average, has not materially varied in many generations; but that the promise and expectation of productiveness which prompt the demand for its use depend upon the activity of enterprise, growing out of the prevailing spirit of hope; upon the rapidity with which new inventions are made, industries extended, and floating or loanable capital expended in permanent works. These conditions are subject to fluctuations extending through considerable periods, so that for a number of years the rate may be higher, and then for a similar series of years lower than the normal rate, determined by average productiveness, but always tending to return to this normal rate, as the tide-swept surface of the ocean to its normal level.

The business of life insurance being founded on well-ascertained natural laws, and on principles of finance which in their broad aspect are of the simplest description, there exists no necessity for frequent close scrutiny of the affairs of an Assets and reserve. insurance office, in so far as the maintenance of a mere standard of solvency is concerned. We have seen that the premiums charged for insurances are based on certain assumptions in regard to (1) the rate of mortality to be experienced, (2) the rate of interest to be earned by the office on its funds, and (3) the proportion of the premiums to be absorbed in expenses and in providing against unforeseen contingencies. If these assumptions are reasonably safe, an insurance office proceeding upon them may be confidently regarded as solvent so long as there is no conspicuously unfavourable deviation from what has been anticipated and provided for, and so long as the funds are not impaired by imprudent investments or otherwise. The ascertainment and division of profits, however, require that the affairs should be looked into periodically; but the fluctuations to which the surplus funds are liable within limited periods of time are generally regarded as furnishing a sufficient reason why such investigations should not take place too frequently. Accordingly in most offices the division of profits takes place only at stated intervals of years—usually five or seven years—when a complete survey is taken of the whole engagements present and future, and of the funds available to meet these. The mode in which the liability of an office under its current policies is estimated requires explanation.

All statistical observations on the duration of human life point to the conclusion that, after the period of extreme youth is past, the death-rate among any given body of persons increases gradually with advancing age. If, therefore, insurance premiums were annually adjusted according to the chances of death corresponding to the current age of the insured, their amount would be at first smaller, but ultimately larger, than the uniform annual payment required to insure a given sum whenever death may occur. This is illustrated by the following figures, calculated from the HM mortality table at 3% interest. In column 2 is the uniform annual premium at age thirty for a whole-term insurance of £100. In column 3 are shown the premiums which would be required at the successive ages stated in column 1 to insure £100 in the event of death taking place within a year. Column 4 shows the differences between the figures in column 2 and those in column 3.

From this table it appears that if a number of persons effect, at the age of thirty, whole-term insurances on their lives by annual premiums which are to remain of uniform amount during the subsistence of the insurances, each of them pays for the first year £1.130 more than is required for the risk of that year. The second year the premiums are each £1.111 in excess of that year’s risk. The third year the excess Is only £1.093, and so it diminishes from year to year. By the time the individuals who survive have reached the age of fifty-four, their uniform annual premiums are no longer sufficient for the risk of the following year; and this annual deficiency goes on increasing until at the extreme age in the table it amounts to £95.207, the difference between the uniform annual premium (£1.880) and the present value (£97.087) of £100 certain to be paid at the end of a year. Now, since the uniform annual premiums are just sufficient to provide for the ultimate payment of the sums insured, it is obvious that the deficiencies of later years must be made up by the excess of the earlier payments; and, in order that the insurance office may be in a position to meet its engagements, these surplus payments must be kept in hand and accumulated at interest until they are required for the purpose indicated. It is, in effect, the accumulated excess here spoken of which constitutes the measure of the company’s liability under its policies, or the sum which it ought to have in hand to be able to meet its engagements. In the individual case this sum is usually called the “reserve value” of a policy.

In another view the reserve value of a policy is the difference between the present value of the engagement undertaken by the office and the present value of the premiums to be paid in future by the insured. This view may be regarded as the counterpart of the other. For practical purposes it is to be preferred as it is independent of the variations of past experience, and requires only that a rate of mortality and a rate of interest be assumed for the future.

The preceding formulae indicate clearly the nature of the calculations by which an insurance office is able to ascertain the amount of funds which ought to be kept in hand to provide for the liabilities to the assured. In cases Net liability. other than whole-term insurances by uniform annual premiums, the formulae are subject to appropriate modifications. When there are bonus additions to the sums insured, the value of these must be added, so that by the foregoing formula (1), for 670 example, the value of a policy for 1 with bonus additions B is (1 + B)Ax+n − P(1 + ax+n). But the general principles of calculation are the same in all cases. The present value of the whole sums undertaken to be paid by the office is ascertained on the one hand, and on the other hand the present value of the premiums to be received in future from the insured. The difference between these (due provision being made for expenses and contingencies, as afterwards explained) represents the “net liability” of the office. Otherwise the net liability is arrived at by calculating separately the value of each policy by an adaptation of one or other of the above formulae. In either case, an adjustment of the annuity-values is made, in order to adapt these to the actual conditions of a valuation, when the next premiums on the various policies are not actually due, but are to become due at various intervals throughout the succeeding year.

Valuations may be made on different data as to mortality and interest, and the resulting net liability will be greater or less according to the nature of these. Under any given table of mortality a valuation at a low rate of Effects of different data. interest will produce a larger net liability—will require a higher reserve to be made by the office against its future engagements to the insured—than a valuation at a higher rate. The effect of different assumptions in regard to the rates of mortality cannot be expressed in similar terms. A table of mortality showing a high death-rate, and requiring consequently large assurance premiums, does not necessarily produce large reserve values. The contrary, indeed, may be the case, as with the Northampton Table, which requires larger premiums than the more modern tables, but gives on the whole smaller reserve values. The amount of the net liability depends, not on the absolute magnitude of the rates of mortality indicated by the table, but on the ratio in which these increase from age to age.

A prevailing fallacy in the popular mind, which has grown out of the practice of net valuations, is the inference that the average technical reserve represents the value of the individual policy. Each risk is properly assumed at Fallacy of single-policy reserve. its probable or average value at the time. But from that moment its circumstances are constantly changing in directions then unforeseen, and the expectation that such changes will occur is the motive for insuring. To treat them singly as unchanged in value at any later time is as illogical as 671 it would be after some have matured. The actual value of any one risk borne by a company is indeterminate. It may become a claim to-morrow, or not for a generation to come. In the former case the company must now hold funds to pay in full; in the latter, the future premiums will perhaps more than suffice, so that no present reserve is needed. An entire reserve for the whole body of risks is essential, and its amount is definite, upon the reasonable assumption that the general average remains undisturbed by individual changes. A distinct reserve for a single policy is inconceivable. To recognize it is to deny the first principle of insurance. The average amount by which the reserve of a company must be increased, because of the existence of policies of a given class, is to the actuary an important fact, and is commonly accepted as his best guide in the distribution of surplus. But a popular theory has seized upon the assignment of this average sum to each policy, in the technical shorthand of the actuary, and holds that it is in each case the special property of the owner of that policy. The practical consequences are serious when, as often, many of the insured cease to pay premiums, and each demands the amount of the supposed individual reserve. His right to claim it is countenanced by a widespread public opinion, which has inspired statutes in Massachusetts and some other states, requiring companies to redeem all policies lapsing after the first two or three years of insurance at a price founded on the technical reserve. Yet, in by far the majority of instances, the lapse of policies is of itself a loss to the company. It is deprived of business secured at much expense before it has derived any of the advantage expected from the accession. It is compelled to pay numbers of its profitable contributors for ceasing to contribute. The burden falls in a mutual company upon the insured who fulfil their contracts. Such laws favour those who withdraw after few payments at the cost of those who maintain their insurance to the end, or for many years. The American companies formerly yielded to the pressure of a mistaken public sentiment, and competed for favour by promising excessive values in case of surrender.2 Similar conditions exist in Switzerland, Austria, and other countries in which the business is minutely regulated by government bureaus. But in Great Britain the companies are largely free from such influences, while an open market exists for policies which have a commercial value, with results on the whole more satisfactory to all parties interested than any rule of compulsory purchase which could be enforced on the companies.

A special form of life insurance, which has wonderfully developed, is the family insurance of the labouring people by the so-called industrial companies. Until recently this class of people had no satisfactory share in the benefits Industrial Insurance. of insurance, although the friendly societies in Great Britain, and many forms of beneficial associations in the United States, were attempts, often in part successful, to provide for special wants, mainly for maintenance of the sick and for the costs of burial. Most of them, however, lacked a scientific basis and an efficient and permanent organization, while thousands of them were grossly mismanaged. In Germany an elaborate scheme of compulsory insurance for labourers was established by a law of the empire in 1883, and extended in subsequent years; and similar legislation has been enacted in several other countries, most thoroughly in Switzerland and Austria. The ultimate value of this great social experiment cannot yet be determined. That it relieves much want and does a great service in preventing pauperism is not disputed; but that it also undermines the independent spirit of the people, and that it imposes a burden upon the national industry, which not only hampers it in the world’s competition, but reacts with special injury upon the class it aims to benefit, are criticisms not satisfactorily answered. No scheme of government insurance, certainly, is adapted to a people impatient of paternalism in its rulers and thoroughly habituated to voluntary association for all common interests. The solution of the great problem, how to apply the insurance principle to the most pressing needs for protection of the class supported by the wages of labour, is now sought in Great Britain and America mainly in the universal offer to them of industrial insurance. The Prudential Assurance Company of London was the pioneer in this work, beginning it experimentally in 1848, but gradually adapting its methods to the new field, until a generation later they showed themselves so efficient that an extraordinary growth resulted, and has continued without interruption. This company and others upon a similar plan insure whole households together for burial expenses in case of death, and a small provision for dependants or for old age, charging as premiums small fractions of a day’s wages, which must be collected weekly. The great difficulties encountered were the cost of small and frequent collections, and the high rate of mortality, which is from 40 to 90% more than that in the experience of the older companies. This high death-rate is due not so much to the fact that life is shorter in the labouring class as to the lack of efficient medical selection, which would be too costly. The premiums, at best, must be made higher than in offices insuring for annual payments, but the demand for insurance extended as rapidly as the system could be explained, and the Prudential is said to have now in force some 12,000,000 policies, with an average premium of twopence a week, secured by an accumulated insurance fund of £17,000,000. It has superseded a host of petty assessment societies of various classes without scientific basis or business responsibility, which deluded and disappointed the poor. The British government in 1864 undertook to administer a plan for the insurance of working men, but in thirty years accomplished less than the work of one private company in a year. In addition to the many insurance companies which transact industrial business in the United Kingdom, a large number of friendly societies have adopted similar plans.

There are various sources from which a surplus of funds may arise in an insurance company: (1) from the rate of interest actually earned being higher than that anticipated in the calculations; (2) from the death-rate among the insured Division of surplus. 672 being lower than that provided for by the mortality tables; (3) from the expenses and contingent outlay being less than the “loading” provided to meet them; and (4) from miscellaneous sources, such as profitable investments, the cancelment of policies, &c.

Supposing a valuation to have been made on sound data and by a proper method, and to have resulted in showing that the funds in hand exceed the liabilities, the surplus thus ascertained may be regarded as profit, and either its amount may be withdrawn from the assets of the office or the liabilities may be increased in a corresponding degree.

Various methods are employed by insurance companies in distributing their surplus funds among the insured. In some offices the share or “bonus” falling to each policyholder is paid to him in cash; in others it is applied Bonuses. in providing a reversionary sum which is added to the amount assured by the policy; in others it goes to reduce the annual contributions payable by the policyholder. A method of more recent introduction is to apply the earlier bonuses on a policy to limit the term for which premiums may be payable, thus relieving the policyholder of his annual payments after a certain period. Another method is to apply the bonuses towards making the sum insured payable in the lifetime of the policyholder. The plan of reversionary bonus additions is most common, and when it is followed the option is usually given of exchanging the bonuses for their value in cash or of having them applied in the reduction of premiums.

Not only are there different modes of applying surplus, but the basis on which it is divided among the insured also varies in different offices. In some the reversionary bonus is calculated as an equal percentage per annum of the sum insured, reckoning back either to the commencement of the policy in every case, or (more commonly) to the preceding division of profits. In others the rate is calculated, not only on the original sums insured, but also on previous bonus additions. In others the ratio of distribution is applied to the cash surplus, and the share allotted to each policy is dealt with in one or other of the ways above indicated. The following are some of the ratios employed by different offices in the allocation of profits: (1) in proportion to the amount of premiums paid (with or without accumulated interest) since the last preceding valuation; (2) in proportion to the accumulated “loading” of the premiums so paid; (3) in proportion to the reserve values of the policies; (4) in proportion to the difference between the accumulated premiums and the reserve value of the policy in each case.

Some offices have a special system of dealing with surplus, reserving it for those policyholders who survive the ordinary “expectation of life,” or whose premiums paid, with accumulated interest, amount to the sums insured by their policies. This system is usually connected with specially low rates of premium.

In those branches of insurance where the contract is one of indemnity against loss, the risk remaining the same from year to year—and where the consent of both parties, insurer and insured, is required at each periodical renewal—no Surrender values. question of allowance in respect of past payments can arise when one party or the other determines to drop the contract. It is quite recognized that the premiums are simply an equivalent for the risk undertaken during the period to which they apply, with a certain margin for expenses and for profit to the insurer, and that therefore a favourable issue of the particular contract supplies no argument for a return of any part of the sums paid. In life insurance, however, we have shown that the premiums contain a third element, namely, the portion that is set aside and accumulated to meet the risk of the insurance when the premium payable is no longer sufficient of itself for that purpose.

When a policyholder withdraws from his contract with a life insurance office, the provision made for the future in respect of his particular insurance is no longer required, and out of it a surrender value may be allowed him for giving up his right to the policy. If there were no reasons to the contrary, the office might hand over the whole of this provision, which is in fact the reserve value of the policy. No more could be given without encroaching upon the provision necessary for the remaining policies. But the policyholder in withdrawing is exercising a power which circumstances give to him only and not to the other party in the contract. The office is bound by the policy so long as the premiums are duly paid and the other conditions of insurance are not infringed. It has no opportunity of reviewing its position and withdrawing from the bargain should that appear likely to be a losing one. The policyholder, however, is free to continue or to drop the insurance as he pleases, and it may fairly be presumed that he will take whichever course will best serve his own interest. The tendency obviously is that policies on deteriorated and unhealthy lives are kept in force, while those on lives having good prospects of longevity are more readily given up. Again, the retiring policyholder, by withdrawing his annual contribution, not only diminishes the fund from which expenses are met, but lessens the area over which these are spread, and so increases the burden for those who remain. Considerations like these point to the conclusion that, in fairness to the remaining constituents of the office, the surrender value to be allowed for a policy which is to be given up should be less than the reserve value. The common practice is to allow a proportion only of the reserve value. Some offices have adopted the plan of allowing a specified proportion of the amount of premiums paid. This plan is not defended on any ground of principle, but is followed for its simplicity and as a concession to a popular demand for fixed surrender values.

Another mode of securing to retiring policyholders the benefit of the reserve values of their insurances is that known as the non-forfeiture system. This system was first introduced in America, whence it found its way to the United Non-forfeiture system. Kingdom, where it was gradually adopted by a large proportion of the insurance companies. In its original form it was known as the “ten years non-forfeiture plan.” The policies were effected by premiums payable during ten years only, the rates being of course correspondingly high. If during those ten years the policyholder wished to discontinue his payments, he was entitled to a free “paid-up policy” for as many tenth parts of the original sum insured as he had paid premiums. 673 The system, once introduced, was gradually extended first to insurances effected by premiums payable during longer fixed periods, and ultimately, by some offices, to insurances bearing annual premiums during the whole of life. The methods of fixing the amount of paid-up policy in the last-mentioned class of cases vary in different offices, but the principle underlying them all is that of applying the reserve value to the purchase of a new insurance of reduced amount.

An office, in entering on a contract of life insurance, does so in the faith that all circumstances material to be known in order to a proper estimate of the risk have been disclosed. These circumstances are beyond its own Conditions of insurance. knowledge, and as the office for the most part (except as regards the result of the medical examination, which may reveal features of the case unknown to the proposer himself) is dependent on the information furnished by the party seeking to effect the insurance, it is proper that the latter be made responsible for the correctness of such information. Accordingly it is made a stipulation, preliminary to the issue of every policy, that all the required information bearing upon the risk shall have been truly and fairly stated, and that in case of any misrepresentation, or any concealment of material facts, the insurance shall be forfeited. In practice, however, this forfeiture is rarely insisted on unless there has been an evident intention to deceive. Other systems and conditions of life insurance policies may be shortly noticed.

The usual division of policies is into “non-participating” and “participating.” Non-participating policies are contracts for the payment on death of a certain fixed sum in consideration of a given premium, and these amounts are not affected by the profit made by the company. Participating policies entitle the holders to a share in the profits of the company. These profits are applied in various ways, as described above. A policy may be a whole life one, that is, the policyholder may pay a periodical premium throughout life, or it may be a limited payment one (the holder paying a premium for a limited number of years), or an endowment policy, under which the insurer receives the amount he has insured for at a given age, say fifty-five or sixty; or if death occur previously, the sum is paid to his representatives. There are also endowment policies for children, under which parents or others receive a specified sum on a child attaining a given age, the premiums being returnable if the child dies before the specified age.

No branch of social statistics has been more diligently studied than life insurance, and several governments publish classified accounts of corporations insuring lives within their jurisdiction. But the reports are not uniform in method and in periods covered, and aggregates derived from them must be used with reserve. By the Life Assurance Companies Act 1870, and amendments made in later years, each company issuing policies in the United Kingdom must deposit with the Board of Trade every year its revenue account and balance-sheet for the preceding year, and must at fixed intervals cause an investigation of its financial condition to be made by an actuary, and furnish the public through the Board of Trade with the detailed results, in forms prescribed by the act. Thus these returns are the highest authority for the conditions and operations of the offices, which often supplement or anticipate them by voluntary publications. In the United States the laws exact still more minute and much prompter reports to the insurance departments of the states; and every annual statement is required to show the results of an actuarial investigation. All these facts are collected, classified and compared by statisticians for several standard annuals in both countries, especially the Post Magazine Almanack, Bourne’s Directory and Manual and the Insurance Blue Book in London, and The Insurance Year-Book of the Spectator Company in New York.

V. British Post Office Insurance

In 1864 Mr Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer, advocated the extension of life insurance amongst persons of small means, and, encouraged by the remarkable success of the 674 Post Office Savings Bank, then recently established, proposed that the services of the postmaster-general should be enlisted in the promotion of insurance. The result was the passing of the Government Annuities Act 1864. This act authorized the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt, for the first time, to insure a life without granting an annuity upon it, and enabled the postmaster-general to act as the agent of the commissioners in the issue of life policies and the grant of annuities. The limits of insurance were fixed at £20 and £100, and of annuities at £4 and £50; and the purchase of deferred annuities or old-age pay, by monthly, or even more frequent instalments, was sanctioned. The work was eagerly accepted by Lord Stanley of Alderley, the postmaster-general of the day, and the machinery for putting the act in action was elaborated by Frank Ives Scudamore of the Post Office and Sir Alexander Spearman of the National Debt office. The business was commenced on the 17th of April 1865. By the end of the year 560 policies of insurance had been issued, and 94 immediate and 54 deferred annuities granted. In the first twelve months these figures had increased to 809 policies and 230 annuities. The opportunity thus given of insuring through the Post Office with government security was not, however, embraced with the warmth which had been anticipated. In 1882, when Mr Henry Fawcett, then in office, examined the subject, he found that the average number of policies of insurance granted annually during the seventeen years which had elapsed was under 400—less, in fact, than during the first twelve months of the system. The purchase of annuities had increased slightly, but the business was transacted chiefly in immediate annuities, and hardly indicated any progress in provision for old age by means of early savings. Mr Fawcett procured a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the subject. Before this committee Mr James Cardin, then assistant receiver and accountant-general of the Post Office, propounded a scheme for combining the annuity and insurance business of the Post Office with that of the savings bank. The Committee recommended the adoption of this scheme, together with some enlargement of range and some relaxation of conditions. The recommendations of the Committee were embodied in the Government Annuities Act 1882, which came into operation on the 3rd of June 1884, and which forms the basis of the present system.

VI. Marine Insurance

Marine insurance long antedates the kindred businesses of fire and life insurance. Villani, a 14th-century Florentine historian, speaks of marine insurance as having originated in Lombardy in 1182. This proves, at History. least, that in his day it was no novelty. It is mentioned in a Pisan ordinance of 1318, and in Venetian public documents of the early years of the 15th century. The earliest form of policy known is that given in the Florentine statute of 1523. It is uncertain whether insurance was introduced into England directly from Italy or by way of Flanders. The earliest policies issued in England which have yet been discovered are in Italian, but the subscriptions are in English (“Santa Maria di Venetia,” Cadiz to London, 1547, “Santa Maria de Porto Salvo,” Hampton to Messina, 1548).

675

A contract of marine insurance is a contract of indemnity whereby the insurer undertakes to indemnify the insured, in the manner and to the extent agreed, against marine losses, i.e. the losses incident to marine adventure. Definition. The contract may by its express terms or by usage be extended to cover risks on inland waters or land risks incidental to any sea voyage. There is a “maritime adventure,” where any ship, goods or other movables are exposed to maritime perils, such property being termed “insurable property”; also where the earning of any freight, hire or other pecuniary profit or benefit, or the security for any loan or expenditure, is endangered by the exposure of insurable property to maritime perils; and where any liability to a third party may be incurred by the person interested in or responsible for insurable property by reason of its exposure to maritime perils. By “maritime perils” are meant the perils consequent on or incidental to the navigation of the sea, i.e. perils of the seas, fire, war perils, pirates, rovers, thieves, captures, seizures and restraints, and detainments of princes and peoples, jettisons, barratry, and any other perils, either of the like kind or which may be designated by the policy.

The owner of insurable property may insure its full value even though some third party have agreed or become liable to indemnify him in case of loss: a mortgagor has the same right of insuring to full value; while a mortgagee may insure only up to Value. the sum due or to become due to him under the mortgage, unless the mortgagee is insuring for the benefit of the mortgagor as well as for himself, in which case, even though he insure in his own name only, he may insure up to the full value. A consignee may insure in his own name the total amount of his interest and that of others for whose benefit he insures. Where no special contract is made between insured and underwriter, the insurable value of certain matters of insurance is ascertained as follows:—Ship—Her value at the commencement of the risk, including outfit, provisions, stores, advances of wages, and any other outlays expended to make the ship fit for the voyage or period of navigation covered, plus cost of insurance upon the whole. In the case of a steamship, the word “ship” includes machinery, boilers, coals and engine stores. In the case of a vessel engaged in a special trade, the word “ship” includes the ordinary fittings necessary for that trade. Freight (whether paid in advance or not)—The gross amount of freight at the risk of the assured, plus cost of insurance. Goods—The prime cost, plus expenses of and incidental to shipping and cost of insurance. Other interests—The amount at the insured’s risk when the policy attaches, plus cost of insurance.

To be admissible in evidence a contract of marine insurance must be embodied in a document called a policy, which must specify the name of the assured (or of his agent in the effecting of the policy), the objects insured, and the risk Policy. insured against, the voyage or time (or both) covered, the sum insured, the name of the assurers. The signature of the assurer is necessary; it is found at the end of the policy, and the assurer is often on this account called the underwriter. The objects insured must be designated with reasonable certainty, regard being had to customary usage. The undertaking to insure is usually expressed by saying that the insured or his agent “doth make assurance and cause himself to be insured.” The risks are either the whole body of maritime perils detailed above, or any one or set of these, or any other named peril against which the assured desires protection. There is no restriction by law of the length of voyage that may be insured, but time policies are, subject to the Finance Act 1901, invalid if made for more than one year; a voyage and a period of time may be covered on one policy. Policies are classed as “time” or “voyage” policies. It is not necessary to state in the policy the value of the objects insured, but generally the value is given; policies are therefore classed as “valued” or “unvalued,” the latter being often called “open” policies. The values of objects insured under open or unvalued policies are the insurable values given above. As it frequently happens that merchants desire to have all their shipments of whatever nature covered, by whatever vessel they may come, they require insurance in general terms; such a policy is termed a “floating” policy. It states the limits of voyage and value covered by the underwriter, and the class of ships to be employed. The particulars of each shipment are declared as the shipments occur, and in the order of despatch or shipment, the declarations being usually endorsed on the policy. All shipments within the terms of the policy must be declared at their honest value, or in accordance with the special provisions of the policy, if any. An omission or erroneous declaration may be corrected even after loss or arrival, provided it was made in good faith.

It frequently happens that before a vessel has completed the venture on which she is engaged arrangements have already been made for her future employment. Where a vessel is insured on time, this is of no moment as respects her Voyage insured. insurance. It has likewise been decided that where any insurable object is covered by a voyage policy “from” or “at and from” a named place, the policy is not rendered invalid by her not being at that place when the insurance is concluded; but, on the other hand, there is an implied condition that she will begin the venture within a reasonable time, and that if she fails in this the underwriter may avoid the contract. If the delay springs from circumstances known to the underwriter at the time of conclusion of the contract, or if the underwriter then acquiesces in it, the implied condition is nullified. If the insured abandons the venture insured, the contract expires; e.g. if, before the risk commences, the vessel’s destination is changed to one not covered by the policy. Where the policy specifies a place of departure, and the ship does not sail from that place, the risk does not attach. If, however, the vessel actually starts from her intended port of departure, and commences the venture, and thereafter it is decided to change her destination, this decision constitutes a change of voyage. In default of provision to the contrary, the underwriter may elect to avoid his insurance from the time of that decision, although the ship be still in the course she would have followed in her originally intended venture.

In every contract of insurance there are certain conditions precedent to the liability of the underwriter and incumbent on the insured, which must be fully and literally complied with, whether material to the risk or not. These Warranties. conditions are known in insurance as warranties. The name is unfortunate, as in every other branch of the law of contract it bears another meaning; still it is convenient, and its insurance signification is now firmly established. Failure on the part of the insured to fulfil a warranty literally entitles the underwriter to avoid his contract as from the moment of breach,4 but it does not limit his obligation up to that moment. Breach of warranty is not nullified by subsequent remedy of the breach, consequently loss occurring after breach of warranty is not at the charge of the underwriter, even although before the loss the insured has again complied with the warranty. But breach of warranty may be waived by the insurer. Breach of warranty is excused in two cases only: (a) when by change of circumstances the warranty ceases to be applicable to the contract, (b) when by subsequent legislation the warranty becomes unlawful.

When the main points of the preceding particulars of the contract of insurance are summarized it may be said that the transaction is (1) a contract of indemnity reduced to written or printed words, (2) made in good faith, (3) referring to a defined proportion or amount, (4) of a genuine interest in a named object, (5) being against contingencies definitely expressed, to which that object is actually exposed, and (6) in return for a fixed and determined consideration.

It may happen by accident or by design that an insurance object has been covered twice or more times, and that in consequence the sum of the insurance effected exceeds the value in the policy or the insurable value, if an unvalued Multiple Insurance. policy has been employed. This occurrence involves a new set of relations between the insured and his various underwriters; the underwriters themselves are brought into relation to one another. As regards the insured, he may, in the absence of agreement to the contrary, claim payment from whomsoever of the underwriters he may select, but he is not entitled to receive in all more than his proper indemnity. Each underwriter, whether his policy be valued or unvalued, is entitled to receive credit for his proper proportion of the sum obtained by the insured under any other policy. If the insured does obtain any sum in excess of indemnity, he is regarded as holding it in trust for his whole body of underwriters. It thus appears that in case of multiple insurance each underwriter is bound, as between himself and the other underwriters, to contribute to the loss rateably in proportion to the amount of his liability under the policy; and if any one pays more than his proper share, he is entitled to sue the rest for contribution. Should the insured get any of his premium back? It would not be equitable to enforce a return from any underwriter who has at any time stood alone so as to be liable to the full extent of his policy; but if overlapping policies were accidentally effected all at the same time, the case is rather different. This leads to the general question of return of premium. Such return may be claimed under the terms of the policy, in which case the claim for return is simply the carrying out of the agreement between the parties; it may refer to the whole or to a part of the interest insured. But there are other circumstances in which returns can legally be claimed. For instance, it may turn out that interest insured by a particular vessel and for a particular voyage is never shipped in that vessel for that voyage; the underwriter has in this case run no risk, and therefore the consideration for which he received the premium totally fails, and the premium is properly returnable to the intending insured, unless there has been fraud or illegality on the part of the insured. Similarly, in the case of part of the interest insured on a policy, if that part is distinguishable in the policy or by custom of trade. But the interest might have made the voyage in the vessel, and the intending insured might yet remain without insurable interest. In this case, in absence of fraud or illegality, and if the policy is not merely a gaming or wagering contract, the insured is entitled to return of his premium. Similarly, in the absence of fraud or illegality, if the underwriter legally voids his policy from the beginning of the risk; as he runs no risk, he receives no premium. The only cases, except those of fraud and illegality, in which the underwriter can retain his premium without running risk, are those of risks underwritten “lost or not lost,” and arrived safely without the underwriter’s knowledge, in which the underwriter takes his chance as to the condition and situation of the ship when he assumes the risk. But this is practically a case of agreement that there shall be no return.

When the insured has overinsured on an unvalued policy, a proportionate part of the premium is returnable. But where double insurance has been knowingly effected by the insured or any earlier policy has at any time borne the entire risk or a claim has been paid on a policy in respect of its full value, no premium is returnable.

The policy issued by the underwriter to the insured makes mention of certain perils against which the insurance is granted, and unless the policy otherwise provides, the underwriter is liable for any loss proximately caused by any of these perils, but is not liable for any loss not proximately caused by a peril insured against. He is not responsible for any loss due to the wilful misconduct of the insured but, unless the policy otherwise provides, he is liable for any loss proximately caused by a peril insured against even though it would not have happened but for the misconduct or negligence of master or crew. Nor is he responsible for any loss caused by delay, although the delay be caused by a peril insured against; nor for ordinary wear and tear, ordinary leakage or breakage, inherent vice or character of objects insured, loss from rats or vermin, or injury to machinery not proximately caused by sea-perils.

INTAGLIO (an Ital. word, from intagliare, to incise, cut into), a form of engraving or carving, in which the pattern or design is sunk below the surface of the material thus treated, opposed to “cameo” or “relievo”—carving or engraving where the design is raised. Intaglio is thus applied to incised gems, as cameo (q.v.) to gems cut in relief (see Gems).

INTELLECT (Lat. intellectus, from intelligere, to understand), the general term for the mind in reference to its capacity for knowing or understanding. It is very vaguely used in common language. A man is described as “intellectual” generally because he is occupied with theory and principles rather than with practice, often with the further implication that his theories are concerned mainly with abstract matters: he is aloof from the world, and especially is a man of training and culture who cares little for the ordinary pleasures of sense. “Intellect” is thus distinguished from “intelligence” by the field of its operations, “intelligence” being used in the practical sphere for readiness to grasp a situation. (The employment of the word as a synonym for “news” is mere journalese; such phrases as “Intelligence Department” in connexion with newspapers and public offices are more justifiable.) In philosophy the “intellect” is contrasted with the senses and the will; it sifts and combines sense-given data, which otherwise would be only momentary, lasting practically only as long as the stimuli continued to operate. It thus includes the cognitive processes, and is the source of all real knowledge. Various attempts have been made to narrow the use of the term, e.g. to the higher regions of knowledge entirely above the region of sense (so Kant), or to conceptual processes; but no agreement has been reached. “Intellection” (i.e. the process as opposed to the capacity) has similarly been narrowed (e.g. by Professor James Ward) to the sphere of concepts; other writers, however, give it a much wider meaning. “Intellectualism” is a term given to any system which emphasizes the cognitive function; thus aesthetic intellectualism is that view of aesthetics which subordinates the sensual gratification or the delight in purely formal beauty to what may be called the ideal content.

INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS.1 Professor G. J. Romanes, in his work on Animal Intelligence (1881), used the term “intelligence” as synonymous with “reason,” and defined it as follows: “Reason or intelligence is the faculty which is concerned in the intentional adaptation of means to ends. It therefore implies the conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, and may be exercised in adaptation to circumstances novel alike to the experience of the individual and that of the species.” There is here some ambiguity as to the exact psychological significance of the words “intentional adaptation” and of the phrase “conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained.” A chick a day or two old learns to leave untouched nauseous caterpillars, and Romanes would certainly have regarded this as a case of intelligent profiting by experience; but how far there is intentional adaptation and whether the chick has conscious knowledge of the relation of means to ends, is doubtful, and, to say the least of it, open to discussion. St George Mivart, the acute dialectical opponent of Romanes, denied that animals are capable of the exercise of reason or intelligence. He urged that according to traditional views reason should denote and include all intellectual perception, whether it be direct and intuitive or indirect and inferential (sensu stricto), and contended that under neither head are to be included the sensuous perceptions and merely practical inferences of animals. Wasmann, who argues on similar grounds, regards such behaviour as that of the chicken as instinctive in the wider sense (see Instinct) and not intelligent; man alone, he contends, is intelligent, that is to say has the power of perceiving the relations of concepts to each other, and of drawing conclusions therefrom. It is clear that the discussion largely turns on the definition of terms; but more than this lies behind it. Both Mivart and Wasmann are emphatic in their assertions that instinctive modes of behaviour in the wider sense or the sensuous 681 perceptions and practical inferences of animals differ fundamentally in kind from the rational or intelligent conduct of human folk, and that by no conceivable process of evolution could the one pass upwards into the other.

Wasmann regards the inclusion of those activities which result from sense-experience under the term “intelligence” as pseudo-psychological. To modern psychologists of standing we must therefore turn. Under the heading Psychological definition. “Intellect or Intelligence,” in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, G. F. Stout and J. Mark Baldwin say: “There is a tendency to apply the term intellect more especially to the capacity for conceptual thinking. This does not hold in the same degree of the connected word intelligence. We speak freely of ‘animal intelligence,’ but the phrase ‘animal intellect’ is unusual. However, the restriction of the term to conceptual process is by no means so fixed and definite as to justify us in including it in the definition.” With respect to the word intellection again: “There is a tendency to restrict the term to conceptual thinking. Ward does so definitely and consistently. Croom-Robertson, on the other hand, gives the word the widest possible application, making it cover all forms of cognitive process. On the whole, if the term is to be employed at all, Robertson’s usage appears preferable, as corresponding better to the generality of the words intellect and intelligence.” It does not seem to be pseudo-psychological, therefore, to apply the term intelligence to the capacity, unquestionably possessed by animals, of profiting by sensory experience. The present writer has suggested that the term may be conveniently restricted to the capacity of guiding behaviour through perceptual process, reserving the terms intellect and reason for the so-called faculties which involve conceptual process. There are, however, advantages, as Stout and Baldwin contend, in employing the word in a somewhat wide and general sense. It is probably best for strictly psychological purposes to define somewhat strictly perceptual and conceptual (or ideational) process and to leave to intelligence the comparative freedom of a word to be used in general literature and therein defined by its context. It may be helpful, however, to place in tabular form the different uses above indicated:—

From this table it may be seen at a glance that, with such divergence of usage, the application of the word “intelligent” to any given case of animal behaviour has in itself little psychological significance. If the psychological status of the animal is to be seriously discussed, the question to be answered is this: Are the observed activities explainable in terms of perceptual process only, or do they demand also a supplementary exercise of conceptual process? Granting that they are intelligent in the broad acceptation of the word, are they only perceptually intelligent or also conceptually intelligent?

It would require more space than is at our command to make the distinction which is drawn by those who use these terms clear and distinct; but enough may perhaps be said to enable the general reader to grasp the salient points. Perceptual process. It will be convenient to take a concrete case. A chick in the performance of its truly instinctive activities pecks at all sorts of small objects. In doing so it gains a certain amount of initial experience. Very soon it may be observed that some grubs and caterpillars are seized with avidity whenever occasion offers; while others are after a few trials let alone. Broadly speaking, we have here intelligent selection and rejection. Psychologically interpreted what is believed to take place is somewhat as follows. Each grub or caterpillar affords a visual impression or sensation. This as such is just a presentation to sight and nothing more. But in virtue of previous experience it suggests what was formerly presented to consciousness in that experience. It has meaning. An impression which carries meaning begotten of previous experience is raised to the level of a percept; and behaviour which is influenced and guided by such percepts, that is to say by impressions and the meaning for behaviour they suggest, is the outcome of perceptual process. If a dog learns to open a gate by lifting the latch, this may be due to perceptual process. Through previous experience the sight of the latch may suggest meaning for practical behaviour. His action may be simply due to the fact that the visual presentation has been directly associated with the appropriate bodily activities, and now by suggestion reinstates like activities; he Conceptual process. may not, though on the other hand he may, exercise conceptual thought. Let us suppose that the chick which selects certain caterpillars and rejects others does form concepts. What does this imply from the standpoint of psychology? Stout and Baldwin define conception as the “cognition of a universal as distinguished from the particulars which it unifies. The universal apprehended in this way is called a concept.” If then the chick apprehends the universal “good-for-eating” as exemplified in the particular maggot, and the maggot as a concrete case of the abstract and universal “good-for-eating,” it has a capacity for conceptual thought. “There is one point in our definition,” say Stout and Baldwin, “which requires to be specially emphasized. Conception is the cognition of a universal as distinguished from the particulars which it unifies. The words “as distinguished from” are of essential importance. The mere presence of a universal element in cognition does not constitute a concept. Otherwise all cognition would be conceptual. The simplest perception includes a universal.... The universal must be apprehended in antithesis to the particulars which it unifies.” The general, or in technical phraseology, the universal characteristic “good-for-eating” is present in all that the chick practically finds to be edible; but the chick may just eat the nice caterpillars without thinking for a moment of edibility.

Few would dream of contending that the chick a few days old is capable of conceptual thought. Naïve perceptual process pretty obviously suffices for an explanation of the behaviour of the little bird. But so too, it may be Their value. said, does it suffice for the explanation of much of the practical behaviour of men. If a great number of the actions of animals are only perceptually intelligent, so too are a great number of the actions of men and women. This is unquestionably the case; and it serves to bring out the distinction in value which may be assigned to the percept and the concept respectively. The value of the percept is for simple direct practical behaviour; the value of the concept is for the elaboration of systematic knowledge. Any given impression may have meaning for behaviour in a given situation which is like that which has previously developed in a certain manner; but it may also have significance for the interpretation of such situations in a conceptual scheme of thought. The sight of the sage-blossom may have meaning for the bee which has sucked the sweets contained in such flowers; the sight of the bee in this situation may have significance for scientific interpretation as an example of the fertilization of flowers by insects. The bee may be only perceptually intelligent; the man who observes its action may or may not be conceptually intelligent.

A good deal of human behaviour may be interpreted in terms of perceptual intelligence, and a far larger proportion of animal behaviour may be so interpreted. But some human conduct cannot be explained save as the outcome of conceptual intelligence. The question is, whether any carefully observed and well-authenticated cases of animal procedure are inexplicable in the absence of conceptual thought, and if so what concepts are necessarily involved? It is now conceded that the mere collection of anecdotes which result from casual as opposed to systematic observation can afford no satisfactory basis for an answer to this question. A solution can only be obtained by well-planned observations conducted by those who have an adequate psychological training. Even under these conditions a criterion of the presence or absence of conceptual factors is 682 needed; and such a criterion is not easy to formulate or to apply.

If we institute inquiries with a view to ascertaining how the conceptual factor originates, it appears to be the result of analysis and abstraction, and to be reached by a process of comparison which becomes intentional Development of concept. and deliberate. If, for example, in educational procedure, we seek to assist children in forming concepts of colour, shape and material, we place before them a number of objects, some round, some square, some triangular; some red, some yellow, some blue; some made of paper, some of wood, some of flannel. Any given object is both red and square and made of flannel, blue and round and made of wood, and so on. We teach the child to group the objects, to put all the blues, yellows and reds together irrespective of shape or material; then all the rounds, squares and triangles together; then all which are made of like material. We thus help the children to grasp that though shape, colour and material are combined in each object, yet for the immediate purpose in hand one matters and the others do not matter. That which does matter is abstracted from the rest. The child has to analyse his experience and fix his attention on some given factor therein. He has to compare the objects intentionally, that is, for a definite end. He reaches, for example, the concept “blue” and realizes that the word may be applied to a number of particular objects differing in other respects, and that each is an example of what he understands by the word blue. Whether he could reach the concept without words is a question on which opinions differ.

Locke held that animals are incapable of the abstraction which is implied in such procedure. Dr Stout considers that observation of their behaviour shows little if any evidence of intentional comparison. And it is open Are animals conceptually intelligent? to discussion whether they are able to analyse the situations opened up by their perceptual behaviour. The matter cannot be fully considered here. It must suffice if enough has been said to show the nature of the distinction between perceptual and conceptual process.

An example may, however, be given of the kind of observation which, since it was carefully planned and carried out, is of evidential value. Dr Alexander Hill’s fox terrier was “taught” to open the side door of a large box by lifting a projecting latch. When the door swung open he was never allowed to find anything in the box, but was given a piece of biscuit from the hand. Then a warm chop-bone was put inside the box, which was placed in a courtyard so that the dog would pass it when no one was near, though he could be watched from the window. Details of the terrier’s behaviour are given by Dr Hill in Nature (lxvii. 558, April 1903). The net result was that the dog failed to apply at once his quite familiar experience of lifting the latch in the usual way. Here two situations were presented; first the box with people around and a piece of biscuit to be obtained from one of them by lifting the latch; secondly the box with no one near and a redolent chop-bone inside. To us it is obvious enough that the lifted latch is the key to the development of both situations; we analyse them so as to get the essential factor which matters. The dog apparently did not do so. He seemingly was incapable of this modest amount of analysis and abstraction.

We can now see more clearly what was meant by saying that Romanes’ phrase (that intelligence “implies a conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained”) is ambiguous. The dog which lifts Ambiguity of phrase “conscious knowledge of means.” the latch of a gate and goes out when the gate swings open undoubtedly employs means to reach an end; he need not analytically think the means as conducive to the end and the end as reached by the means; he need not conceive this relationship as exemplified in a number of particular cases; he need not cognize the universal as distinguished from the particulars. Perceptual experience, therefore, does not imply what Romanes states if his words are interpreted in terms of conception; it does, however, imply that the relationship is contained within the unanalysed whole of experience and is a factor contributing to an acquired mode of behaviour.

Opinions differ as to how far, if at all, animals show what we are bound to interpret as the rudiments of conceptual thinking. It is perhaps best to regard the question as still sub judice. The evolutionist school, but not without exception, incline to the view that we find in animals the beginnings of conceptual experience; some are, however, of opinion that, in the absence of language, conceptual analysis is well-nigh impossible, and in any case cannot be carried far. To an evolutionist the assertion that conceptual intelligence could not conceivably have had a natural genesis from perceptual experience, appears to be made on grounds other than scientific. Few if any psychologists contend, on strictly psychological grounds, for a distinction of kind such as Mivart and Wasmann postulate. Conscious experience is indeed sui generis and is distinct in kind from the energy with which the physicist or the physiologist has to deal; but within conscious experience from its earliest manifestation to its latest development scientific psychology only recognizes differences of mode.

In individual development the earliest manifestation of experience is the conscious accompaniment or concomitant of that type of organic behaviour which includes all reflex and instinctive acts. This affords the primordial Stages of development. tissue of experience, including a conscious awareness of the stimulating presentations which initiate organic behaviour and the kinaesthetic presentations which accompany it. Thus arises an awareness of the development of the instinctive situation. Perceptual intelligence depends upon associative re-presentation—the earlier phases of a presented situation calling up a revival of the whole previous experience before its later phases are again actually presented. Through the process of inhibition, to the clearer understanding of which physiology is daily contributing fresh data, the actual development through behaviour of the later phases of the situation is checked, and an acquired modification of the behaviour results. The whole range of perceptual intelligence in animals illustrates the manner in which accommodation to varied circumstances is reached. On these foundations in varied experience conceptual intelligence is developed. The early stages of its development, whether in the child, in whom it unquestionably occurs, or in the higher animals, in which it is not improbably incipient, are difficult to determine on the basis of observation of its expression in behaviour or conduct. But the distinguishing features of conceptual as contrasted with perceptual intelligence are the comparison of situations with a view to their analysis, the disentangling of factors which are of importance for some purpose of interpretation or of conduct, and the attitude of mind which is expressed by saying that the particular case is an example of what experience has shown to be, in technical phrase, universal, and is realized as such. Under the comprehensive phrase, intelligence in animals, this may or may not be included.

INTENDANT (from Lat. intendens, pres. part. of intendere, to apply the mind to, to watch over; cf. “superintendent”), the name used in early times in France to designate a functionary invested by the king with an important and durable commission.1 As early as the 14th century the title of intendentes or superintendentes financiarum was given to the commissaries appointed by the king to levy the aides, or temporary subsidies. In the 16th century Francis I. created the intendants des finances, permanent functionaries who formed the central and superior 683 administration in financial matters. They took the place of the généraux des finances and the “treasurers of France,” who became provincial functionaries in the various généralités. The intendants des finances existed until the end of the ancien régime; they were at first under the authority of the surintendant, and subsequently under that of the contrôleur général des finances. The intendants des provinces date from the last thirty years of the 16th century. They were commissaries sent by the king with wide powers to restore order in the provinces after the civil wars. Their functions were at first extraordinary and temporary, but a few were retained as permanent state officials, and in course of time they came to be fairly generally distributed over the whole kingdom. The existing territorial divisions were not disturbed, each intendant being placed over a généralité, save in some cases where slight modifications were necessary for administrative purposes. In their functions, however, there is another element worthy of notice. In the 13th and 14th centuries the monarchy had organized a species of inspection (chevauchée) over the provincial functionaries, which was performed by the maîtres des requêtes, and this the reform ordinances of the 16th century sought to revive. This inspectorate passed to the intendant, who became the resident local inspector and supervisor of all the other functionaries in his district; its connexion with the old chevauchée is plainly shown by the fact that the intendants were almost invariably selected from the maîtres des requêtes. The early intendants had naturally been largely concerned with the troops; eventually special military intendants (the only ones that exist in modern French law) were created, but the intendants des provinces retained certain military duties, notably those relating to the housing of the troops.

The early intendants were called indifferently intendants de justice or intendants de finances, their full official title being intendants de justice, police et finances, et commissaires, départis dans les généralités du royaume pour l’exécution des ordres de Sa Majesté. This title shows the wide range of their duties, the word “police” in this connexion connoting general administration. Not being officers of the king, but merely commissaries, they could always be recalled, and their powers were fixed by the commission they received from the king. As their functions became pre-eminently administrative the laws of the 17th and 18th centuries referred many questions to their decision, and, in this respect, their powers were determined by law. They became the direct general representatives of the king in each généralité, with authority over the other officials, whom they were empowered to censure, suspend or sometimes even replace. They were in constant touch with the king’s council, with which they were connected by their original rights as maîtres des requêtes. In the first half of the 17th century they encountered some opposition from the governors of provinces, who had formerly been the direct political representatives of the crown, and also from the parliaments, which traditionally intervened in the administration, especially by means of arrêts de règlement (decisions, from which there was no appeal, regulating questions of procedure, civil law or custom). The intendants, however, were energetically supported, and so complete was their triumph that in the 18th century governors of provinces could not enter upon their duties without formal lettres de résidence.

The intendants had wide powers in the drawing by lot of the militia and in the royal corvées for the making and repair of the high roads, and were largely concerned with the administration of the taille, in which they effected useful reforms. They were the sole administrators of the principal direct and indirect imposts created in the second half of the 17th century and in the 18th century, and had full powers to settle disputes arising out of these taxes. Owing to the vast size of the districts allotted to the intendants (there were no more than thirty-two intendants in 1788), they often felt the need of assistants. As commissaries of the king, they could delegate their powers to sub-délégués, who were, however, not royal officials, but merely mandatories of the intendant. Decisions of the intendant could be carried to the king’s council, and those of the sub-délégué to the intendant.

INTENT (from Lat. intendere, to stretch out, extend, particularly in the phrase intendere animum, to turn one’s mind to, purpose), in law, the purpose or object with which an act is done. The question of intent is important with reference both to civil and criminal responsibility. Briefly, it may be said that in criminal law the constituent element of an offence is the mens rea or the guilty intent. The commission of an act without the intent is not, as a general rule, sufficient to constitute a crime, nor, on the other hand, does the existence of a guilty intent without commission of the act amount to the legal conception of a crime (see Criminal Law). In the case of civil wrongs, in general, the opposite holds good. A wrongful act done to the person or property of another carries with it legal liability, irrespective of the motive with which the act was done (see Tort). In reference to the construction of contracts, wills and other documents, the question of intention is material as showing the sense and meaning of the words used, and what they were intended to effect.

INTERAMNA LIRENAS, an ancient town of Italy in the Volscian territory near the modern Pignataro Interamna, 5 m. S.E. of Aquinum; the additional name distinguishes it from Interamna Praetuttianorum (mod. Teramo) and Interamna Nahartium (mod. Terni). It was founded by the Romans as a Latin colony in 312 B.C. as a military base in the war against Samnium, no fewer than 4000 colonists being sent thither. It was among the Latin colonies which in 209 B.C. refused to supply further contingents or money for the Hannibalic war. It became a municipium with the other Latin colonies, but we hear no more of it—mainly, no doubt, because it lay off the Via Latina. Livy’s description of it as on the Via Latina is not strictly accurate, and cannot be used as an indication that the former course of the Via Latina was through Interamna. The city lay on a hill on the N. bank of the Liris, between two of its tributaries, thus lacking natural defences on the N. side alone. Many inscriptions have been found, and there are considerable remains of antiquity. One inscription bears the date A.D. 408, and the site was occupied in the middle ages by a castle called Terame or Termine.

INTERCALARY (from Lat. intercalare, to proclaim, calare, the insertion of a day in the calendar), a term applied to a month, day or days inserted between other months or days in order to adjust the reckoning of time, based on the revolution of the earth round the sun, the day, and of the moon round the earth, the lunar month, to the revolution of the earth round the sun, the solar year (see Calendar). From the meaning of something inserted or placed between, intercalary is used for something which interrupts a series, or comes between two types. In botany, the term is used of growth which is not apical but somewhere between the apex and base of an organ, such as the growth in length of an Iris leaf, or of the internode of a grass-haulm.

INTERCOLUMNIATION, in architecture, the distance between the columns of a peristyle, generally referred to in terms of the lower diameter of the column. They are thus set forth by Vitruvius (iii. 2): (a) Pycnostyle, equal to 1½ diameters; (b) Systyle, 2 diameters; (c) Eustyle, 2¼ diameters (which was the proportion preferred by him); (d) Diastyle, 3 diameters; and (e) Araeostyle or wide spaced, 4 diameters, a span only possible when the architrave was in wood. Vitruvius’s definition would seem to apply only to examples with which he was acquainted in Rome, or to Greek temples described by authors he had studied. In the earlier Doric temples the intercolumniation is sometimes less than one diameter, and it increases gradually as the style developed; thus in the Parthenon it is 1¼, in the Temple of Diana Propylaea at Eleusis, 1¼; and in the portico at Delos, 2½. The intercolumniations of the columns of the Ionic Order are greater, averaging 2 diameters, but then the relative proportion of height to diameter in the column has to be taken into account, as also the width of the peristyle. Thus 684 in the temple of Apollo Branchidae, where the columns are slender and over 10 diameters in height, the intercolumniation is 1¾, notwithstanding its late date, and in the Temple of Apollo Smintheus in Asia Minor, in which the peristyle is pseudodipteral, or double width, the intercolumniation is just over 1½. Temples of the Corinthian Order follow the proportions of those of the Ionic Order.

INTERDICT (Lat. interdictum, from interdicere, to forbid by decree, lit., interpose by speech), in its full technical sense as an ecclesiastical term, a sentence by a competent ecclesiastical authority forbidding all celebration of public worship, the administration of some sacraments (baptism, confirmation and penance are permitted) and ecclesiastical burial. From general interdicts, however, are excepted the feast days of Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, the Assumption and Corpus Christi. An interdict may be either local, personal or mixed, according as it applies to a locality, to a particular person or class of persons, or to a particular locality as long as it shall be the residence of a particular person or class of persons. Local interdicts again may be either general or particular; in the latter instance they refer only to particular buildings set apart for religious services. An interdict is a measure which seeks to punish a population or a religious body (e.g. a chapter) for the fault of some only of its members, who cannot be reached separately. It is a penalty directed against society rather than against individuals. In 869 Hincmar of Laon laid his entire diocese under an interdict, a proceeding for which he was severely censured by Hincmar of Reims. In the Chronicle of Ademar of Limoges (ad ann. 994) it is stated that Bishop Alduin introduced there “a new plan for punishing the wickedness of his people; he ordered the churches and monasteries to cease from divine worship and the people to abstain from divine praise, and this he called excommunication” (see Gieseler, Kirchengesch. iii. 342, where also the text is given of a proposal to a similar effect made by Odolric, abbot of St Martial, at the council of Limoges in 1031). It was not until the 11th century that the use of the interdict obtained a recognized place among the means of discipline at the disposal of the Roman hierarchy, which used it, without great success, to bring back the secular authorities to obedience. Important historical instances of the use of the interdict occur in the cases of Scotland under Pope Alexander III. in 1181, of France under Innocent III. in 1200, and of England under the same pope in 1209. So far as the interdict is “personal,” that is to say, applied to a particular individual, it may be regarded as a kind of partial excommunication; for instance, a bishop may, for certain faults, be interdicted from entering the church (ab ingressu ecclesiae), that is, without being excommunicated, he must not celebrate or assist at the celebration of divine offices. Interdicts cease at the expiration of the term, or by removal (relaxatio). General and local interdicts are no longer in use.

Interdict, in Scots law, is an order of court pronounced on cause shown for stopping any proceedings complained of as illegal or wrongful. It may be resorted to as a remedy against all encroachments either on property or possession. For the analogous English practice see Injunction.

INTERDICTION, in Scots law, a process of restraint applied to prodigals and others who, “from weakness, facility or profusion, are liable to imposition.” It is either voluntary or judicial. Voluntary interdiction is effected by the prodigal himself, who executes a bond obliging himself to do no deed which may affect his estate without the assent of certain persons called the “interdictors.” This may be removed by the court of session, by the joint act of the interdictors and the interdicted, and by the number of interdictors being reduced below the number constituting a quorum. Judicial interdiction is imposed by order of the court, either moved by an interested party or acting in the exercise of its nobile officium, and can only be removed by a similar order. Deeds done by the interdicted person, so far as they affect or purport to affect his heritable estate, are reducible, unless they have been done with the consent of the interdictors. Interdiction has no effect, however, on movable property.

INTERESSE TERMINI (Lat. for “interest in a term”), in law, an executory interest, being the right of entry which the grant of a lease confers upon a lessee. Actual entry on the lands by the lessor converts the right into an estate. If the lease, however, has been created by a bargain and sale or by any other conveyance under the Statute of Uses, which does not require an entry, the term vests in the lessee at once. An interesse termini gives a cause of action against any person through whose action entry by the lessee or delivery of possession to him may have been prevented. An interesse termini is a right in rem, alienable at common law, and transmissible to the executors of the lessee.

INTEREST, etymologically a state or condition of being concerned in or having a share in anything, hence a legal or other claim to or share in property, benefits or advantages. Further developments of meaning are found in the application of the word to the benefits, advantages, matters of importance, &c., in which “interest” or concern can be felt, and to the feeling of concern so excited; hence also the word is used of the persons who have a concern in some common “interest,” e.g. the trading or commercial interest, and of the personal or other influence due to a connexion with specific “interests.” The word is derived from the Latin interesse (literally “to be between”), to make a difference, to concern, be of importance. The form which the word takes in English is a substantival use of the 3rd person singular of the present indicative of the Latin verb, and is due to a similar use in French of the older interest, modern intérêt. The earlier English word was interess, which survived till the end of the 17th century; the earliest example of “interest” in the New English Dictionary is from the Rolls of Parliament of 1450.

These meanings of “interest” are plainly derived from the ordinary uses of the Latin interesse. The origin of the application of the word to the compensation paid for the use of money or for the forbearance of a debt, with which, as far as present English law is concerned, this article deals, forms part of the history of Usury and Money-Lending (q.v.). By Roman law, where one party to a contract made default, the other could enforce, over and above the fulfilment of the agreement, compensation based on the difference (id quod interest) to the creditor’s position caused by the default of the debtor, which was technically known as mora, delay. This difference could be reckoned according as actual loss had accrued, and also on a calculation of the profit that might have been made had performance been carried out. Now this developed the canonist doctrine of damnum emergens and lucrum cessans respectively, which played a considerable part in the breaking down of the ecclesiastical prohibition of the taking of usury. The medieval lawyers used the phrase damna et interesse (in French dommages et intérêts) for such compensation by way of damages for the non-fulfilment of a contract, and for damages and indemnity generally. Thus interesse and intérêt came to be particularly applied to the charge for the use of money disguised by a legal fiction under the form of an indemnity for the failure to perform a contract.

At English common law an agreement to pay interest is not implied unless in the case of negotiable instruments, when it is supported by mercantile usage. As a general rule therefore debts certain, payable at a specified time, do not carry interest from that time unless there has been an express agreement that they should do so. But when it has been the constant practice of a trade or business to charge interest, or where as between the parties interest has been always charged and paid, a contract to pay interest is implied. It is now provided by the Civil Procedure Act 1833 that, “upon all debts or sums certain payable at a certain time or otherwise, the jury on the trial of any issue or in any inquisition of damages may if they shall think fit allow interest to the creditor at a rate not exceeding the current rate of interest, from the time when such debts or sums certain were payable, if such debts or sums be payable by virtue of some written instrument at a certain time; or if payable 685 otherwise, then from the time when demand of payment shall have been made in writing, so as such demand shall give notice to the debtor that interest will be claimed from the date of such demand until the term of payment: provided that interest shall be payable in all cases in which it is now payable by law.” Compound interest requires to be supported by positive proof that it was agreed to by the parties; an established practice to account in this manner will be evidence of such an agreement. When interest is awarded by a court it is generally at the rate of 4%; under special circumstances 5% has been allowed.

INTERFERENCE OF LIGHT. § 1. This term1 and the ideas underlying it were introduced into optics by Thomas Young. His Bakerian lecture on “The Theory of Light and Colours” (Phil. Trans., 1801) formulated the following hypotheses and propositions, and thereby laid the foundations of the wave theory:—

In the Philosophical Transactions for 1802, Young refers to his discovery of “a simple and general law.” The law is that “wherever two portions of the same light arrive at the eye by different routes, either exactly or very nearly in the same direction, the light becomes most intense where the difference of the routes is a multiple of a certain length, and least intense in the intermediate state of the interfering portions; and this length is different for light of different colours.”

This appears to be the first use of the word interfering or interference as applied to light. When two portions of light by their co-operation cause darkness, there is certainly “interference” in the popular sense; but from a mechanical or mathematical point of view, the superposition contemplated in proposition viii. would more naturally be regarded as taking place without interference. Young applied his principle to the explanation of colours of striated surfaces (gratings), to the colours of thin plates, and to an experiment which we shall discuss later in the improved form given to it by Fresnel, where a screen is illuminated simultaneously by light proceeding from two similar sources. As a preliminary to these explanations we require an analytical expression for waves of simple type, and an examination of the effects of compounding them.

Fig. 1.

§ 5. Interference Fringes.—In Fresnel’s fundamental experiment light from a point O (fig. 1) falls upon an isosceles prism of glass BCD, with the angle at C very little less than two right angles. The source of light may be a pin-hole through which sunlight enters a dark room, or, more conveniently, the image of the sun formed by a lens of short focus (1 or 2 in.). For actual experiment when, as usually happens, it is desirable to economize light, the point may be replaced by a line of light perpendicular to the plane of the diagram, obtained either from a linear source, such as the filament of an incandescent electric lamp, or by admitting light through a narrow vertical slit.

In lieu of the biprism, reflectors may be invoked to double the original source of light. In one arrangement two reflected images are employed, obtained from two reflecting surfaces nearly parallel and in the same plane. Glass, preferably blackened behind, may be used, provided the incidence be made sufficiently oblique. In another arrangement, due to H. Lloyd, interference takes place between light proceeding directly from the original source, and from one reflected image. Lloyd’s experiment deserves to be better known, as it may be performed with great facility and without special apparatus. Sunlight is admitted horizontally into a darkened room through a slit situated in a window-shutter, and, at a distance of 15 to 20 ft., is received at nearly grazing incidence upon a vertical slab of plate glass. The length of the slab in the direction of the light should not be less than 2 or 3 in., and for some special observations may advantageously be much increased. The bands are observed on a plane through the hinder vertical edge of the slab by means of a hand-magnifying glass of from 1 to 2 in. focus. The obliquity of the reflector is, of course, to be adjusted according to the fineness of the bands required.

From the manner of their formation it might appear that under no circumstances could more than half the system be visible. But according to Sir G. B. Airy’s principle (see below) the bands may be displaced if examined through a prism. In practice all that is necessary is to hold the magnifier somewhat excentrically. The bands may then be observed gradually to detach themselves from the mirror, until at last the complete system is seen, as in Fresnel’s form of the experiment.

§ 6. Achromatic Interference Bands.—We have already seen that in the ordinary arrangement, where the source is of white light entering through a narrow slit, the heterogeneity of the light forbids the visibility of more than a few bands. The scale 688 of the various band-systems is proportional to λ. But this condition of things, as we recognize from (2) (see § 5), depends upon the constancy of b, i.e. upon the supposition that the various kinds of light all come from the same place. Now there is no reason why such a limitation need be imposed. If we regard b as variable, we see that we have only to take b proportional to λ, in order to render the band-interval Λ independent of colour. In such a case the system of bands is achromatic, and the heterogeneity of the light is no obstacle to the formation of visible bands of high order.

§ 7. Airy’s Theory of the White Centre.—If a system of Fresnel’s bands be examined through a prism, the central white band undergoes an abnormal displacement, which has been supposed to be inconsistent with theory. The explanation has been shown by Airy (Phil. Mag., 1833, 2, p. 161) to depend upon the peculiar manner in which the white band is in general formed.

§ 8. Colours of Thin Plates.—These colours, familiarly known as those of the soap-bubble, are seen under a variety of conditions and were studied with some success by Robert Hooke under the name of “fantastical colours” (Micrographia, 1664). The inquiry was resumed by Sir Isaac Newton with his accustomed power (“Discourse on Light and Colours,” 1675, Opticks, book ii.), and by him most of the laws regulating these phenomena were discovered. Newton experimented especially with thin plates of air enclosed by slightly curved glasses, and the coloured rings so exhibited are usually called after him “Newton’s rings.”

The colours are manifested in the greatest purity when the reflecting surfaces are limited to those which bound the thin film. This is the case of the soap-bubble. When, as is in other respects more convenient, two glass plates enclosing a film of air are substituted, the light under examination is liable to be contaminated by that reflected from the outer surfaces. A remedy may be found in the use of wedge-shaped glasses so applied that the outer surfaces, though parallel to one another, are inclined to the inner operating surfaces. By suitable optical arrangements the two portions of light, desired and undesired, may then be separated.

In his first essay upon this subject Thomas Young was able to trace the formation of these colours as due to the interference of light reflected from the two surfaces of the plate; or, as it would be preferable to say, to the superposition of the two reflected vibrations giving resultants of variable magnitude according to the phase-relation. A difficulty here presents itself which might have proved insurmountable to a less acute inquirer. The luminous vibration reflected at the second surface travels a distance increased by twice the thickness of the plate, and it might naturally be supposed that the relative retardation would be measured by this quantity. If this were so, the two vibrations reflected from the surfaces of an infinitely thin plate would be in accordance, and the intensity of the resultant a maximum. The facts were notoriously the reverse. At the place of contact of Newton’s glasses, or at the thinnest part of a soap-film just before it bursts, the colour is black and not white as the explanation seems to require. Young saw that the reconciliation lies in the circumstance that the two reflections occur under different conditions, one, for example, as the light passes from air to water, and the second as it passes from water to air. According to mechanical principles the second reflection involves a change of sign, equivalent to a gain or loss of half an undulation. When a 689 series of waves constituting any particular coloured light is reflected from an infinitely thin plate, the two partial reflections are in absolute discordance and, if of equal intensity, must give on superposition complete darkness. With the aid of this principle the sequence of colours in Newton’s rings is explained in much the same way as that of interference fringes (above, § 5).

Fig. 2.

The complete theory of the colours of thin plates requires us to take account not merely of the two reflections already mentioned but of an infinite series of such reflections. This was first effected by S. D. Poisson for the case of retardations which are exact multiples of the half wave-length, and afterwards more generally by Sir G. B. Airy (Camb. Phil. Trans., 1832, 4, p. 409).

In fig. 2, ABF is the ray, perpendicular to the wave-front, reflected at the upper surface, ABCDE the ray transmitted at B, reflected at C and transmitted at D; and these are accompanied by other rays reflected internally 3, 5, &c., times. The first step is to calculate the retardation δ between the first and second waves, so far as it depends on the distances travelled in the plate (of index μ) and in air.

If the angle ABF = 2α, angle BCD = 2α′ and the thickness of plate = t, we have

δ = μ (BC + CD) − BG   = 2μBC − 2BC sin α sin α′ = 2μBC (l − sin2 α′)   = 2μt cos α′

(1).

In (1) α′ is the angle of refraction, and we see that, contrary to what might at first have been expected, the retardation is least when the obliquity is greatest, and reaches a maximum when the obliquity is zero or the incidence normal. If we represent all the vibrations by complex quantities, from which finally the imaginary parts are rejected, the retardation δ may be expressed by the introduction of the factor ε−iκδ, where i = √(−1), and κ = 2π/λ.

At each reflection or refraction the amplitude of the incident wave must be supposed to be altered by a certain factor which allows room for the reversal postulated by Young. When the light proceeds from the surrounding medium to the plate, the factor for reflection will be supposed to be b, and for refraction c; the corresponding quantities when the progress is from the plate to the surrounding medium will be denoted by e, f. Denoting the incident vibration by unity, we have then for the first component of the reflected wave b, for the second cefε−iκδ, for the third ce3fε−2iκδ, and so on. Adding these together, and summing the geometric series, we find

b +	cef ε−iκδ
	1 − e2 ε−iκδ

(2).

In like manner for the wave transmitted through the plate we get

cf

1 − e2 ε−iκδ

(3).

The quantities b, c, e, f are not independent. The simplest way to find the relations between them is to trace the consequences of supposing δ = 0 in (2) and (3). This may be regarded as a development from Young’s point of view. A plate of vanishing thickness is ultimately no obstacle at all. In the nature of things a surface cannot reflect. Hence with a plate of vanishing thickness there must be a vanishing reflection and a total transmission, and accordingly

b + e = 0,    cf = l − e2

(4),

the first of which embodies Arago’s law of the equality of reflections, as well as the famous “loss of half an undulation.” Using these we find for the reflected vibration,

−	e(1 − ε−iκδ)
	1 − e2 ε−iκδ

(5),

and for the transmitted vibration

1 − e2

1 − e2 ε−iκδ

(6).

The intensities of the reflected and transmitted lights are the squares of the moduli of these expressions. Thus

Intensity of reflected light = e2	(1 − cos κδ)2 + sin2 κδ
	(1 − e2 cos κδ)2 + e4 sin2 κδ

=	4e2 sin2 (½κδ)
	1 − 2e2 cos κδ + e4

(7);

Intensity of transmitted light =	(1 − e2)2
	1 − 2e2 cos κδ + e4

(8),

the sum of the two expressions being unity.

According to (7) not only does the reflected light vanish completely when δ = o, but also whenever ½κδ = nπ, n being an integer, that is, whenever δ = nλ. When the first and third mediums are the same, as we have here supposed, the central spot in the system of Newton’s ring is black, even though the original light contain a mixture of all wave-lengths. If the light reflected from a plate of any thickness be examined with a spectroscope of sufficient resolving power, the spectrum will be traversed by dark bands, of which the centre corresponds to those wave-lengths which the plate is incompetent to reflect. It is obvious that there is no limit to the fineness of the bands which may be thus impressed upon a spectrum, whatever may be the character of the original mixed light.

Fig. 3.

The relations between the factors b, c, e, f have been proved, independently of the theory of thin plates, in a general manner by Stokes, who called to his aid the general mechanical principle of reversibility. If the motions constituting the reflected and refracted rays to which an incident ray gives rise be supposed to be reversed, they will reconstitute a reversed incident ray. This gives one relation; and another is obtained from the consideration that there is no ray in the second medium, such as would be generated by the operation alone of either the reversed reflected or refracted rays. Space does not allow of the reproduction of the argument at length, but a few words may perhaps give the reader an idea of how the conclusions are arrived at. The incident ray (IA) (fig. 3) being 1, the reflected (AR) and refracted (AF) rays are denoted by b and c. When b is reversed, it gives rise to a reflected ray b2 along AI, and a refracted ray bc along AG (say). When c is reversed, it gives rise to cf along AI, and ce along AG. Hence bc + ce = 0, b2 + cf = 1, which agree with (4). It is here assumed that there is no change of phase in the act of reflection or refraction, except such as can be represented by a change of sign.

When the third medium differs from the first, the theory of thin plates is more complicated, and need not here be discussed. One particular case, however, may be mentioned. When a thin transparent film is backed by a perfect reflector, no colours should be visible, all the light being ultimately reflected, whatever the wave-length may be. The experiment may be tried with a thin layer of gelatin on a polished silver plate. In other cases where a different result is observed, the inference is that either the metal does not reflect perfectly, or else that the material of which the film is composed is not sufficiently transparent. Some apparent exceptions to the above rule, exhibited by thin films of collodion resting upon silver surfaces, have been described by R. W. Wood (Physical Optics, p. 143), who attributes the very curious effects observed to frilling of the collodion film.

For study of the colours of thin plates there are no more interesting subjects than the soap-film. For projection the films may be stretched across vertical rings of iron wire coated with paraffin. In their undisturbed condition they thin from the top, and the colours are disposed in horizontal bands. If, as suggested by Brewster, a jet of wind issuing from a small nozzle and supplied from a well-regulated bellows be allowed to impinge obliquely, parts of the film are set in rotation, and displays of colours may be exhibited to a large audience, astonishing by their brilliance and by the rapidity with which they change. Permanent films, analogous to soap-films, are best obtained by Glew’s method. A few drops of celluloid varnish are poured upon the surface of water contained in a large dish. After evaporation of the solvent, the films may be picked up upon rings of iron wire.

As a variant upon Newton’s rings, interesting effects may be obtained by the partial etching of the surfaces of picked pieces of plate-glass. A surface is coated in parallel stripes with paraffin wax and treated with dilute hydrofluoric acid for such a time (found by preliminary trials) as is required to eat away the exposed portions to a depth of one quarter of the mean wave-length of light. Two such prepared surfaces pressed in the crossed position into suitable contact exhibit a chess-board pattern. Where two uncorroded, or where two corroded, parts overlap, the colours are nearly the same; but where a corroded and an uncorroded surface meet, a strongly contrasted colour is developed. The combination lends itself to projection and the pattern seen upon the screen is very beautiful if proper precautions are taken to eliminate the white light reflected from the first and fourth surfaces of the plates (see Nature, 1901, 64, 385).

Theory and observation alike show that the transmitted colours of a thin plate, e.g. a soap film or a layer of air, are very inferior to those reflected. Specimens of ancient glass, which have undergone superficial decomposition, on the other hand, sometimes show transmitted colours of remarkable brilliancy. The probable explanation, suggested by Brewster, is that we have here to deal not merely with one, but with a series of thin plates of not very different thicknesses. It is evident that with such a series the transmitted colours would be much purer, and the reflected much brighter, than usual. If the thicknesses are strictly equal, certain wave-lengths must still be absolutely missing in the reflected light; while on the other hand a constancy of the interval between the plates will in general lead to a special preponderance of light of some other wave-length for which all the component parts as they ultimately emerge are in agreement as to phase.

On the same principle are doubtless to be explained the colours of fiery opals, and, more remarkable still, the iridescence of certain 690 crystals of potassium chlorate. Stokes showed that the reflected light is often in a high degree monochromatic, and that it is connected with the existence of twin planes. A closer discussion appears to show that the twin planes must be repeated in a periodic manner (Phil. Mag., 1888, 26, 241, 256; also see R. W. Wood, Phil. Mag., 1906).

A beautiful example of a similar effect is presented by G. Lippmann’s coloured photographs. In this case the periodic structure is actually the product of the action of light. The plate is exposed to stationary waves, resulting from the incidence of light upon a reflecting surface (see Photography).

All that can be expected from a physical theory is the determination of the composition of the light reflected from or transmitted by a thin plate in terms of the composition of the incident light. The further question of the chromatic character of the mixtures thus obtained belongs rather to physiological optics, and cannot be answered without a complete knowledge of the chromatic relations of the spectral colours themselves. Experiments upon this subject have been made by various observers, and especially by J. Clerk Maxwell (Phil. Trans., 1860), who has exhibited his results on a colour diagram as used by Newton. A calculation of the colours of thin plates, based upon Maxwell’s data, and accompanied by a drawing showing the curve representative of the entire series up to the fifth order, has been given by Rayleigh (Edin. Trans., 1887). The colours of Newton’s scale are met with also in the light transmitted by a somewhat thin plate of doubly-refracting material, such as mica, the plane of analysis being perpendicular to that of primitive polarization.

The same series of colours occur also in other optical experiments, e.g. at the centre of the illuminated area when light issuing from a point passes through a small round aperture in an otherwise opaque screen.

The colours of which we have been speaking are those formed at nearly perpendicular incidence, so that the retardation (reckoned as a distance), viz. 2μt cos α′, as sensibly independent of λ. This state of things may be greatly departed from when the thin plate is rarer than its surroundings, and the incidence is such that α′ is nearly equal to 90°, for then, in consequence of the powerful dispersion, cos α′ may vary greatly as we pass from one colour to another. Under these circumstances the series of colours entirely alters its character, and the bands (corresponding to a graduated thickness) may even lose their coloration, becoming sensibly black and white through many alternations (Newton’s Opticks, bk. ii.; Fox-Talbot, Phil. Mag., 1836, 9, p. 40l). The general explanation of this remarkable phenomenon was suggested by Newton.

Let us suppose that plane waves of white light travelling in glass are incident at angle α upon a plate of air, which is bounded again on the other side by glass. If μ be the index of the glass, α′ the angle of refraction, then sin α′ = μ sin α; and the retardation, expressed by the equivalent distance in air, is

2t sec α′ − μ·2t tan α′ sin α = 2t cos α′;

and the retardation in phase is 2t cos α′/λ, λ being as usual the wave-length in air.

The first thing to be noticed is that, when α approaches the critical angle, cosα′ becomes as small as we please, and that consequently the retardation corresponding to a given thickness is very much less than at perpendicular incidence. Hence the glass surfaces need not be so close as usual.

A second feature is the increased brilliancy of the light. According to (7) the intensity of the reflected light when at a maximum (sin ½κγ = 1) is 4e2/(1 + e2)2. At perpendicular incidence e is about 1⁄5, and the intensity is somewhat small; but, as cos α′ approaches zero, e approaches unity, and the brilliancy is much increased.

But the peculiarity which most demands attention is the lessened influence of a variation in λ upon the phase-retardation. A diminution of λ of itself increases the retardation of phase, but, since waves of shorter wave-length are more refrangible, this effect may be more or less perfectly compensated by the greater obliquity, and consequent diminution in the value of cos α′. We will investigate the conditions under which the retardation of phase is stationary in spite of a variation of λ.

In order that λ−1 cos α′ may be stationary, we must have

λ sin α′ dα′ + cos α′ dλ = 0,

where (α being constant)

cos α′ dα′ = sin α dμ.

Thus

cot2 α′ =	λ		dμ
	μ		dλ

(9),

giving α′ when the relation between μ and λ is known.

According to A. L. Cauchy’s formula, which represents the facts very well throughout most of the visible spectrum,

μ = A + Bλ−2

(10),

so that

cot2 α′ =	2B	=	2(μ − A)
	λ2μ		μ

(11).

If we take, as for Chance’s “extra-dense flint,” B = .984 × 10-10, and as for the soda lines, μ = 1.65, λ = 5.89 × 10-6, we get

α′ = 79°30′.

At this angle of refraction, and with this kind of glass, the retardation of phase is accordingly nearly independent of wave-length, and therefore the bands formed, as the thickness varies, are approximately achromatic. Perfect achromatism would be possible only under a law of dispersion

μ2 = A′ − B′λ2.

If the source of light be distant and very small, the black bands are wonderfully fine and numerous. The experiment is best made (after Newton) with a right-angled prism, whose hypothenusal surface may be brought into approximate contact with a plate of black glass. The bands should be observed with a convex lens, of about 8 in. focus. If the eye be at twice this distance from the prism, and the lens be held midway between, the advantages are combined of a large field and of maximum distinctness.

If Newton’s rings are examined through a prism, some very remarkable phenomena are exhibited, described in his twenty-fourth observation (Opticks; see also Place, Pogg. Ann., 1861, 114, 504). “When the two object-glasses are laid upon one another, so as to make the rings of the colours appear, though with my naked eye I could not discern above eight or nine of those rings, yet by viewing them through a prism I could see a far greater multitude, insomuch that I could number more than forty.... And I believe that the experiment may be improved to the discovery of far greater numbers.... But it was on but one side of these rings, namely, that towards which the refraction was made, which by the refraction was rendered distinct, and the other side became more confused than when viewed with the naked eye....

“I have sometimes so laid one object-glass upon the other that to the naked eye they have all over seemed uniformly white, without the least appearance of any of the coloured rings; and yet by viewing them through a prism great multitudes of those rings have discovered themselves.”

Newton was evidently much struck with these “so odd circumstances”; and he explains the occurrence of the rings at unusual thicknesses as due to the dispersing power of the prism. The blue system being more refracted than the red, it is possible under certain conditions that the nth blue ring may be so much displaced relatively to the corresponding red ring as at one part of the circumference to compensate for the different diameters. A white stripe may thus be formed in a situation where without the prism the mixture of colours would be complete, so far as could be judged by the eye.

The simplest case that can be considered is when the “thin plate” is bounded by plane surfaces inclined to one another at a small angle. By drawing back the prism (whose edge is parallel to the intersection of the above-mentioned planes) it will always be possible so to adjust the effective dispersing power as to bring the nth bars to coincidence for any two assigned colours, and therefore approximately for the entire spectrum. The formation of the achromatic band, or rather central black band, depends indeed upon the same principles as the fictitious shifting of the centre of a system of Fresnel’s bands when viewed through a prism.

But neither Newton nor, as would appear, any of his successors has explained why the bands should be more numerous than usual, and under certain conditions sensibly achromatic for a large number of alternations. It is evident that, in the particular case of the wedge-shaped plate above specified, such a result would not occur. The width of the bands for any colour would be proportional to λ, as well after the displacement by the prism as before; and the succession of colours formed in white light and the number of perceptible bands would be much as usual.

The peculiarity to be explained appears to depend upon the curvature of the surfaces bounding the plate. For simplicity suppose that the lower surface is plane (y = 0), and that the approximate equation of the upper surface is y = a + bx2, a being thus the least distance between the plates. The black of the nth order for wave-length λ occurs when

½nλ = a + bx2

(12);

and thus the width (δx) at this place of the band is given by

½λ = 2bxδx

(13);

or

δx =	λ	=	λ
	4bx		4√b · √(½nλ − a)

(14).

If the glasses be in contact, as is usually supposed in the theory of Newton’s rings, a = 0, and δx∞λ1/2, or the width of the band of the nth order varies as the square root of the wave-length, instead of as the first power. Even in this case the overlapping and subsequent obliteration of the bands is greatly retarded by the use of the prism, but the full development of the phenomenon requires that α should be finite. Let us inquire what is the condition in order that the width of the band of the nth order may be stationary, as λ varies. By (14) it is necessary that the variation of λ2/(½nλ − a) should vanish. Hence a = ¼nλ, so that the interval between the surfaces at the place where the nth band is formed should be half due to curvature and half to imperfect contact at the place of closest approach. If this condition be satisfied, the achromatism of the nth band, effected by the prism, carries with it the achromatism of a large number of neighbouring bands, and thus gives rise to the remarkable effects described by Newton. Further developments 691 are given by Lord Rayleigh in a paper “On Achromatic Interference Bands” (Phil. Mag., 1889, 28, pp. 77, 189); see also E. Mascart, Traité d’optique.

In Newton’s rings the variable element is the thickness of the plate, to which the retardation is directly proportional, and in the ideal case the angle of incidence is constant. To observe them the eye is focused upon the thin plate itself, and if the plate is very thin no particular precautions are necessary. As the plate thickens and the order of interference increases, there is more and more demand for homogeneity in the light, and we may have recourse to a sodium-flame or a helium vacuum tube. At the same time the disturbing influence of obliquity increases. Unless the aperture of the eye is reduced, the rays reaching it from even the same point of the plate are differently affected, and complications ensue tending to impair the distinctness of the bands. To obviate this disturbance it is best to work at incidences as nearly as possible perpendicular.

Fig. 4.

The bands seen when light from a soda flame falls upon nearly parallel surfaces are often employed as a test of flatness. Two flat surfaces can be made to fit, and then the bands are few and broad, if not entirely absent; and, however the surfaces may be presented to one another, the bands should be straight, parallel and equidistant. If this condition be violated, one or other of the surfaces deviates from flatness. In fig. 4, A and B represent the glasses to be tested, and C is a lens of 2 or 3 ft. focal length. Rays diverging from a soda flame at E are rendered parallel by the lens, and after reflection from the surfaces are recombined by the lens at E. To make an observation, the coincidence of the radiant point and its image must be somewhat disturbed, the one being displaced to a position a little beyond, and the other to a position a little in front of the diagram. The eye, protected from the flame by a suitable screen, is placed at the image, and being focused upon AB, sees the field traversed by bands. The reflector D is introduced as a matter of convenience to make the line of vision horizontal.

These bands may be photographed. The lens of the camera takes the place of the eye, and should be as close to the flame as possible. With suitable plates, sensitized by cyanin, the exposure required may vary from ten minutes to an hour. To get the best results, the hinder surface of A should be blackened, and the front surface of B should be thrown out of action by the superposition of a wedge-shaped plate of glass, the intervening space being filled with oil of turpentine or other fluid having nearly the same refraction as glass. Moreover, the light should be purified from blue rays by a trough containing solution of bichromate of potash. With these precautions the dark parts of the bands are very black, and the exposure may be prolonged much beyond what would otherwise be admissible.

By this method it is easy to compare one flat with another, and thus, if the first be known to be free from error, to determine the errors of the second. But how are we to obtain and verify a standard? The plan usually followed is to bring three surfaces into comparison. The fact that two surfaces can be made to fit another in all azimuths proves that they are spherical and of equal curvatures, but one convex and the other concave, the case of perfect flatness not being excluded. If A and B fit one another, and also A and C, it follows that B and C must be similar. Hence, if B and C also fit one another, all three surfaces must be flat. By an extension of this process the errors of three surfaces which are not flat can be found from a consideration of the interference bands which they present when combined in three pairs.

The free surface of undisturbed water is almost ideally flat, and, as Lord Rayleigh (Nature, 1893, 48, 212) has shown, there is no great difficulty in using it as a standard of comparison. Following the same idea we may construct a parallel plate by superposing a layer of water upon mercury. If desired, the superior reflecting power of the mercury may be compensated by the addition of colouring matter to the water.

Haidinger’s Rings dependent on Obliquity.—It is remarkable that the well-known theoretical investigation, undertaken with the view of explaining Newton’s rings, applies more directly to a different system of rings discovered at a later date.

The earliest observation of rings dependent upon obliquity appears to have been made by W. von Haidinger (Pogg. Ann., 1849, 77, p. 219; 1855, 96, p. 453), who employed sodium light reflected from a plate of mica (e.g. 0.2 mm. thick). The transmitted rays are the easier to see in their completeness, though they are necessarily somewhat faint. For this purpose it is sufficient to look through the mica, held close to the eye and perpendicular to the line of vision, at a sheet of white paper or card illuminated by a sodium flame. Although Haidinger omitted to consider the double refraction of the mica and gave formulae not quite correct for even singly refracting plates, he fully appreciated the distinctive character of the rings, contrasting Berührungsringe und Plattenringe. The latter may appropriately be named after him. Their tardy discovery may be attributed to the technical difficulty of obtaining sufficiently parallel plates, unless it be by the use of mica or by the device of pouring water upon mercury. Haidinger’s rings were rediscovered by O. R. Lummer (Wied. Ann., 1884, 23, p. 49), who pointed out the advantages they offer in the examination of plates intended to be parallel.

§ 9. Newton’s Diffusion Rings.—In the fourth part of the second book of his Opticks Newton investigates another series of rings, usually (though not very appropriately) known as the colours of thick plates. The fundamental experiment is as follows. At the centre of curvature of a concave looking-glass, quicksilvered behind, is placed an opaque card, perforated by a small hole through which sunlight is admitted. The main body of the light returns through the aperture; but a series of concentric rings are seen upon the card, the formation of which was proved by Newton to require the co-operation of the two surfaces of the mirror. Thus the diameters of the rings depend upon the thickness of the glass, and none are formed when the glass is replaced by a metallic speculum. The brilliancy of the rings depends upon imperfect polish of the anterior surface of the glass, and may be augmented by a coat of diluted milk, a device used by Michel Ferdinand, duc de Chaulnes. The rings may also be well observed without a screen in the manner recommended by Stokes. For this purpose all that is required is to place a small flame at the centre of curvature of the prepared glass, so as to coincide with its image. The rings are then seen surrounding the flame and occupying a definite position in space.

The explanation of the rings, suggested by Young, and developed by Herschel, refers them to interference between one portion of light scattered or diffracted by a particle of dust, and then regularly refracted and reflected, and another portion first regularly refracted and reflected and then diffracted at emergence by the same particle. It has been shown by Stokes (Camb. Trans., 1851, 9, p. 147) that no regular interference is to be expected between portions of light diffracted by different particles of dust.

In the memoir of Stokes will be found a very complete discussion of the whole subject, and to this the reader must be referred who desires a fuller knowledge. Our limits will not allow us to do more than touch upon one or two points. The condition of fixity of the rings when observed in air, and of distinctness when a screen is used, is that the systems due to all parts of the diffusing surface should coincide; and it is fulfilled only when, as in Newton’s experiments, the source and screen are in the plane passing through the centre of curvature of the glass.

Fig. 5.

As the simplest for actual calculation, we will consider a little further the case where the glass is plane and parallel, of thickness t and index μ, and is supplemented by a lens at whose focus the source of light is placed. This lens acts both as collimator and as object-glass, so that the combination of lens and plane mirror replaces the concave mirror of Newton’s experiment. The retardation is calculated in the same way as for thin plates. In fig. 5 the diffracting particle is situated at B, and we have to find the relative retardation of the two rays which emerge finally at inclination θ, the one diffracted at emergence following the path ABDBIE, and the other diffracted at entrance and following the path ABFGH. The retardation of the former from B to I is 2μt + BI, and of the latter from B to the equivalent place G is 2μBF. Now FB = t sec θ′, θ′ being the angle of refraction; BI = 2t tan θ′sin θ; so that the relative retardation F is given by

R = 2μt {1 + μ−1 tan θ′ sin θ − sec θ′) = 2μt (1 − cos θ′).

If θ, θ′ be small, we may take

R = 2tθ2 / μ

(1).

as sufficiently approximate.

The condition of distinctness is here satisfied, since R is the same for every ray emergent parallel to a given one. The rays of one parallel system are collected by the lens to a focus at a definite point in the neighbourhood of the original source.

The formula (1) was discussed by Herschel, and shown to agree with Newton’s measures. The law of formation of the rings follows immediately from the expression for the retardation, the radius of the ring of nth order being proportional to n and to the square root of the wave-length.

§ 10. Interferometer.—In many cases it is necessary that the two rays ultimately brought to interference should be sufficiently separated over a part of their course to undergo a different treatment; for example, it may be desired to pass them through different gases.

Fig. 6.

Fig. 7.

A simple modification of Young’s original experiment suffices to solve this problem. Light proceeding from a slit at A (fig. 6) perpendicular to the plane of the paper, falls upon a collimating lens B whose aperture is limited by two parallel and rather narrow slits of equal width. The parallel rays CE, DF (shown broken in the figure) transmitted by these slits are brought to a focus at G by the lens EF where they form an image of the original slit A. This image is examined with an eye-piece of high magnifying power. The interference bands at G undergo displacement if the rays CE, DF are subjected to a relative retardation. Consider what happens at the point G, which is the geometrical image of A. If all is symmetrical so that the paths CE, DF are equal, there is brightness. But if, for example, CE be subjected to a relative retardation of half a wave-length, the brightness is replaced by darkness, and the bands are shifted through half a band-interval.

An apparatus of this kind has been found suitable for determining the refractivity of gases, especially of gases available only in small quantities (Proc. Roy. Soc., 1896, 59, p. 198; 1898, 64, p. 95). There is great advantage in replacing the ordinary eye-piece by a simple cylindrical magnifier formed of a glass rod 4 mm. in diameter. Under these conditions a paraffin lamp sufficed to illuminate the slit at A, and allowed the refractivities of gases to be compared to about one-thousandth part.

If the object be to merely see the bands in full development the lenses of the above apparatus may be dispensed with. A metal or pasteboard tube 10 in. long carries at one end a single slit (analogous to A) and at the other a double slit (analogous to C, D). This double slit, which requires to be very fine, may be made by scraping two parallel lines with a knife on a piece of silvered glass. The tube is pointed to a bright light, and the eye, held close behind the double slit, is focused upon the far slit.

§ 11. Other Refractometers.—In another form of refractometer, employed by J. C. Jamin, the separations are effected by reflections at the surfaces of thick plates. Two thick glass mirrors, exactly the same in all respects, are arranged as in fig. 7. The first of the two interfering rays is that which is reflected at the first surface of the first reflector and at the second surface of the second reflector. The second ray undergoes reflection at the second surface of the first reflector and at the first surface of the second reflector. Upon 693 the supposition that the plates are parallel and equally thick, the paths pursued by these two rays are equal. P represents a thin plate of glass interposed in the path of one ray, by which the bands are shifted.

Fig. 8.

In Jamin’s apparatus the two rays which produce interference are separated by a distance proportional to the thickness of the mirrors, and since there is a practical limit to this thickness, it is not possible to separate the two rays very far. In A. A. Michelson’s interferometer there is no such restriction. “The light starts from source S (fig. 8) and separates at the rear of plate A, part of it being reflected to the plane mirror C, returning exactly, on its path through A, to O, where it may be observed by a telescope or received upon a screen. The other part of the ray goes through the glass plate A, passes through B, and is reflected by the plane mirror D, returns on its path to the starting point A, where it is reflected so as nearly to coincide with the first ray. The plane parallel glass B is introduced to compensate for the extra thickness of glass which the first ray has traversed in passing twice through the plate A. Without it the two paths would not be optically identical, because the first would contain more glass than the second. Some light is reflected from the front surface of the plate A, but its effect may be rendered insignificant by covering the rear surface of A with a coating of silver of such thickness that about equal portions of the incident light are reflected and transmitted. The plane parallel plates A and B are worked originally in one piece, which is afterwards cut in two. The two pieces are placed parallel to one another, thus ensuring exact equality in the two optical paths AC and AD” (see Michelson, Light-Waves and their Uses, Chicago, 1903).

The adjustments of this apparatus are very delicate. Of the fully silvered mirrors C, D, the latter must be accurately parallel to the image of the former. For many purposes one of the mirrors, C, must be capable of movement parallel to itself, usually requiring the use of very truly constructed ways. An escape from this difficulty may be found in the employment of a layer of mercury, standing on copper, the surface of which automatically assumes the horizontal position.

Michelson’s apparatus, employed to view an extended field of homogeneous light, exhibits Haidinger’s rings, and if all is in good order the dark parts are sensibly black. As the order of interference increases, greater and greater demand is made upon the homogeneity of the light. Thus, if the illumination be from a sodium flame, the rings are at first distinct, but as the difference of path increases the duplicity of the bright sodium line begins to produce complications. After 500 rings, the bright parts of one system coincide with the dark parts of the other (Fizeau), and if the two systems were equally bright all trace of rings would disappear. A little later the rings would again manifest themselves and, after 1000 had gone by, would be nearly or quite as distinct as at first. And these alternations of distinctness and indistinctness would persist until the point was reached at which even a single sodium line was insufficiently homogeneous. Conversely, the changes of visibility of the rings as the difference of path increases give evidence as to the duplicity of the line. In this way Michelson obtained important information as to the constitution of the approximately homogeneous lines obtained from electrical discharge through attenuated metallic vapours. Especially valuable is the vacuum tube containing cadmium. The red line proved itself to be single and narrow in a high degree, and the green line was not far behind.

But although in Michelson’s hands the apparatus has done excellent spectroscopic work, it is not without its weak points. A good deal of labour is required to interpret the visibility curves, and in some cases the indications are actually ambiguous. For instance, it is usually impossible to tell on which side of the principal component a feebler companion lies. It would seem that for spectroscopic purposes this apparatus must yield to that of Fabry and Pérot, in which multiple reflections are utilized; this is a spectroscope in the literal sense, inasmuch as the constitution of a spectrum line is seen by simple inspection.

INTERIM, originally a Latin word for “in the meantime.” The word was hence applied to certain edicts and decrees passed by the emperor and the diets during the reformation in Germany with the object of temporarily settling a controversy. These “interims” regulated points of religious and ecclesiastical difference until they could be decided by a general council. The best example of such a modus vivendi is the Augsburg Interim of 1548, drawn up by Michael Helding, Julius von Pflug and John Agricola (a medievalist, an Erasmian, and a conservative Lutheran) at the bidding of Charles V., and accepted by the diet. It was an ambiguous document, teaching from the Roman Catholic side transubstantiation, the seven sacraments, adoration of the Virgin and saints, and papal headship, and from the Protestant, justification by faith, marriage of priests, the use of the cup by the laity. Maurice of Saxony was permitted to vary the interim for his dominions, and his edition was called the Leipzig Interim. An earlier interim was that of Regensburg, 1541.

INTERLACED ARCHES, the term for a scheme of decoration employed in Romanesque and Gothic architecture, where arches are thrown from alternate piers, interlacing or intersecting one another. In the former case, the first arch mould is carried alternately over and under the second, in the latter the mouldings actually intersect and stop one another. An example of the former exists in St Peter’s in the East, Oxford, and of the latter in St Joseph’s chapel, Glastonbury, and in the cathedral of Bristol.

INTERLAKEN, a Swiss town (1864 ft.) in the canton of Berne, situated on the flat plain (Bödeli) between the lakes of Brienz (E.) and of Thun (W.), and connected by steamer, as well as by railway (17½ m.) with the town of Thun. It is built on the left bank of the Aar, and grew up around the religious house of Austin Canons, founded about 1130 and suppressed in 1528. In the surviving buildings of the convent religious services (Anglican, Scottish Presbyterian and French Protestant) are now held, while the more modern castle is occupied by offices of the Cantonal Government. The fine and well-shaded avenue called the Höheweg runs through the main portion of the town, and is lined on the north side by a succession of huge hotels and the large Kursaal. Interlaken is much frequented in summer, partly because of the glorious view of the Jungfrau (13,669 ft.) which it commands to the south, and partly because it is the best starting-point for many excursions, as to Schynige Platte, Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald. The lines serving these places all start from the eastern railway station (that from Thun reaches the western or main railway station), whence steamers depart for the Giessbach Falls, Brienz and Meiringen, on the way to Lucerne or to the Grimsel Pass. In 1900 the population of Interlaken was 2962 (mainly Protestant and German-speaking). Opposite Interlaken, and on the right bank of the Aar is Unterseen (in 1900, 2607 inhabitants), which was built in 1280 by Berthold von Eschenbach.

INTERLOPER, one who interferes in affairs in which he has no concern. This word, with the verbal form “to interlope,” first appears at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century in connexion with the interference of unauthorized persons in the trading monopoly of the Russia Company and later of the East India Company. The New English Dictionary quotes from H. Lane (1590), Hakluyt’s Voyages, “From those parts the Muscovites were furnished out of Dutchland by enterlopers with all arts and artificers and had few or none by us,” and also from the Minutes of the Court of the East India Company, 22nd of February 1615, “to examine all suspected personnes that intend interlopinge into the East Indies or Muscovy.” Edward Phillips (New World of Words, 1658) defines interlopers at common law as those “that without legal authority intercept the trade of a company, as it were Interleapers.” The word appears to be of English origin, for the Dutch enterlooper, smuggler, often given as the source, was taken from English, as was the French interlope. The word is a compound of inter, between, and lope, a dialectal variant of “leap.” A common word for a vagrant, or “straggler,” as it is defined, was till 1580 “landloper,” and the combination of “straggler” and “interloper” is found in Horsey’s Travels (Hakluyt Soc.), 1603-1627, “all interlopers and straglyng Englishmene lyving in that country.”

INTERNATIONAL, THE. The International Working Men’s Association, commonly called “The International,” was formed at London in 1864. It was a society of working men of all nations, somewhat like a cosmopolitan trades union, but 694 bearing a still closer resemblance to an international social science association for discussing and furthering the rights of labour. The occasion of its formation was the visit of some French workmen to the London Exhibition of 1862. In the course of their visit the labour question was discussed, and a desire for the further interchange of ideas expressed. Nothing decisive was done till 1864, when a great public meeting of working men of all nations was held at St Martin’s Hall, London, and a provisional committee was appointed to draft the constitution of the new association.

The first four congresses of the International, held at Geneva (September 1866), Lausanne (1867), Brussels (1868), and Basel (1869), marked the rapid development of the association. It gained its first triumph in the effectual support of the bronze-workers at Paris during their lock-out in 1867; and it repeatedly aided the English unionists by preventing the importation of cheap labour from the continent. It soon spread as far east as Poland and Hungary, and it had affiliated societies with journals devoted to its cause in every country of western Europe.

It was supposed to be concerned in all the revolutionary movements and agitations of Europe, gaining notoriety as the rallying point of social overthrow and ruin. Its prestige, however, was always based more on the vast possibilities of the cause it represented than on its actual power. Its organization was loose, its financial resources insignificant; the continental unionists joined it more in the hope of borrowing than of contributing support. At the successive congresses its socialistic tendencies became more and more pronounced; it declared its opposition to private property not only in railways but in mines and the soil, holding that these should revert to the community. Even the principle of inheritance was saved only by a narrow majority. In 1869 M. Bakunin, the Russian socialist or nihilist, with his party joined the association, and at once asserted his character as the “apostle of universal destruction.”

The relation of the association to the communal rising at Paris in the spring of 1871 has been the subject of much dispute. It is now agreed that the International as such had no part either in originating or conducting it; some of its French members joined it, but only on their individual responsibility. Its complicity after the event is equally clear. After the fall of the commune the general council of London, Karl Marx included, issued a long and trenchant manifesto, approving its action and extolling the “glorious vanquished.” From this point the decline and fall of the association is to be dated. The English unionists, intent on more practical concerns at home, never took a deep interest in its proceedings; the German socialists were hindered by law from corporate action; America was too remote. But it found its worst enemies amongst its own friends; the views of Marx and his school were too moderate for the universally subversive principles of M. Bakunin and the radical Swiss federation of the Jura. It came to a rupture at the congress of 1872, held at the Hague, when Bakunin, being outvoted and “excommunicated” by the Marx party, formed a rival International, which found its chief support in Spain and Italy. Wearied of its European contentions and desirous to form a basis of operation in America, the Marx International now transferred the seat of its general council to New York; but it survived just long enough to hold another congress at Geneva in 1874, and then quietly expired.

The party of destruction styling themselves “autonomists” had a bloodier history. The programme of this party was to overturn all existing institutions, with the view to reconstructing them on some vague communal basis such as had been tried at Paris in 1871. It endeavoured to realize this in the great communal risings in southern Spain in 1873, when its adherents set up their peculiar form of government at Barcelona, Seville, Cadiz and Cartagena—at the last-mentioned place also seizing part of the ironclad fleet of Spain. As at Paris, they failed in leadership and organization, and were suppressed, though not without difficulty, by the national troops. The “autonomists” lingered on till 1879. The collapse was complete of an association which once extended from Hungary to San Francisco, and alarmed the minds of men with visions of universal ruin.

INTERNATIONAL LAW, the general term for the law governing the relations and intercourse of states with one another. The parties in its application are states (see State) and not nations, so that the word “international” does not accurately limit the scope of the subject. Nor do authors always confine themselves to its proper limitation. Thus the rules relating to nationality and naturalization, extradition, patents, trade marks, &c., which affect states on the one side and foreign persons on the other, are generally included among the subject-matter of International Law. There is a special branch of International Law known as Private International Law (see International Law, Private) which deals exclusively with the relations of persons belonging to different states, in which states as such are not parties.

The term “international” was first used by Bentham. His explanation of the new term was as follows:—

There has been much controversy as to the aptness of the use of the word “law” in this connexion. “International law,” said the 3rd marquess of Salisbury in a speech on the establishment of a Court of International Arbitration, “has no existence in the sense in which the term ‘law’ is usually understood. It depends generally upon the prejudices of writers of text-books. It can be enforced by no tribunal, and therefore to apply to it the phrase ‘law’ is to some extent misleading.”2 This has been more or less the view not only of most British statesmen but also of many practical English jurists. It found one of its most emphatic exponents in Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge. “Strictly speaking,” he observed in his judgment on the Franconia case,3 “international law is an inexact expression, and it is apt to mislead, if its inexactness is not kept in mind. Law implies a lawgiver and a tribunal capable of enforcing it and coercing its transgressors, but there is no common lawgiver to sovereign states, and no tribunal has the power to bind them by decrees or coerce them if they transgress. The law of nations is that collection of usages which civilized states have agreed to observe in their dealings with one another. What these usages are, whether a particular one has or has not been agreed to, must be matter of evidence. Treaties and acts of states are but evidence of the agreement of nations, and do not, in England at least, per se bind the tribunals. Neither certainly does a consensus of jurists, but it is evidence of the agreement of nations on international points, and on such points, when they arise, the English courts give effect as part of English law to such agreement.”

In opposition to this view may be cited the more recent one expressed by Lord Russell of Killowen, who challenged Lord Coleridge’s view as “based on too narrow a definition of law, a definition which relies too much on force as the governing idea.” “If,” he added, “the development of law is historically considered it will be found to exclude that body of customary law which in early stages of society precedes law. As government becomes more frankly democratic, laws bear less and less the character of commands imposed by a coercive authority, and acquire more and more the character of customary law founded 695 on consent.... I claim that the aggregate of the rules to which nations have agreed to conform in their conduct towards one another are properly to be designated International Law.”4 This recalls Blackstone’s definition: “The law of nations is a system of rules, deducible by natural reason, and established by universal consent among the civilized inhabitants of the world, in order to decide all disputes, to regulate all ceremonies and civilities, and to ensure the observance of justice and good faith in that intercourse which must frequently occur between two or more independent states, and the individuals belonging to each.”5 The current English narrower view owes its origin chiefly to the influence of John Austin, and the current broader one to that of Sir Henry Maine.6 The increasing popularity of references to international arbitration (see Arbitration, International), the adoption of a large number of special treaties making such references compulsory in certain cases, the establishment of and increasing recourse to the court for the decision of difficulties between states created by The Hague “Convention for the pacific settlement of disputes between States” of 1899 (see Peace), the adoption of fixed rules of law in the international conventions in 1899, 1907 and 1909 dealing with many of the most controversial questions of international usage, have so transformed the subject that if, as Lord Coleridge said, law implies a lawgiver and a tribunal capable of enforcing it, these conditions are now at any rate partly fulfilled. We shall see below to what extent it may be necessary to regard power of enforcement against transgressors as requisite to give international law the character of law properly so-called.

Sanctions.—The subject of the enforcement of International Law, or its “sanctions,” has given rise to much controversy. The word “sanction” is derived from the Lat. sanctio, which in turn is derived from sancire, to consecrate. In its original sense sanctio means consecration. From this followed the sense of religious obligation. Thus sancire legem is used by Roman writers as meaning that observance was made obligatory, but without reference to the idea of there being a remedy or penalty for non-observance. With the development of an organized judicial system the religious or moral obligation was displaced by the growth of remedial procedure. Cicero observes of some legal restrictions, hoc non sancitur lege civili (this is not consecrated by the civil law, i.e. with penalties). A collateral sense of the word grew up which meant ratification, as where Cicero speaks of sancire acta Caesaris or of sancire foedus.

Bentham, who worked out the theory of legal sanctions as applied to modern law, describes them as equivalent to pleasures and pains derived from four different sources. These are physical, political, moral and religious. The first three belong to experience in the present life, the fourth to that in the present life or hereafter.7

Austin’s analysis of this vague subdivision led him to a more precise determination of the relationship of sanctions to law, viz. that a law properly so-called is a command and its sanction is the power to enforce obedience to it. Stated briefly, any other kind of law according to Austin is not positive law but merely called so by analogy. Applying this test to International Law he concludes that the law obtaining between nations is not positive law; for every positive law is set by a given sovereign to a person or persons in a state of subjection to its author. The law obtaining between nations is only law set by general opinion, with duties which are only enforced by moral sanction; by fear on the part of nations, or by fear on the part of a sovereign, of provoking general hostility, and incurring its probable evils, in case they should violate maxims generally respected.8

Sir H. Maine’s somewhat indirect answer to Austin may now be taken as the view held at least by British theoretical writers. “Austin,” he said, “has shown, though not without some straining of language, that the sanction is found everywhere, in positive law, civil and criminal. This is, in fact, the great feat which he performed, but some of his disciples seem to me to draw the inference from his language that men always obey rules from fear of punishment. As a matter of fact this is quite untrue, for the largest number of rules which men obey are obeyed unconsciously, from a mere habit of mind. Men do sometimes obey rules for fear of the punishment which will be inflicted if they are violated, but, compared with the mass of men in each community, this class is but small; probably it is substantially confined to what are called the criminal classes, and for one man who refrains from stealing or murdering because he fears the penalty there must be hundreds of thousands who refrain without a thought on the subject.”9

The view, however, that a law is not devoid of binding character because there is no authority to enforce its observance hardly requires justification at the present day. The fact that any well-established international usage is observed, and that states invariably endeavour to answer any reproach of departing from such usage by explanations showing that the incriminated act is justified by recognized rules of International Law, is evidence of its binding character. As the late Professor Rivier, one of the leading authorities on Roman Law, as well as an international jurist of eminence, has expressed it: “The law of nations is positive law because states wish it to be so. They recognize its compulsory character and proclaim it. As they are their own legislators and make their common laws by express or tacit consent, they attest explicitly and implicitly their conviction that its principles are binding upon them, as judicial principles, as law. Innumerable public acts, affirmations, declarations and conventions are there to prove it. On the other hand, never in any published official act of the present age, verbal or written, has a state dared to declare that it did not consider itself bound by the law of nations and its principles.”10 States, as Professor Rivier says, have again and again solemnly declared their determination to abide by the principles of International Law. Witness the Declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle of November 15, 1818, in which the representatives of five powers, Austria, France, Great Britain, Russia and Prussia, solemnly stated that “the sovereigns in forming this august union have regarded as its fundamental basis their unchangeable resolution never to depart, either amongst themselves or in their relations with other states, from the strictest observance of the principles of the law of nations, principles which, in their application to a permanent state of peace, can alone effectively guarantee the independence of each government and the stability of the general association.” In the negotiations for the Treaty of London concerning the Black Sea (March 13, 1871), at which seven powers were represented, Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey, a resolution on the sanctity of treaties was annexed to the first protocol, stating that the plenipotentiaries recognize that it is an essential principle of the law of nations that “no power can liberate itself 696 from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting powers by means of an amicable arrangement.” Even in 1908, when Austria-Hungary proceeded to the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina without obtaining the prior assent of the high contracting powers, who under the treaty of Berlin of 1878 had granted her temporary occupation of the annexed provinces, the protests of the powers concerned were answered by Austria-Hungary declaring that she had done nothing contrary to the law of nations or affecting the sanctity of treaties, because the powers had given their tacit consent to the practical transformation of her temporary into a permanent occupation.

The public opinion of the civilized world, in fact, plays in an ever-increasing degree the part of a sanctioning authority. With the growth of international intercourse and international interdependence the danger of isolation or of discredit or even of “boycotting” becomes a matter of increasing importance in the conduct of states. The national press and periodical literature, with exceptions no doubt, are among the chief factors in the development of this public opinion, but it is by no means dependent upon them. Personal intercourse among citizens of the same country, and between statesmen, politicians and citizens of different countries has a still greater effect in the creation of the mental attitude of nations towards each other. This exposes any departure from recognized usage or any disregard for international obligations to such reprobation throughout the whole world, that, far from taking advantage of the absence of any coercive method of enforcing obedience to the principles of international law, states compete with each other in asserting their strict fidelity to such principles. And now successive diplomatic conferences have codified many of the chief branches of international usage, thus diminishing the possible cases in which states can take advantage of the uncertainty of the law and, by quibbling over its interpretation, escape from its obligations.

Sources and Foundations.—It is usual, following Wheaton’s classification,11 to enumerate the sources of International Law in the following groups: text-writers of authority as witnesses of usage; treaties of peace, alliance and commerce; ordinances of particular states, prescribing rules for the conduct of their commissioned cruisers and prize tribunals; adjudications of international tribunals; written opinions of official jurists given confidentially to their own government; history of wars, negotiations, treaties and other transactions relating to the public intercourse of nations. It is in these different classes of opinions and precedents that writers have been in the habit of searching for those arguments and analogies on which have been built up the system and principles called International Law.

Wheaton, it is seen, regarded text-writers as witnesses of the usage of nations. He explains his meaning as follows: “Without wishing to exaggerate the importance of these writers, or to substitute in any case their authority for the principles of reason, it may be affirmed that they are generally impartial in their judgment. They are witnesses of the sentiments and usages of civilized nations, and the weight of their testimony increases every time that their authority is invoked by statesmen, and every year that passes without the rules laid down in their works being impugned by the avowal of contrary principles.” This distinguished writer’s quasi-explanation of the sources of International Law is extremely vague. He masses together cause and effect, private and public opinions, usage and exceptions. Professor Oppenheim has endeavoured to give a more scientific explanation of the growth and development of International Law, and objects to calling sources of International Law what are mere factors influencing its growth:—

We prefer to regard International Law as deriving the rules composing it from practically the same sources as domestic law, and to attribute to text-writers more or less the same value in its development as in that of the private Precedents. law of nations. The same primary rules of conduct are appealed to between states as between individuals, and precedents play exactly the same part wherever human actions are concerned. In both cases what has been done before commends itself when the responsibility of taking steps pledging the future is concerned. Statesmen on whom great responsibility impends, on whom the conduct of momentous negotiations has devolved, and who will have to render an account of their work to the sovereign or nation they represent, preserve an argument in their own favour in departing as little as possible from any course taken in previous similar circumstances. Precedents, moreover, are arguments for acceptance by their adversaries or counter-negotiators. In fact, in diplomacy even more than in matters of domestic government precedents play a dominant part in the growth of usage. These precedents are often in themselves originally local usages, such as grew up in the intercourse of the Italian Italian influence. communities. Italy, in fact, served as a laboratory for early diplomatists and writers. It was in the intercourse of these active and ambitious states that grew up the very notion of a foreign diplomacy and the necessity of rules of conduct in this miniature Europe, with its perpetual antagonisms and jealousies, its balance of power, its idea of a state distinct from a nation and of a community of 697 states elbowing each other in their daily contact. It was there that grew up the institution of passports, the distinction between armed forces and civilians, international comity, and in fact the very notion that states have an interest in the observance of law and order among them. In the same way the active commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean led, in the common interest, to the development of rules of the sea in time of peace, and later to others in time of war.

In the north of Europe, again, out of the active commercial intercourse among the Baltic and North Sea communities grew rules of the sea in the same common interest. It was the Thirty Years’ War, with its revolting cruelty, Thirty Years’ War. which brought out the contrast between the more humane practice of war as an art in Italy and the mere bludgeonry which prevailed in the brutal struggle which disgraced the first half of the 17th century. The brutality of the struggle turned thinkers’ attention to the need of formulating rules for the protection in time of war of non-combatants and the innocent subjects of absolute sovereigns, the treatment of the sick and wounded, the prohibition of wanton pillage and the other horrors which shocked the awakening conscience of northern Europe. It was the starting-point of the age of text-books.

The first effective work, the one which was the first to influence sovereigns and statesmen, was Grotius’s De jure belli ac pacis (Paris, 1625), which practically exhausted the theoretical arguments in favour of the new subject. Nobody Grotius.

Pufendorf. has in fact since brought to light any new conception of the foundations of international law. An exhaustive and masterly treatise having been published, no further subsequent treatise was necessary to show what all men were beginning to feel. He sublimated the feelings of his age, and having arrived at the pure substance, the work of proving the need of his subject was disposed of for all time. Pufendorf (1632-1697), who, in the sequence of effective text-writers, succeeded Grotius, endeavoured to base international law on an ethical basis accepted by all peoples without necessity for a common creed or standard of morals, but it is doubtful, whatever may have been the extent to which he stimulated the study of jurisprudence, whether he did much in advancing the practical development of the law of nations. His book De jure naturae et gentium (1672), as its name indicates, based international law on what he called the law of nature, a subject which has much exercised the minds of jurists searching for an ethical basis for existing law.

The scientific mind of Leibnitz (1646-1716) revolted against this theoretical and doctrinaire tendency of Pufendorf and other writers, who were following with feeble tread in the giant footsteps of Grotius. He saw that the practice Leibnitz. of nations was taking a course dictated by the current moral standards of civilized society, and that the philosophizing of the text-book writers was leading them away from that actual practice which they should use as data for their conclusions. Natural science, moreover, had taught him the risk of theorizing on imperfect data, and while writing a history of Brunswick it occurred to him that treaties and diplomatic documents generally were the substances and tests of the publicist’s laboratory. His codex juris gentium diplomaticus (1693-1700) gave a more precise direction to speculations on the subject.

The next great writer of authority united all the qualities of a practical lawyer and jurist. This was Bynkershoek (1673-1743). He was the first writer on international law who dealt with public maritime law as a matter Bynkershoek. demanding special treatment and involving a set of principles not called into action in territorial warfare. A magistrate administering the law in a great commercial country, whose interests were on or across the high seas rather than within the narrow European limits of Holland, Bynkershoek, like Leibnitz, searched for his data in the actual practice of nations in their intercourse with one another. He applied his clear legally trained mind to deriving principles from practice instead of endeavouring to build up a practice on abstract principles. It was he who first generalized the different isolated usages which had grown up at different spots in northern Europe in the interest of maritime defence, and evolved from practice the principle that dominion seawards was limited to the extent to which it was possible to enforce it (cannon-shot range), a principle which not only created the legal institution of territorial waters, but has since been imported into other branches of International Law, and has indirectly influenced the suppression of fictitious blockades and more recently of fictitious occupations of territory.

A contemporary of Bynkershoek was Christian de Wolff (1679-1754), a philosopher, mathematician, theologian, lawyer and disciple of Leibnitz. Wolff’s great work on the Institutions of the Law of Nature and Nations is a learned C. de Wolff. and accurate treatise drawn from all the well-known sources of knowledge, and, just as Grotius based his demonstrations on the then imperfect knowledge of public events of his time, Wolff based his on the more accurate sources of information which had grown up under the influence of Leibnitz, and created a connected system out of the scattered fragments available. But his book was written in Latin at a period when scholarship had declined, and its influence was only felt after Vattel (1714-1767) wrote his Droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle appliquées à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (1758). His book had all the charm, although Vattel was a Vattel. Neufchatelois, of the French writers of his time, and he it was who popularized the study of International Law. His book was based chiefly on the work of Wolff, but in it he gave what was best amongst his predecessors without attempting to add anything original of his own. It became the handbook of statesmen and jurists, and has never ceased to be quoted by them down to the present day.

But the opinions of jurists in International Law can have little more than the value of criticism and co-ordination. They have seldom served to make law, though they have the weight of all statements made by those who have made a special study of any branch of law, as to what they had gathered to be the existing practice at the time when they wrote, or as to the trend which they showed that practice might be taking. Great lawyers and writers like those we have mentioned, and such as Lord Mansfield, Sir William Scott, Chief-Justice Marshall and others, have done the work of classifying facts, deducing conclusions from them and connecting rules with psychological and ethical motives, and have thus sent a current of higher intelligence through the subject which has raised it to its present methodical form. Still International Law remained a wide field for controversy. Authors were agreed on general principles, but when these general principles were applied in practice, the shortcomings of unwritten usage often caused as much difficulty as that which the appeal to principles was intended to overcome.

What may be called the first enactment of rules of International Law was the Declaration of Paris of 1856, but the great work of codification, or rather of reducing into writing the rules which had been floating as an unwritten law Hague and London Conferences. in the conscience of Europe, was undertaken by the Hague Conferences, which may be said to be and to have created an entirely new factor in the domain of International Law. Two of the conventions adopted in 1899 completed work which had already been commenced long before, viz. those on the usages of war and on the adaptation of the Geneva Convention to naval war. The third established methods for the pacific settlement of international difficulties, including the formation of the Hague Court of Arbitration. Recourse to the latter was purely optional, but the other two conventions have been absorbed into the national law of the ratifying countries, and thus have also the domestic sanction states give to their own laws. The work of the Conference of 1907 was of a much wider and more exhaustive character than that of 1899. It comprised, besides revised conventions on the matters dealt with in 1899, new Conventions on the following subjects: Opening of hostilities; Position in naval war of enemy’s merchant ships at beginning of hostilities; Conversion of merchant vessels into warships; Rights and duties of neutral states in naval war; The laying of automatic submarine contact mines; The 698 bombardment of undefended places by naval forces; Treatment of fishing vessels, postal correspondence and capture generally in maritime war; and Recovery by force of contract debts. It also adopted a convention for the creation of an International Prize Court of Appeal, which led to the calling of a fresh Conference on Prize Law. This conference sat in London from December 4, 1908, to February 26, 1909, and was confined to representatives of the following countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, United States of America, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Japan, Holland and Spain. It adopted a series of rules on naval warfare relating to Blockade in time of war; Contraband of war; Unneutral service; Destruction of neutral prizes; Transfer to neutral flag; Enemy character; Convoy; and Resistance to search and Compensation.

The revolution effected in the relations of states by the Hague and London Conferences, however, is not confined to the reduction into writing of more or less vague usages nor to the elaboration of details which no usage can possibly determine. Until a machinery was provided for the reform of the law it was futile to speculate on the advantages or disadvantages of any rule admitted by the majority of civilized nations. The territorial waters 3 m. limit, for instance, had its origin in the distance seawards of cannon-range in a past period. Its almost universal recognition only came long after the range of coast-guns had far exceeded this distance. This superannuated rule has now no legal basis at all except the so-called “common consent of nations,” a boon no doubt which outweighs any consideration of absolute fitness still unrecognized, but of which the learned Barbeyrac truly said,14 “Ce commun consentement des peuples que l’on suppose avoir force de loi est une chose qu’on ne prouvera jamais.” The institution of the Hague Conferences has now provided a method of obtaining the consent of nations, not only to existing rules, but to their reform and to the introduction of new rules. It is now an understanding among the states of the world, that these conferences shall be held periodically. It is, of course, possible for one great state to hold aloof and thus wreck the chances of universal agreement, but even then we have the power of the majority as against that of the minority. A case actually arose in a recent war between non-signatories of the declaration of Paris of 1856. Neither the United States nor Spain was a party to that declaration, yet neither ventured to disregard it.

The chief source of International Law will, therefore, in all probability for the future be that “Parliament of mankind,” the Hague Conferences. The Hague Court and its adjunct in time of war, the proposed International Prize Court of Appeal, will form the Judicature applying and construing the enactments of the Conferences acting as a sort of international Legislature.

Fundamental Principles.—Underlying the details of both the new International Legislature and the new International Judicature are certain principles which may some day have to be officially defined. These principles have Standard of right conduct. necessarily fluctuated with the standard of morals of each period. With the contemporary development of the public conscience, they are undergoing changes and a betterment which it is not desirable to check by yet nailing them up as immutable articles of faith. Till quite recently it was usual to speak of the common standard of right conduct prevailing throughout the Christian world, a standard to which responsible statesmen tried to adjust their direction of the affairs of state. The admission of Japan into the councils of the great powers has introduced a non-Christian element whose standard of conduct was not identical with nor based upon Christian morals. Turkey, though admitted in 1856 to European Councils, remained rather the occasion of their deliberations than a deliberating party. Her new position as a constitutional state, with a code of morals at any rate in some essentials distinct from that of Christian peoples, will add a further new non-Christian element into the moral foundations of international conduct. The influence of western Europe, however, in both Japan and Turkey, has hitherto in all external development been paramount. Japan, after examining all the existing systems, has even adopted the best she found in Western morals, and in her schools inculcates Christian ethics as a subject per se without reference to divine revelation or authority. Turkey too has the advantage of possessing a code of morals which produces so high a standard of right conduct in private life that very little in the way of moral lessons will have to be learned by the Ottomans from Western civilization. As regards practice, it is unreasonable to expect that the high estimate of the moral standard of west European civilization, which is cherished by those who profess its principles, should be accepted by other peoples with unqualified assent. Are not the nations of western Europe still vaguely influenced by the instincts of their conquering ancestors, and by the traditions of—

There is nothing essentially different between many recent wars and military enterprises undertaken by Western nations against heathen peoples, and wars and conquering enterprises undertaken by the Northmen of a thousand years ago. In his Northern Antiquities Mallet15 describes the primitive feeling of the Northmen in the following passages:—

The very notion of the “right of conquest,” and that the victorious are entitled to an indemnity without reference to any question of right and wrong or of justice and injustice, shows that there are principles in actual practice which What is a civilized state? lie outside and have no analogy in the principles of private law. In the partition of Africa native states have been treated as non-existent except as local bodies. They have been annexed to European states without reference to their will or consent. Treaties have indeed been made with them, but they have rather been regarded as evidence of prior occupation than as involving any question of native right. The test in the distinction between civilized and uncivilized states which is regarded as warranting exclusion from enjoyment of the right to consideration as independent states, and admission to the community of the civilized world, is in practice the possession of a regular government sufficient to ensure to Europeans who settle among them safety of life and property. Every country, in principle, possessing such a government has prima facie the rank of a state and is entitled to treatment as a civilized community. Treaties made with it for the purpose of extra-territorial jurisdiction are intended merely to take into account a difference of judicial institutions but are not supposed to detract otherwise from the possession of such equality and independence. This principle has no analogy in private morals, and has been, slight as it is, more honoured in the breach than the observance. If indifference to native right has provoked reaction, it has been on the part rather of philanthropists than of statesmen. Their movement for the protection of African aborigines has, however, 699 resulted in at least one great international charter for the prevention of the further degradation of African aborigines, viz. the General Act of Brussels of 1885. A vigorous outcry has also been raised against the methods of the government of the Congo State. But the agitation ought not to be confined to this part of Central Africa. Other governments are also in fault. In fact, the contact of the European with Central Africa has, throughout, with few exceptions, been one of barbarous practice quite inconsistent with the principles which Christian missionaries have been sent to teach the African native.

In the case of European enterprise in Asia, the “good old rule” has had still less justification. The action taken for the repression of the Boxer movement in China, like previous European incursions, had no essential characteristic distinguishing it from the expeditions of the Northmen described by Mallet in the above-quoted passage. The Japanese took part in the “Boxer” expedition, and the example of respect for native right and of orderly self-restraint they set has been universally acknowledged. But the lesson is one of greater significance than one of comparative ethics. The rise of the power of Japan and her obvious determination to constitute herself the champion of the races of eastern Asia has widened the scope of International Law, and we may now regard China as henceforth under the protection of the same principles as European states.

The three chief principles of interstate intercourse, those, in fact, on which International Law is based are:—

As regards the first o£ these principles see State. From the principle of independence it follows that every state has a right to change its form of government and to enjoy the free exercise o£ its internal energies. This is subject Chief principles. only to the limitation that in the exercise of this right other states or their subjects shall not be molested or otherwise suffer. The equality of all independent states entitles them to respect by other states of all the forms of ceremonial and to the same treatment by others, where their interests are identical, whether they are strong or weak. This principle has often been violated, but it is, nevertheless, acknowledged wherever possible, as in diplomatic conferences relating to all matters of an economic, hygienic, industrial or social character. Even at the Conference of Algeciras, though the powers immediately concerned from a political point of view were only Great Britain, France, Germany and Spain, the following were also represented as having economic interests in Morocco, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Sweden.

Ships on the high sea being regarded as detached portions of the national territory, there is also the derived principle of the freedom of the high sea, of the independence and equality High sea. upon it of the ships of all nations, subject only to due respect being paid to the independence and equality of all others and to such conventional restrictions as states may impose upon themselves (see Territorial Waters). This principle is re-enunciated in the preamble to the Convention of 1907 on the laying of automatic submarine contact mines (see Peace Conferences).

The Hague Conventions are based on these principles, to which there is a tendency to add another, viz. the right to arbitration in certain cases. This principle is set out The right to arbitration. more or less tentatively, it is true, but it is being completed by separate treaties of compulsory arbitration in connexion with the cases referred to. It is enunciated in the following article of the Convention of 1907 for the pacific settlement of International disputes:—

The principle of arbitration has also been adopted in reference to the recovery of contract debts under the following article of the “Convention respecting the limitation of the employment of force for the recovery of contract debts”:—

The codification of International Law itself, begun at the Hague and London Conferences, is an admission of the binding character of the primary principles set out above.

One of the chief tendencies of contemporary reform is also to restrict the effect of fictions and reduce rights to the limits of their practical application. Between two alternatives, the one to assert rights which cannot possibly be Restriction of effect of fictions. maintained by force such as claims to dominion over portions of the high sea (see High Sea, Territorial Waters), “paper blockades” (see Blockade) and fictitious occupations of territory (see Occupation), and the other to require actual physical assertion, a medium course is growing up, viz. that of recognizing potential assertion, that is assertion limited to physical possibilities.16 With the aid of the Institute o£ International Law, the International Law Association and other reforming agencies (see Peace), expert opinion in these matters is becoming homogeneous throughout the civilized world, and the ground is being prepared for a clearer understanding of these fundamental principles by the statesmen and state officials who have to apply them in practice.

INTERNATIONAL LAW (PRIVATE). There is in every territory the law of the land, or territorial law, by which the courts decide all cases that include no circumstances connected with any foreign territory. Often, however, such a circumstance suggests the question whether justice does not require that the law of some other territory shall be applied. Thus the Gretna Green marriages, by which English minors escaped the necessity of banns or the consent of parents or guardians, suggested the question, which was answered in the affirmative, whether even in England their validity ought not to be tried by the law of Scotland, where they were celebrated. Often, again, the question is suggested whether justice does not require that the courts of law should allow some effect to foreign legal proceedings, such as a judgment obtained or litigation pending abroad. Such questions as these are answered by private international law, which, since both laws and legal proceedings are emanations of public authority, may be defined as the department of legal science which is concerned with the effect to be given in the courts of law of any territory to public authority of another territory. The extradition of criminals is also an effect given to foreign public authority, but rather by the government which surrenders the criminal (see Extradition) than by the courts of law, whose only function is to check the surrender so far as the domestic legislation allows them to do so. If private international law were defined as the effect to be given by any mode in one territory to the public authority of another, extradition would be included in it, as is often done; but since the principles governing extradition have little to do with those applicable to other cases, it seems best to treat it as a separate department of law, as is generally done in England.

Comity of Nations.—In the 17th century the Dutch jurists Paul and John Voet and Huber brought forward a view which has since been largely adopted in England and the United States, namely, that the effect given by courts of law to foreign public authority is only due to the comity of nations, but for which every possible question before them would have to be decided by the law of the land. Comity, in that phrase, may only be intended to express the truth that foreign public authority has no inherent effect, without denying that the effect which domestic public authority allows to it is dictated by justice. But the limitations implied in the popular meaning of comity have sometimes been made the ground for deciding questions of private international law in the manner supposed to be most for the interest of litigants belonging to the territory; the phrase is consequently reprobated by most European continental writers, and had better be dropped. The justice on which private international law is founded acknowledges no interest but the general one of intercourse between persons sharing a common civilization in different countries. This interest, as manifesting itself in the domain of law, it seeks to satisfy and it is therefore a true legal justice, rightly classed under law, droit, recht, diritto, derecho and other corresponding terms.

Of the two words which, together with law, make up the title of our subject, private is justified by the fact that its application is between litigants in courts of law, and not between governments except so far as they may be such litigants. International (although interterritorial would be better) is justified by the 702 facts that public authority, which may be internationally foreign, has to be considered, and that governments display a great interest in the question by concluding treaties about it, and occasionally even by suspending diplomatic relations when a court of one country has applied to the subjects of another a rule which the government of the latter deems unjust. But those who think that the primary division of law should be into public and private, and not into international (or interterritorial) and territorial, object to the order in which the three words of the name are usually placed, and call the subject “international private law.”

Conflict of Laws.—This is another name for our subject, and indeed an older one than “private international law,” besides being still much used. But although laws may differ, they cannot properly be said to conflict, unless each can lay a just claim to application in the same circumstances. Now this does not happen. The justice which points out that in certain cases effect ought to be given in one territory to the laws or legal proceedings of another really traces the limits of laws and legal proceedings in space; and the tracing of limits is rather the prevention of conflict than its solution. Savigny has well pointed out that our subject is analogous to the determination of the limits of laws in time, which has to be made when the just application of a new enactment is to be distinguished from the ex post facto application which cannot justly be allowed it. The truth which is aimed at in the phrase “conflict of laws” is that the main problem of our subject is the selection of a law for each given case; but different laws are candidates for selection, not from anything in them as laws, but from differing opinions about the justice of the case. From this selection, again, will be seen the contrast between private international law and attempts at the assimilation of the laws of different countries. To a great extent such assimilation is desirable, especially in mercantile law, but it must always be limited by different views of social order and differences in national habits of thought and action. So far as it is realized, private international law comes to an end with the occasion for selection.

Territory.—This word, as entering into the definition of private international law, does not imply a separate state, whether sovereign or semi-sovereign; it includes every geographical area having a separate legal system, England and Scotland, as well as France or Germany. The case of the Gretna Green marriages illustrates the necessity of rules of private international law between all such, as well as between areas internationally foreign to one another; and indeed the rules are so applied, and in the language of our subject, the area of every separate legal system is foreign to every other such area. Only where a rule contemplates a person as attached more or less permanently to a particular territory, the tie which so attaches him to it may be either nationality or domicile if the territory is a separate state, as France; but it can only be domicile if the territory is combined with others in one state. Nothing but domicile can distinguish British subjects as belonging to England, Scotland or Jamaica, or citizens of the United States as belonging to New York or Pennsylvania.

Legal rules must have relation to the physical and mental characters, and the consequent habits of action, of the populations for which they are intended; they would not satisfy legal justice if they endangered social order as understood and desired by those populations, or if they failed to give due effect to the expectations of parties. This must be true for the rules of private international law as well as for those of any territorial law, and it leads us to ask whether the differences which preclude the universal identity of the latter must not also preclude the existence of the former. The answer is: (1) That where circumstances connected with different territories are concerned, wise rules for the selection of a law will generally give better effect to the expectations of the parties than an exclusive adherence to the territorial law of the court; (2) That the circumstances in which a foreign law is held to apply are exceptional as compared with those in which the domestic law applies, and naturally occur oftenest among the persons and in the affairs having most of a cosmopolitan character, so that the moral shock of applying to them a law founded on a foreign social order is greatly attenuated; (3) That throughout Christendom (to which Japan has now been added for legal purposes) there does exist, though not an identity, yet a considerable similarity in views of social order and prevalent habits of thought and action. Within the same geographical limits there also exists another requisite for the working of a system of private international law, namely, a mutual confidence between countries in the enlightenment and purity of their respective judicatures, to whose proceedings the respect enjoined by the rules of our subject is to be mutually given.

Even within the geographical limits just mentioned there are certain differences on points of social order, especially on marriage or divorce, which have hitherto prevented a complete agreement being attained in the rules of private international law. But no attempt has ever been made to establish any system of the kind as between Christian communities and Mahommedan or other polygamous ones, or between countries enjoying a Christian standard of civilization and those, of which China may be taken as an example, which, whether polygamous or not, do not inspire the necessary confidence in their judicatures. In Turkey and other Eastern countries (in which designation Japan is no longer included for purposes of law) Christians are placed by treaty under the jurisdiction in civil matters of their respective consuls. When in the courts of Christian countries Eastern persons or circumstances connected with Eastern laws have to be dealt with, the peculiar institutions of those countries are not enforced; and while in other respects the judges may be assisted by some of the rules of private international law, especially such as have for their object to carry into effect the reasonable intentions of parties, yet those rules are not applied as parts of an authoritative system.

Rules for the selection of the territorial law to be applied in the different classes of cases, or for the recognition of foreign legal proceedings, have sometimes been made the subject of international treaties, and have often been enacted by territorial legislatures. England possesses a few such enactments, as in the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, and many other countries possess them to a much larger extent in their codes. Where such enactments exist, or where treaty stipulations have been entered into, and the territorial law makes such stipulations binding on the judges, the courts of law must obey and apply them as they must obey and apply any other part of the law of the land. If, as in England, judicial precedents are held to be binding, so that the law of the land consists in part of judge-made law, a similar result is produced; an English court must follow English precedents on the application of foreign law or the refusal to apply it, to the same extent to which it would be bound to follow them on any other point. So far as our matter remains open for a judge, he has, to assist him towards a just decision, the treaties, written laws and judicial precedents of other countries as examples, and a vast literature which has grown up in all Christian countries. That this apparatus is far from having furnished concordant results is due, not only to the divergences on points of social order referred to, but also to the different bases of the legal systems with which the respective governments and writers have been familiar. The legal systems of different countries have been founded on Roman law, feudal law, English common law and still other bases. The arguments of lawyers are affected by the prepossessions thence arising, and they have consequently failed to arrive by their unaided efforts at so much agreement on the rules of private international law as would have been compatible with the conditions and modes of life and action surrounding them. But the general acceptance of a complete body of rules on private international law is a goal which for other countries than England is well within sight by the road of international treaties concluded under the joint direction of professional and non-professional minds.

The most remarkable steps taken in or towards the conclusion of such treaties are those initiated, to its high credit, by the 703 government of the Netherlands. That government first moved in the matter in 1874, and has succeeded in assembling at the Hague the official representatives of nearly all European powers in conferences held in 1893, 1894, 1900 and 1904. At these conferences rules on many branches of private international law were agreed on for submission to the respective governments, which has led to conventions, one of the 14th of November 1896, three of the 12th of June 1902, and four of the 19th of July 1905, regulating the selection of the laws for determining the validity of marriage and of contracts made on the occasion of marriage, their effects on property and on the status of the wife and children, divorce and judicial separation, the guardianship of minors and of interdicted persons, the validity of testamentary dispositions and the rules of intestate succession, and many points of judicial procedure. These conventions may be found at length in the Revue de droit international et de legislation comparée, t. 28, pp. 574-579; 2e série, t. 4, pp. 485-500; and 2e série, t. 7, pp. 646-678. A draft relating to bankruptcy was also prepared at the conference of 1904, but was intended to serve, not as a general convention, but as the base of separate conventions to be concluded between particular states. The extent to which the continent has become united with regard to private international law appears from the fact that France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Rumania and Sweden are parties to all the conventions—that Luxemburg, Russia and Spain are parties to those relating to judicial procedure—and that all the ten except Russia, but with the addition of Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, are parties to those on the validity of marriage, divorce and judicial separation, and the guardianship of minors; while all remain open to adhesion by other powers. It is much to be regretted that the British government has declined all invitations to take part in this great international work. The fact must in part be ascribed to the hindrance which the difference between the English common law and the Roman law places, even for lawyers, in the way of joint action with the continent, and in part to the necessity that the rules laid down in any convention should be enacted for the United Kingdom by parliament, the leaders of which belonging to either party take no interest in any such matters.

Next in importance among combined official efforts should be mentioned the congress of seven South American states at Montevideo in 1888-1889, which on many branches of private international law drew up rules intended for adoption by treaty on that continent.

Nationality: Domicile.—Coming now to the particular rules of private international law which are received in England, or have been most widely received elsewhere, the most obvious cases which present themselves for admitting foreign circumstances to influence the decision of a judge are those in which rights are so connected with the person of an individual that the justice of deciding on them by a law having relation to his person speaks almost for itself. Hence arises the notion of a personal law, which must be that either of the person’s political nationality or of his domicile, these being the only circumstances that for the time being are fixed for the individual, irrespectively of the spot where he may happen to be, and of the transaction in which he may happen to engage. We have seen in the article on Domicile what is the legal meaning of that term, how its existence is ascertained, that in and long after the middle ages it was the usual criterion of the personal law, and that in modern times political nationality has largely replaced it as such criterion on the continent of Europe. Thus as well by the conventions mentioned as by the codes of many states—France, Italy and Germany among the number—the capacity and status of persons is now governed by the law of their political nationality. In Latin America the criterion of the personal law is still generally held to be domicile, which is among the reasons why the South American states prefer to pursue the codification of private international law independently of European conferences and conventions.

The English courts were slow to recognize a personal law at all and as late as Lord Eldon’s time they held that the competency of a person to contract depended on the law of the place where the contract was made. Their decisions have since come into line with the continental decisions so far as to make capacity and status depend on a personal law, but not so far as to make nationality its criterion. Hence in England, and in a minority of European continental countries, of which Denmark is an example, the capacity of a party to enter into a contract, whether it be disputed on the ground of his age, or, in the case of the contract of marriage, on the ground of his consanguinity or affinity with the other party, will be decided by the law of his domicile. Guardians, curators and committees of foreign minors or lunatics, deriving their authority from the law or jurisdiction of the latter’s domicile or nationality, can sue and give receipts for their personal property. A court will not decree the divorce of persons not domiciled within its jurisdiction, and it will recognize foreign divorces if, and only if, they have been decreed by a jurisdiction to which the parties were subject by domicile or nationality. And the legitimation of a child by the subsequent marriage of its parents will be held to depend on the law of its father’s domicile or nationality. But the reference to the place of contract, carried to North America with the rest of the English jurisprudence of that date, still maintains in the courts of the United States a struggle with the doctrine of personal law as governing capacity and status.

Here must be noticed a difficulty which arises about the application of any foreign law to the capacity for contracting. It will be understood by the German provision intended to meet it, namely, that “if a foreigner enters in Germany into a transaction for which he is incapable or has only a restricted capacity, he is to be treated for that transaction as being so far capable as he would be by the German legislation. This, however, does not apply to transactions with regard to rights of family or of succession, or to those disposing of foreign immovable property” (Art. 7 of the statute enacting the code). In a spirit similar to that which dictated the German enactment, the French courts have not generally allowed a Frenchman to suffer from the incapacity, by his personal law, of a foreigner who contracts in France, when the foreigner would have been capable by French law, and the Frenchman was in good faith and without great imprudence ignorant of his incapacity. Lately a disposition has been shown to limit this protection of nationals to the case in which the foreigner has been guilty of fraud. English courts usually hold themselves to be more stringently bound by rules, whether those enacted by parliament or those adopted for themselves; and if they should continue to profess the doctrine that capacity depends on the law of the domicile, it is not probable that they will deem themselves entitled to make exceptions for the protection of persons contracting in England with foreigners not enjoying such capacity. The point furnishes an illustration of the fact that to deal satisfactorily with so complex a subject as private international law requires the assistance of the legislature, which again cannot be given with full utility unless uniform provisions, to be enacted in different countries, are settled by international convention.

Another ground for the application of a personal law is furnished by the cases in which masses of property and rights have to be dealt with collectively, by reason of their being grouped around persons. The principal instances of that kind are when it is necessary to determine the validity and operation of a marriage settlement or contract, or the effect of marriage on the property of the husband and wife in the absence of any express settlement or contract, and when property passes on death, either by a will or by intestate succession.

Lex situs, lex loci actus, lex loci contractus, lex fori.—The law of the territory in which they are situate (lex situs) is generally applied to the property in particular things, whether movable or immovable, so far as they are not included in any mass grouped round a person; in England, therefore, always to immovables. In drawing up documents and conducting ceremonies public functionaries must necessarily follow the law from which they derive their authority, wherefore the law of the place where any public document is entered into, or any public ceremony performed (lex loci actus), is the only one that can be followed in its external form. This maxim applies to the forms of notarial acts, and to that of marriage celebrated with the official concurrence of clergymen, registrars and so forth. And since documents and ceremonies entered into without official concurrence are rarer on the continent of Europe than in England, the inevitableness of the form of the lex actus, when such concurrence is had, has generally led to that form being also held sufficient whenever the affair comes to be inquired into later. Nor in England has the sufficiency of the form of the lex loci actus for the celebration of marriage ever been doubted, but a will made by a notarial act in accordance with that law was not admitted. Disregarding the distinction between external form and internal validity and operation, a will of English land could not take effect unless made in English form (that is, since the Wills Act of 1837, with two witnesses), and a will of personal estate could not be admitted in England to probate unless made in the form of the law of the testator’s last domicile. But now, by Lord Kingsdown’s Act, passed in 1861, there are given for wills of personal property made by British subjects, besides the form of their last domicile, three alternative forms, namely, the form of the place of making the will, that of the testator’s domicile at the time when it was made, and that of the part of the British dominions where he had his domicile of origin—only the first of the three, however, being offered when the will is made in the United Kingdom; and no will is to be revoked or invalidated by a change of the testator’s domicile after making it.

Renvoi.—We will now suppose that the rules of private international law, as practised in any country (A), refer a case arising in its courts to the law of another country (B), as being that of the domicile or nationality of a person, and that those rules as practised in (B) in turn refer (renvoient) the same case to the law of (A), as being that of the nationality or domicile or perhaps of the locus actus: what are the courts of (A) to decide? This question, which involves nothing less than that of the meaning in which the reference to a law is to be understood in our subject, has during recent years excited great discussion both among the jurists and in the courts of all nations. It is answered by the English courts to the effect that (B) by its reference back (renvoi) has disclaimed the control of the case, which must therefore be decided without regard to (B)’s particular laws. See In re Trufort, 36 Ch. D. 600, and In re Johnson, 1903, 1 Ch. 821. This principle practically gives efficacy to the renvoi, and coincides with the express provisions both of the above-mentioned convention of the 12th of June 1902, Art. 1, as to the right of contracting marriage, and of the statute enacting the German code, Art. 27, as to capacity generally. The English law agrees in opinion, and is supported by a numerical preponderance of the judicial precedents in France and Belgium; but it must be admitted that a numerical preponderance of the jurists who have declared themselves hold that the courts of (A) ought to apply the particular laws of (B).

Public Order.—It must not be supposed that the law of the land, the proper territorial law of the court which has to deal with a case in which foreign circumstances arise, always gives way to the foreign law pointed out by the general maxims which even that particular court accepts. All rules for the application of foreign laws are subject to an exception commonly called that of public order, i.e. where such application would interfere with essential principles of morality or policy received in the territory. This reservation is usually made in general terms where legislation on private international law is attempted, as in Article 6 of the Code Napoleon, and preliminary Article 12 of the Italian code; but the courts have to administer it, as they have also in England and other countries where it rests only on judicial practice, and the greater or less extent given to it is one of the causes of the uncertainty and want of uniformity in our subject. One example often quoted is the refusal of the courts in all Christian countries to give effect to polygamous marriage, but this case goes deeper still, for none of the countries in which polygamous marriage exists is allowed to enter at all into the communion of private international law. All, so far as Great Britain has settled legal relations with them, are among those in which British subjects live under consular protection and jurisdiction, or (in Egypt) under that of the Mixed Courts. A better instance is afforded by the refusal of courts, normally within the pale of European legal communion, to recognize divorce as dissolving a marriage, notwithstanding that it has been decreed under the personal law. As another instance, 705 there can be little doubt that an incapacity to marry imposed by the personal law in virtue of religious vows or orders would be disregarded by the English courts in the case of a person marrying in England. Again, it is established in England that damages cannot be recovered for a tort unless the act complained of was a wrong both by the law of the country where it was done and by the law of England; and Article 12 of the statute enacting the German code is in accordance with that doctrine. Now the law of the country where the act is done would naturally give the standard for measuring its legal consequences, and it seems to be due to the connexion which laws qualifying acts as wrongs have with public order that respect for that law is tempered by respect for the law of the countries in which it is invoked; but Article 8 of the Belgian code refers the liability for torts to the former law without any restriction.

Foreign Judgments.—In the rules which have passed before us in the foregoing general review it is easy to perceive a leading motive—that of securing, so far as public order allows, the certainty and stability both of personal and of business relations in the international or interterritorial intercourse which has always accompanied civilization, but is now especially frequent and extensive. It has been attempted to erect this motive into a guiding principle of law, laying down that rights once accrued in any territory, or sometimes, it is said, by virtue of any territorial law, are to be recognized and enforced, subject to the requirements of public order, in any other territory in which they may be invoked before a court of justice. From this, which may be called the principle of the acceptance of foreign rights, it is claimed that the rules of private international law are to be deduced, and that by their consonance with it any such rules are to be tested when proposed. The difficulties of the subject, however, do not admit of being unlocked by so simple a key. They meet us again when we inquire in what territory, or by virtue of what territorial law, a particular alleged right has accrued. Persons belonging by domicile or nationality to A enter in B into a contract to be performed in C; where and by virtue of what law does either acquire a right against the other? Is it to be in or by the law of their homes, where they are normally, though not always necessarily, to be sued? Or of the country where they contract, which for various purposes, as those of police, but not for all purposes, has the control of them when they contract? Or of the country where their contract is to be performed, under a similar control by which, perhaps extending to the very acts of performance, they or their agents may be brought by the operation of their contract? Evidently we cannot apply the principle to guide us in our choice of a law till the very problem which that choice presents has first been solved. There is, however, one case in which the principle of the acceptance of foreign rights leads to a conclusion, namely, where the right has been declared by the judgment of a competent court, which may have been given in an ordinary case, presenting no question of private international law, but in which, if such a question arose, it has been solved by choosing the law and basing the judgment on it. The rule in England and in many other countries as to foreign judgments is that the judgments of competent courts in other territories (foreign in the sense of civil law, whether politically foreign or not) are to be enforced without reopening the merits of the questions disposed of by them. In some countries, however, a foreign judgment is examinable on its merits before being enforced. This was formerly the unquestioned rule in France, though the practice there seems to be now turning the other way. In the system adopted in England everything turns on the competence. For judgments in rem, declaring or disposing of the property in a thing, the test of competence is that the thing, whether movable or immovable, was within the territory of the court. Judgments which declare the status of a person, as with regard to marriage or majority, are competent if the person was subject to the jurisdiction by nationality or domicile. The property or the status is treated as being what has been so declared or decreed. For judgments in personam, decreeing the payment of a certain sum, the test of competence for the present purpose is again that the person against whom it was pronounced was subject to the jurisdiction by nationality or domicile; the judgment may then be sued on as giving of itself a good title to the sum decreed by it to be paid. For domestic purposes the competence may exist on quite other grounds. By its own territorial law a court may be authorized to entertain a suit in personam because the plaintiff possesses its nationality, as by Article 14 of the code Napoleon, or because the contract sued on was made or was to be performed in the territory, and so forth. But judgments based on these grounds will not be enforceable outside the territory. Here we touch the root principles of our subject. The distinction between domestic and international grounds of competence can only be explained by the history of law, and we come in sight of the fact that the rules of private international law rest finally on conventions which could not have existed if the civilization of different countries had not so much that was common in its origin and in the course which it has followed, but which suit the life of those countries just because that life is itself another outcome of those common antecedents.

INTERPELLATION (from Lat. interpellare, to interrupt), a term meaning, in general, an interruption, more particularly used of a method of procedure adopted in some of the legislative chambers of continental Europe, especially those of France and Italy, and somewhat similar to that of a motion to adjourn the House in the British parliament. It was originally confined to the asking of a question, after due notice, on some affair of state. It is now, however, the chief means by which the policy or action of the ministry of the day is challenged. An interpellation can be brought on without the consent of the minister to be attacked; it is usually made the subject of a general debate, and generally ends with a vote of confidence or want of confidence in the ministry. The right of permitting or vetoing an interpellation rests with the chamber. In France a tendency has been growing among deputies to use the interpellation as a method of attack on or accusation against individual colleagues.

INTERPLEADER, in English law, the form of action by which a person who is sued at law by two or more parties claiming adversely to each other for the recovery of money or goods wherein he has no interest, obtains relief by procuring the rival claimants to try their rights between or among themselves only. Originally the only relief available to the possessor against such adverse claims was by means of a bill of interpleader in equity. The Interpleader Act 1831 enabled the defendant in such cases, on application to the court, to have the original action stayed and converted into a trial between the two claimants. The Common Law Procedure Act of 1860 further extended the power of the 706 common law courts in interpleader; and the Judicature Act 1875 enacted that the practice and procedure under these two statutes should apply to all divisions of the High Court of Justice. The Judicature Act also extended the remedy of interpleader to a debtor or other person liable in respect of a debt alleged to be assigned, when the assignment was disputed. In 1883 the acts of 1831 and 1860 were embodied in the form of rules by the Rules of the Supreme Courts (1883), O. lvii. by reference to which all questions of interpleader in the High Court of Justice are now determined. The acts themselves were repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act of the same year. Interpleader is the equivalent of multiplepoinding in Scots law.

INTERPOLATION (from Lat. interpolare, to alter, or insert something fresh, connected with polire, a polish), in mathematics, the process of obtaining intermediate terms of a series of which particular terms only are given. The cubes, for instance, shown in the second column of the accompanying table, may be regarded as terms of a series, and the cube of a fractional number, not exceeding the last number in the first column, may be found by interpolation. The process of obtaining the cube of a number exceeding the last number in the first column would be extrapolation; the formulae which apply to interpolation apply in theory to extrapolation, but in practice special precautions as to accuracy are necessary. The present article deals only with interpolation.

The term is usually limited to those cases in which there are two quantities, x and u, which are so related that when x has any arbitrary value, lying perhaps between certain limits, the value of u is determinate. There is a given series of associated values of u and of x, and interpolation consists in determining the value of u for any arbitrary value of x, or the value of x for any arbitrary value of u, lying between two of the values in the series. Either of the two quantities may be regarded as a function of the other; it is convenient to treat one, x, as the “independent variable,” the other, u, being treated as the “dependent variable,” i.e. as a function of x. If, as is usually the case, the successive values of one of the quantities proceed by a constant increment, this quantity is to be regarded as the independent variable. The two series of values may be tabulated, those of x being placed in a column (or row), and those of u in a parallel column (or row); u is then said to be tabulated in terms of x. The independent variable x is called the argument, and the dependent variable u is called the entry. Interpolation, in the ordinary sense, consists in determining the value of u for a value of x intermediate between two values appearing in the table. This may be described as direct interpolation, to distinguish it from inverse interpolation, which consists in determining the value of x for a value of u intermediate between two in the table. The methods employed can be extended to cases in which the value of u depends on the values of two or more independent quantities x, y,...