an Idea?-if you have, and it is a genuine one, there is hardly any danger that you will ever be anticipated in it, and this is the criterion, perhaps, of its quality. If you are anticipated in it, or it is shared by another, it is only of the second, third, or fourth rate quality. This may be understood by a reference to art. Darwin and Wallace hit upon the idea of evolution together and, perhaps, a score of similar coincidences could be cited in science, but did two poets ever write the same poem or two artists paint the same picture? It is often said that it is impossible to succeed in anything nowadays because there is so much competition. One may reply to this that, on the contrary, in most essential success there is no competition. The person who possesses ideas steps right out into a state or condition in which competition is impossible. Competition is fatal to the best success, for here the problem is to escape it.

The same principle applies alike to art or literature or commerce. Success is not here to the fleet or to the strong, as in a foot-race, but to the men who have ideas. Competition arises only from a lack of imagination and ideas; it arises from stupid and superfluous imitation. It is curious to reflect that while men are striving together and against one another to exist, fortunes are lying waiting for the simple idea which shall discover them, like those treasures of gold and mineral or precious stones which still lie undiscovered in the earth, or those unclaimed fortunes waiting for a claimant held in Chancery. If a man could only discover one of these ideas, he might in

a few years become a millionaire or an artist. Let us only think for a moment of those ideas which have made fortunes or great works of art (which, understood well, are generally the expression of a single idea), and we shall be astonished at their simplicity, and wonder why they did not occur to ourselves, and where they derive their significance and potency. Nay, very often the idea, we shall find, did occur to us, but it did not also occur to us that it was an idea-which makes all the difference. For an idea is not an idea until it is perceived as an idea, and is expressed in action. This is best realized, perhaps, and is most frequently experienced in reading.

A

"In every work of genius," Emerson declares, "we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back with a certain alienated majesty. . man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson than this."

This is one of the curious things in the psychology of ideas. Whether they have ever actually presented themselves to our own consciousness or not we invariably feel familiar with them as if they had done so, and we almost always feel that they might have been ours. Even the artist, it may be supposed, whose business it is to discover and register ideas, not infrequently fails to recognize his opportunity the first time it occurs to him, and the idea which he at last brings into his intellectual nets he often remembers as one which has escaped him on several or many previous occasions.

But what is an idea? One may perhaps best define it, as Aristotle defines art, as the reason of the thing without the matter. It is that which exists in thought rather than in matter; and in

the case of the writer of books or the artist it may be described as that which he sees more or less clearly in "idea," or noumenally, before he touches pen or pencil to paper. Nearly all ideas which have proved the happiest and most permanent first appeared, one suspects, to the artist as a sudden perception or "idea." It occurs to him, as Dr. Holmes says the "Autocrat" did to him, with the force of an explosion. It was an idea, a happy thought, a discovery, the very thing for which he had been looking. And probably all forceful ideas occur in this manner, and may be almost dated. When did the idea of Don Quixote occur to Cervantes, on what day, at what hour, and what moment? In such a moment the artist foresees the laughter and delight of the world, and tastes immortality. So, too, it must have been with "Tristram Shandy" and "Gulliver's Travels," and scores of works which have become the world's classics. And how strange to reflect that such ideas, even to the born artist and man of genius, seem only accidental! Many great writers have been already much past their prime before the idea occurred to them which resulted in the work that gave them immortality; the idea was the string which tied all their wit and wisdom together and gave their life its meaning. They would have been just as witty and just as wise without their magnum opus, but the world without it would scarcely have known them. There is no pleasure to equal that of the artist in discovering in himself an idea; by it he at last justifies himself and accomplishes the purpose for which it seems to him he has lived; and without it, whatever his success in the eye of the world, all his life is bound in miseries and shallows. He misses perfect happiness.

Every work of art, it has been said in this paper, represents a single idea, and, broadly, this is true, but it re

quires a word of qualification. It is not to be thought that a work of art contains a single thought excluding every other, but it is true nevertheless that it represents, or should express, in the main, a single idea. In the process of composition other ideas may occur to the artist, but if he is true to his purpose these will all be subordinated to or merely supplement his leading idea. In fact all these subsidiary ideas may be considered as necessary to the original idea, and assisting to complete its expression; they are, in a manner, its children. Very often one may mark with a pencil the chapter, paragraph, or even sentence which is nearest to the centre of the idea, but, on the other hand, it sometimes does not seem to have any location within the composition, and its raison d'être lies somewhere beyond it, just as in mechanics a centre of gravity if a body often falls at a point in space and not within the matter of which it is composed. And yet in a perfect work of art there is not a single word which may be deemed superfluous to its perfect and complete expression. "Ideas cannot," as Blake has said, "be given but in their minutely appropriate words, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution."

But it is not only in art or literature that ideas are necessary; without them there is no success or real development in any direction. They are as necessary in scientific investigation or success in business as in literature. And ideas are not to be discovered by any process of the unaided intellect or powers of ratiocination; they arise only in the imagination. No amount of arrangement and no number of permutations will produce them; they must exist in the mind of the artist or man of science to begin with. Tyndall long ago demonstrated the service of imagination to science, and imagination is but another word for ideas. It is by leaps that new discoveries are

usually made by intuitions, divinations, ideas, proved afterwards by experiment-and every new idea, as Tyn

The Nation.

dall observes, breaks a new Emersonian circle in human knowledge and experience.

The indefinite adjournment of the International Conference on Aerial Rights appears to have been caused by fundamental differences among the delegates. It is easy to see why such differences should exist; a new means of transport, which knows no frontiers because it moves in a universal element, has been introduced, and the widest considerations of strategy and national defence, not to mention the administration of the customs and the protection of one's shores against undesirable immigrants, have been brought into play. Last June the Conference in Paris had drawn up a provisional scheme for regulating international traffic by air, and when that point had been reached two or three Governments took fright at the immensity of the problems involved. They wanted time to think them over, and accordingly the British representative, Admiral Gamble, proposed that the Conference should adjourn till November 29th. When the Conference reassembled, Admiral Gamble's place was taken by Sir Francis Bertie, the British Ambassador in Paris, who moved that the Conference adjourn sine die. This was agreed to, and no one knows whether the same Conference will ever meet again. It is worth while to look into the issues and see of what sort they are, what dangers and inconveniences countries in the future will have to provide against, and how the delegates of the Conference, working very much, as we may say, in the air, have attempted to tackle them.

We learn the contents of the draft Convention from an article supplied by a correspondent to the Times. The

Convention is intended to apply principally to balloons, whether ordinary or dirigible, which would be subject to the Convention even when travelling within the borders of their own countries. Aeroplanes would not be subject to the Convention except when making international journeys; but it was agreed to invite all the contracting Governments to insist on aeroplanes bearing marks of identification, plainly distinguishable wherever they might be. We should think that the Convention would not be long in existence before aeroplanes would be put on the same terms as balloons. The first chapter of the Convention deals with the nationality of balloons. No contracting State would allow unauthorized balloonsballoons not belonging to contracting States-to enter the air over its territory. But it may be said that it would be impossible to say to what nation a balloon belonged if it were travelling very high. It would frequently be invisible above the clouds. The answer to the difficulty is that the movements of balloons should be checked by methods similar to those adopted by shipping. Every master of a ship reports his movements; he declares his departure from a port, and he must fly his distinguishing flag when he arrives in a foreign port. This is not an adequate solution of the difficulty, of course, because a ship is not invisible when she enters a foreign port-except in a fogand in any case she cannot sail inland. She comes to anchor, and she cannot escape observation for long. But the analogy between air shipping and sea shipping must be observed as far as

is a good illustration of the perplexities caused by the use of the universal element. All balloons would be registered as ships are registered, and every January the contracting States would exchange their latest lists. Further, if a State were in doubt as to the nationality of a balloon which had entered its air, any other contracting State would be bound to answer at once questions put to it as to the names of the owner and pilot of any balloon which had left its own borders. Balloons would all carry large distinguishing marks.

It

The second chapter provides that pilots shall possess, and always carry with them, certificates of competence, similar to a master mariner's certificate. One State may refuse to recognize a certificate of competence issued by another State, but it must report its intention to refuse. Chapter III. provides liberty of international air traffic, subject to such restrictions as are necessary for each State to guarantee its own safety and that of the persons and property of the inhabitants. was proposed that each State should make its legislation conform with this understanding. Here we come to very wide and vague principles indeed. The highest questions of national defence are involved, and we do not wonder that some Governments-including, we understand, our own-have felt unable to agree to any general formula when there is so little experience to guide the judgment. Considering that the rules of the sea in time of war have never been satisfactorily settled, we confess that it would be quite unreasonable to expect an inspired formula to dispose of all the difficultiesthe much greater difficulties of aerial navigation. It is much better to agree to nothing for a while than unwittingly to commit ourselves to undertakings which it would be very difficult to re

tract. The objection to a Channel Tunnel is that it would quite unnecessarily sign away the privileges of our insular position. It could never be guaranteed that the French end of the tunnel would remain in the hands of France. The air is not a tunnel, to be sure, but we should be very careful not to make ingress too free by an element which is much less easily guarded than the sea. Chapter III., for the rest, illustrates the curious interdependence of the needs of nations in this new age. Thus:

Each contracting State has power to regulate passenger and goods traffic between points in its own territories, and consequent restrictions must be at once published and notified to other Governments interested. Interdicted zones are to be indicated with sufficient precision to permit of their being indicated on aeronautical charts of the scale of 1500,000 at least. The contracting States are bound to communicate those charts to one another. An airship entering an interdicted zone must make the prescribed signal of distress and at once descend, as it must also do if signalled from the earth to that effect. Each State is to notify to the others the signal which it has adopted.

What is an "interdicted zone"? We suppose that France, for instance, would set apart certain sections of her Eastern frontier for international traffic-say, a northern, a central, and a southern route-and that all the rest certainly the neighborhood of the more important forts-would be interdicted zones. Thus the task of watching the frontier would be reduced to manageable proportions. Chapters IV. and V. deal with police regulations and the Customs:-

It was agreed that airships temporarily coming to earth in foreign countries shall be exempt from duty, that provisions and working materials shall enjoy the customary tolerance, and that passengers' luggage shall be treated as

if it had arrived by crossing sea or land frontiers. Merchandise can only be carried under special conventions or in virtue of internal legislation, the aerial transport of explosives, firearms, ammunition, and carrier birds is prohibited, and that of photographic apparatus is to be regulated by each State for its own territory. A State may cause the photographic negatives found on board an airship coming to earth in its territory to be developed, and, it necessary, may seize them and the photographic apparatus. Wireless telegraphic apparatus carried by an airship may not be used, without special permission, for any other purpose than to secure the airship's safety.

Does the era of airships mean a new lease of life for smuggling? It will certainly be easy, in spite of aerial Customs officials, to avoid a Customs examination at the frontier, but probably it would be difficult to avoid detection afterwards.

Chapter VI. treats of public airships and military airships. Here again far-reaching possibilities are involved, and we are not surprised that Great Britain and other countries withheld their consent to the proposals. It was suggested that military balloons should enjoy privileges of extra-territoriality The Spectator.

in foreign countries. These privileges would hold good, of course, only in peace; a state of war between two contracting States would automatically end their adhesion to the Convention. But even so it appears that Great Britain by signing such a Convention would be voluntarily putting herself on the same plane as those who do not enjoy the inaccessibility of an island. The balloons of France and Germany may drift across the common frontier any day by chance, and no doubt some sort of arrangement as to the nature of their reception is desirable, if not necessary. A journey across the sea is a more deliberate business. And we have to remember that in regularizing the freedom of the air it is not only a question of possibly weakening our defences, but of shaking the confidence of the people in the protection provided for them. The restoration of confidence in national defence, even though confidence need never have been withheld, is generally an expensive matter. We do not recommend stupid and artificial hindrances to a science which must of course be developed, but it is necessary to think fully before we sign documents.

III. THE FIRST FRUITS OF EDUCATION OF THE NATIVES.

(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) So far no more than incidental reference has been made to the educational work which is the corner-stone of the structure which the United States is endeavoring to erect. Many of those who came out as teachers, especially in the very early days, were sadly unfitted for their work. It was inevitable that it should be so. The comfortable Jacksonian theory, which once had wide acceptance in the United States, held that

any American was by Divine Providence created competent to execute any task which he might undertake. But it was stretching this doctrine to its limits when it was supposed that any man or woman who could pass certain elementary examinations, never having had experience of the world beyond that to be gained in a small town in, perhaps, Kansas or Indiana, entirely unversed in the ways of men, could, being suddenly transplanted to an unfamiliar environment, become by the light of nature a competent instructor of an