itself. The low rate is the thing; and the sober sense of the American people may be relied upon to see that the only war Canada is interested in is that of commerce, not of arms.

Although

The Georgian Bay Canal project brings up the important question of the increasing size and draught of Lake vessels. It must be recognized that, notwithstanding the shorter route, there is some question whether there will be sufficient traffic west-bound from Montreal to attract large Lake vessels in preference to the run to Lake Erie ports. In favor of the canal it may, however, be urged that the development of a large bulk of east-bound tonnage will increase the volume of ocean-going tonnage entering Montreal and that the result of this will be a large volume of inbound tonnage. Enthusiasts have claimed that not only will the canal attract the Lake type of vessel, but that it will also lead to direct voyages from the Great Lakes to European ports, thus obviating the disadvantages of breaking bulk. ocean voyages were made in earlier days by small sailing-vessels sailing from Lake ports, for example, the "Dean Richmond" in the fifties, this is not conclusive. The experiences in 1901 of the vessels built for the Counselman Syndicate by the American Shipbuilding Company are more in point. Although they journeyed under their own steam from Chicago and Detroit to European ports, the venture was so unprofitable that it was given up after one season. There are, it is true, vague hints that this was due to the underhand machinations of those adverse to this route. Without speculating in regard to motives, sufficient economic causes exist to explain the lack of success. The fact that the vessels could not load to their full depth of twenty feet until Montreal was reached was peculiar to the existing canal depth. In addition, they could not compete in cargo capacity with the larger vessels either of the Lakes or of the ocean. Their sailors were paid on the Lake scale of wages, which is about twice as great as the ocean scale. In addition, the vessels were subjected to high insurance charges.

In Canada the ship-building industry on the Lakes has not been greatly developed. The largest vessel so far built, one 510 feet in length, was recently launched at Fort Erie. The bonding system used in vessel construction on the American side of the Lakes is practically non-existent in Canada. In general, Canadian firms interested in Lake traffic find they can save time by

obtaining vessels from Great Britain. Such vessels have, of course, to be built to withstand the stormy passage of the north Atlantic. The American vessel engaged in the Lake traffic can be more lightly constructed. The stronger hulls, etc., needed for the ocean voyage add about twenty per cent. to the cost. The Lake vessel, on account of the smaller amount of coal needed to be carried, has greater cargo space in proportion to size than the ocean-going vessel. In general, the latter costs about twice as much per ton of cargo capacity as the former. A combined Lake and ocean type of vessel would lack the economic advantages attaching to the more specialized types.

The Georgian Bay Canal will be a costly work. Construction through the Laurentian formation will be expensive and will take about ten years to complete. It is estimated that the canal will cost $105,000,000; even if money can be obtained at three per cent., the interest charge will exceed three millions; in addition, maintenance charges must be considered. Although Canada has greatly increased its resources of recent years, the demands upon these are also great. The Government, while favoring the construction of the canal, has not given a definite indication of the policy it proposes to adopt. The English Company, known as the Montreal, Ottawa & Georgian Bay Canal Company, which was chartered in 1894, has done considerable survey-work. It has offered to construct the work if interest on its bonds is guaranteed, the right to regulate the tolls being reserved to the Government. Pending a definite announcement of policy, the Government has reserved the right to expropriate the private company. Conditions favor Government construction and operation. The fact that the canal would be, if in private hands, a toll canal gives point to the desire for Government ownership and management. For since 1903 there have been no tolls on the through traffic of the Canadian canals. The advantage of canal development is looked for in the expansion of Canada's trade and resources, not in direct contributions to the revenue of the country from the tonnage utilizing the canals.

S. J. MCLEAN.

BLIND SIGHT.

BY COLONEL CHARLES WILLIAM LARNED, UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY.

IN the sixth book of the "Republic" of Plato, Socrates, in his colloquy with Glaucon and Adeimanthus upon the Beautiful and the Good, observes:

"But have you remarked that sight is by far the most costly and complex piece of workmanship which the artificer of the senses ever contrived? . . . Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to see, color being also present in them; still, unless there be a third nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see nothing, and the colors will be invisible."

Although the "third nature" of which Socrates makes mention is Light, and the purpose of his discourse is to bring out the analogy between Light and Truth, between the Eye and the Soul, I shall take the liberty of reading another interpretation into the term, and of maintaining that the "third nature" specially adapted to the purpose of true vision is Reflection; and that from habitual lack of conscious reflective vision the majority of mankind are disdaining and dishonoring their noblest faculty.

"Blind sight" is a term I employ to designate a malady that is especially characteristic of man in general as a highly civilized being, and in proportion as he recedes from a nomadic and aboriginal state. It is an attribute of the mechanical and artificial environment in which we live; of our intense subjectivity; of our minute and narrowing specialization; of our physical deterioration; of our preoccupation; of our indifference to that which is not immediately concerned with our activities . . . of our overwork. It is also due, and under these tendencies mainly due, to the inefficiency of education which fails to train synthetically the sense organs and to endow men with expert facul

ties of perception. Sense training should be the first, most thorough and persistent labor exacted in primary and secondary education. The faculties of sight, of hearing, of touch, of smell, of taste, should all be developed to refinement, and every youth should possess these organs of sense and their attendant faculties as perfected tools with which to enter upon his career of development as an intelligent member of society. Some day when education shall have taken on a rational and coherent form, it will appear pathetically absurd that so many centuries of laborious servitude at the treadmill of schooling exacted of childhood and youth should have been barren of results in any way commensurate with the toil, the physical and nervous energy expended.

Blind sight means specifically the suppression of the faculty of conscious vision; the gradual atrophy of visual perception as an act of discriminating observation. It means that the camera of the eye is focussing countless pictures of beauty; of interest; of perhaps vital importance in potential result, if noticed; of delight, if intelligently considered-upon sensitive films that are never developed. The reagents-apprehension, comparison, judgment, reflection—do not act; the image is not fixed upon the consciousness and filed away by the memory for future reference: and the man's intelligence is so much the poorer; his nature so much the more meagre; his range of sympathy so much the more restricted and barren, for the neglect of the bounties of God's supreme gift of vision.

Unconscious or slovenly sight exists in all degrees of development. With most it is a habit resulting from neglect. Indolent indifference to the features of the objective panorama becomes habitual and fixed, so that the conscious attention is asleep and does not act unless aroused by some special exciting cause. It is more or less a case of blind stare like that of the philosophers of Laputa who were attended by bladder-carriers to rap them over the head whenever it was necessary for them to take notice of their environment. The pity of it is that the opposite habit of conscious, attentive vision is readily cultivable and quickly responds to treatment, especially in childhood and youth.

Alas! for the weary little jailbirds of the schoolhouse who serve their terms in chain gangs in the ill-ventilated penitentiaries of the mighty Juggernaut of the text-book; conning conventions from the dirty pages; crammed with a priori formulas and for

malism and the diluted pap of the sophistry of the ages; but forbidden the free use of their faculties, and tied to the car until the natural impulse of independent observation and reflection has gone to sleep, perhaps forever! What if Nature and the objective world had been the first and chief text-book, and the teacher the interpreter and guide developing the faculties, stimulating observations, encouraging inquiry and initiative-being himself the medium of translation of formulas, philosophy and art in terms of visible and tangible fact, until the machinery of thought operates smoothly under the impulse of the natural forces of living inquiry and interest? Under such conditions, would school for the most of us have seemed a dismal drudgery; college a dull cram; and life a patchwork of arbitrary and stupid conventions, accepted without thought or discrimination?

Dear Average Man, consider with me what immeasurable opportunities elude our grasp; what a wealth of delightful, intelligent perception is lost to us; what a mass of valuable reminiscence and reference matter is missing from our stores; what a world of sympathetic understanding is absent from our comprehension; what "oodles" of fun escapes us-all through the lack of vigorous habits of observation and refined organs of sense. Why should we sell our birthright of acute sense perception for a mess of mechanical inactivities and a pulpy life of automatism? Why are we becoming more and more parasitic and morbid in our art; more sophisticated and self-conscious in our literature; less spontaneous and sincere in our social relations; less clairvoyant in our perceptions of Nature and of the natural man? Is it not mainly because we no longer see with the natural eye nor observe with the reflective brain? We take our observation at second hand out of books or newspapers, even of things under our noses, just as we take our notions of art from histories of art and the deliverances of our Ruskins, our Taines, our Wincklemanns and our Hammertons; just as we swallow open-mouthed our literary standards from literary compendiums and essayists, or are plundered of them and all the rest of our inherited conventions and beliefs by such critical Knights of the Jolly Roger as Baudelaire, Stirner, Stendhal, Nietzsche, Shaw and the rest, the bladder-carriers of our Laputa.

As we are forfeiting the power of clear and independent visual observation by disuse and the atrophy of these faculties, so we are