called matter. Often in the world of his thinking this substance travels incognito. Now it is nature; now the universal environment; now natural law-whether physical or psychological; and now fate, or even history-in the sense of a single, all-inclusive, self-perpetuating process that stampedes everything happening in its way; but in fact, if not in name, it is always matter. And because it is matter and because before matter all things are equal, prosaic details of the minutest sort are studied with great patience and with an amazing lack of humor and perspective. Because it is matter, too, and because as matter it is made to stand off and apart in an arbitrary independence, the up-to-date historian, though not in the smaller ways of his boastfully idealistic critics, is given to materialism. True, with only matter to consider, this being single in process and in law, his history can really have only one period and be the history of only one class of beings, but it is still materialistic, because it treats the great whole as if it were only another part, as if something were still outside of it, as if it were a fatal process imposing itself upon human life and robbing mankind of the last vestiges of interest and initiative. In a word the materialism, real as a tendency if not as a fully developed practice, of present-day history, is only the great materialism that has taken into itself all the others; the great beast or leviathan, that has swallowed all the smaller beasts, and has taken them in or swallowed them without assimilating them, withoutcould anything be so lacking in sense of humor?-learning the simple, easy lesson of all-inclusiveness. The ghosts of all it has devoured still look out through its unnatural eyes.

Why unnatural eyes? Because of the ghosts? Doubtless; but especially because of the lesson unlearned though so obvious. Those eyes are looking at what they refuse to see. They are looking at the whole without seeing that the whole cannot be outside of anything; at natural process, or history, without seeing that, if really all-inclusive, it cannot possibly be fate to anything; at material data or conditions, without seeing that the conditions can show only what life is, not what it has to be in spite of itself; or at necessity, without seeing that a recognized necessity cannot be more or less than a welldeveloped opportunity, that just because known the law that suggests necessity is evidence only of a real, substantial freedom already developed in the life of the knowers.

The special charge of materialism against history, then, is not without point. Moreover, it is true to the definition that was given here, for history has tended to treat its whole as if only another part. But the chief reproach in the charge is not so much the materialism as what I will call the superstition of materialism, the

illusion of the independent, arbitrary whole, from which it shows the historian to be suffering. Thus, in my opinion, the up-to-date history has been more superstitious than genuinely materialistic; perhaps because under the hypnotic influence of its critics, it has taken its materialism of the whole too seriously, assuming in consequence a false position, seeing or fearing to see what has no reality in fact, supposing fate, necessity, outside compulsion, or determination, where none can possibly exist.

I have no desire to be needlessly subtle, although for a moment I may now appear so. Under the definition of materialism, a materialism of the whole should somehow end in what a scientist might call the precipitation of something new or different, and only the persistence of the illusion or superstition referred to above can possibly prevent such an outcome. Thoroughness or wholeness, so to speak, constitutes a state of saturation; it makes the materialism too inclusive to remain intact, and under such conditions a precipitate should be looked for. The precipitate of a materialism of the whole, then, is-in lack of a better name-idealism; not of course the illusive idealism of the critics and detractors of history, not the idealism whose strength has lain in an opposition to materialism, but the idealism that comes with and through materialism as a natural consequence of real wholeness supplanting partiality.

Details, material conditions, and natural laws are all pertinent interests of history; but the materialistic illusion of the independent, arbitrary whole, before which all details are equal and conditions and laws mean external necessity and blind fate, has threatened to rob history of its proper interest and vitality, making it materialistic, when just by reason of its present tendencies, just because of its thoroughness, its regard to details, and its study of laws, it has a right to be deeply and genuinely idealistic. Recognition of this right would lead, I venture to believe and I have written this long article chiefly to say, to such a change in history as the stereoscope works upon a flat picture; it would give perspective where perspective has been lacking; dramatic movement-without loss of scientific virtuosity, where there has been only process or law.

The idea of the experience-whole, of the unity of experience, made much of in a preceding section, here comes to my aid, as I conclude. It led, as will be remembered, to emphasis of the importance of the person, in whom all the elements of experience were moving with greater or less power, with higher or lower development, and now, as the materialistic illusion of the independent whole. is dispelled, as its precipitate, idealism, comes to view, the same emphasis is again possible. Thus, the idea of the unity of experience

suggests very clearly that in experience matter-under its own name or under any of its disguises-may have either one of two meanings. It may be a special thing, a distinct group of phenomena, or a general function capable of as many applications or expressions as there are relations in experience. Let me explain.

As to the first of the two meanings: if human nature in its unity does indeed include a physical part, then the outside physical or material world, details, conditions, laws, and all, can be but the special, isolated, why not say with real appreciation even the factional and technical and professional development of just that part, and as in general so here the genius of personality, ever quick with the whole unity of experience, or of human nature, is constantly reaping for its whole self the advantage of this particular professional development and association. How else justify natural poetry or art? or natural religion? How explain mechanical invention with its wonderful applications of material, natural resources to all sorts of human ends and purposes? How account for the sails and ships and the navigator's devices in general that enabled the trade-winds to discover America?

But, secondly, matter may be, and I think in actual use has had all the value of being, something more relative or more general, and therefore less tangible and specific than this. In my opinion it has often stood, not for a distinct thing, not for a specific and more or less independent group of phenomena, the so-called outer, material world, but rather for a very general relationship, in a word, for so much of reality as is concerned with maintaining, relatively to any one side of life, all other sides of life in the unity of experience. So regarded, it has the character of the general restraint that the unity of experience is always putting upon each and every expression of specialism and, as was suggested, it will have as many specific expressions as experience shows tendencies to specific development. Also, in this character, to recall the distinction that was used before, matter will be directly vital and personal-just for being such a general function in the unity of experience—rather than professional and fixedly specific as under the first meaning remarked here. So to speak, it will be a rôle in which every element of personal experience will have some part. Perhaps the fact that even the outer material world as men think of it is a decidedly ambiguous thing, being now the special world of technical physical science and now the world that includes, relatively to any one human being, all other human beings as well as all other classes and races, all other animals, all other things that live, and all other merely existent objects, may be cited in illustration and evidence of what is intended by the

idea of matter as of double meaning, as now a distinct, separate thing, specially and professionally developed, and now a general function vital to and in personality. Perhaps, too, it is worth while to add that in environment, nature, natural selection, the biologist must recognize, and to a certain extent has recognized, the same distinction between specific thing and general function, between the separate group of external phenomena and the vital function that belongs within every organism. Such an addition seems especially worth while because the historian and the evolutionist are bound to have a common interest.

But we now have before our view the two meanings of matter which the idea of the unity of experience has suggested. There is matter as the profession, class, or "kingdom", and there is matter as the function in personality; and it is hardly necessary to say that these two meanings are not at all incongruous. Simply they are both involved in the maintenance and development of experience. With apologies for the repetition, they are only a very general, perhaps the most general and most inclusive expression of the important difference, noted above, between the class-character and the unity of experience, between the technical and the personal expression of anything; and they show that a materialism of the whole not only precipitates idealism but also restores the person to history.

The person, member of all classes, or kingdoms, possesses vitally the whole; this whole permeates his entire nature. Materialism may deny him such membership and such possession, but idealism, coming with removal of the illusion of the independent whole, restores them. In the person history is seen to be an affair of the whole and to be at the same time vital, not fatal, not mechanical. And so history may gain anew the humanity and dramatic interest that to many it has appeared in serious danger of losing.

ALFRED H. LLOYD.

A CONTINENTAL CONGRESSMAN: OLIVER ELLSWORTH, 1777-1783.1

OCTOBER 8, 1778, " Mr. Ellsworth, a delegate from Connecticut, attended and took his seat in Congress." Occupied at home with

so many other duties, Ellsworth had suffered nearly a year to elapse from the time of his first election before he took his place among the civil rulers of the loosely joined confederacy of states. Six years a delegate, he went to Philadelphia but five times in all. His first attendance, lasting a little over four months, ended February 19, 1779, when leave of absence was granted him. Beginning again in the middle of December, 1779, his name appeared on the roll-calls until the latter part of June, 1780; on July 3 another member was appointed to his place on a standing committee. Absent nearly a year, he reappeared at Philadelphia at the beginning of June, 1781, and sat until September. Returning on December 20, 1782, he sat until near the close of January. His final attendance was from April 1 until midsummer, 1783.3

Unfortunately, this sort of spasmodic membership was not exceptional. None of the states kept its full quota in constant attendance. Even the standing committees whose work was of an executive character were subject to incessant changes in their membership. It is no wonder that Washington, after pointing out in one of his letters that short enlistments were the cause of the worse embarrassments in the military line, promptly added, "A great part of the embarrassments in the civil flow from the same source." So far as Congress This is the continuation of an article in the REVIEW for April, 1905, 534"The Early Life of Oliver Ellsworth."

564:

2 Journals of the Continental Congress, IV, 583.

3 Roll of State Officers and Members of General Assembly of Connecticut, 459-460; Journals of Congress, V, 65, 451; VI, 103; VII, 118, 171, 177, 192-193; VIII, 45, 111, 124, 170, 291. Letters of Ellsworth, in the Trumbull collection and elsewhere, confirm certain of these dates. A letter written from Philadelphia to his brother David is dated January 9, 1778; but it seems clear that this was a slip, Ellsworth forgetting that a new year was begun. Another letter to the same brother, written from Philadelphia on November 10, 1779-more than a month before the journal record of Ellsworth's second appearance in Congressis harder to explain. That he should have been there and yet not have taken his seat is scarcely credible. He speaks in the letter of the ill health of his father, and the only conjecture I can offer is that this or something else suddenly recalled him to Connecticut.