of one object has no meaning unless there be other objects to which to refer it'.

But if he looks again at the only passage on which he relies in Chapter 3 of the tract concerning Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias, imputed to Aristotle, he will find that the author of the tract, whoever he may have been, expresses no opinion of his own about motion, but only quotes what Zeno says for the Pantheism of the Eleatics who believed only in one universe always at rest against the Pluralism of those who believed in many moving things. Nevertheless, though his argument fails, Mr. Temperley is right in calling attention to Aristotle's theory of motion. But is Aristotle's theory of motion that of a Relativist?

Aristotle in his Physics rightly recognized that a finite body continuously moves through continuous space during continuous time; and thereby he anticipated the first principle of motion in modern Kinematics, that motion is space during time. In order also to explain how a body moves through space, he distinguished between the private space of each finite body and the common space in which all bodies are and move. He says, in Physics, iv. 2:

Space is of one kind common space in which all bodies are, ' and of another kind private space in which a body primarily 'is: I mean, for example, you are now in the universe, be'cause in the air which is in the universe, and in the air, 'because in the earth, and similarly in this earth because in 'this individual space which contains nothing more than you.'

Having thus provided containing space for all finite bodies to be and to move therein, he connected space and time by proving that they are different, but similar, because neither of them is discrete or composed of discrete parts or points, or instants, but both are continuous yet divisible, space into continuous segments of space, time into continuous moments of time, and both to infinity.

M m

Having also established the kinematic law of motion in space during time on clear and distinct principles, he used the continuous motion of a finite body moving in a continuous common space through a continuous common time to destroy the Pantheistic arguments advanced against motion by Zeno, who had confused the measures of space with space itself, and supposed that a body could not move because it would have to move through infinite discrete parts between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem in a finite time, which is impossible, or rather would be impossible if motion were really what Zeno supposes it to be.

Aristotle's solution of Zeno's paradox is that a body does not have to move by leaps through a series of discrete parts or points, because its motion is not discrete but continuous through continuous space during continuous time; nor does it even have to move through infinite actual segments of continuous space; because this continuous space is only potentially divisible into its continuous segments: in fact all the body has to do is to move through a finite continuous space during a finite continuous time. He wittily adds that even if a body had to move through infinite spaces it would nevertheless have infinite times to arrive at the terminus, because both continuous space and continuous time are alike divisible ad infinitum.

Moreover, Aristotle completed this acute and subtle analysis of the motion of bodies through space during time without saying one word about relative motion, in which the body moves in relation to other bodies, and without showing any indication that he saw any fault in the direct method of investigating the motion of bodies by space during time.

It is clear, therefore, that he did not, as Mr. Temperley supposes, anticipate Einstein in supposing that every motion must only be considered as a

relative motion, which is the motion of one body relatively to another, as, for example, that of a carriage moving alongside of an embankment. On the contrary, he would adhere and rightly adhere to the principle that a body always moves through space during time, though in consequence it may also move or not move in relation to this or that other body. Aristotle's theory of motion is therefore not that of Professor Einstein, nor that of any other Relativist. Oxford, May 12.

IX

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS

THE REV. MR. BARNETT AND DISESTABLISHMENT

The Rev. Samuel Augustus Barnett was born in 1844. He was Vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel, from 1872 to 1894, and Canon of Bristol from 1893 to 1906. From this time to his death in 1913 he was a Canon of Westminster.

FROM The Times, OCTOBER 15, 1886.

The Rev. Mr. Barnett, of St. Jude's Vicarage, Whitechapel, finds fault with his brethren in the Church. It is, he says, 'an organization under the control of men who are not responsible to the nation, in which payment has no relation to work, in which place depends on patronage, and in which age is no disqualification for duty'. The first charge is not true. The clergy are responsible to the laws of the land relating to the Church of England as by law established, and they are the only religious body who are so responsible. The second is only partially true; for a curate may rise by work to a vicar, a vicar to a bishop, a bishop to an archbishop, the hardest worked as well as the best paid. There is plenty of inducement to work in the Church. The fourth charge is true, but might be easily corrected by retiring pensions, which are also necessary in any elective church.

The third charge remains, Place depends on patronage'. The evil attributed to this mode of choice is that it does not produce the best religious teachers of the people. The obvious remedy, therefore,' says Mr. Barnett, is to disestablish this class, to substitute for the clergy the people, and to give them or their representatives control over the

churches and over the appointment of their incumbents.' At the same time he would not disestablish the Church. This is the panacea of the Rev. Mr. Barnett, to disestablish the clergy without disestablishing the Church.

The practicability of the proposal finds no place in his letter to you. When he says that the people are to be the electors, who are the people? It must be remembered that the persons to be elected are not members of a clerical Parliament, but clergymen each of a little parish. If the electors are the people of England, their representatives would frequently be quite out of accord with the people of the parish; they might elect a Congregationalist for a parish mainly of Anglican Catholics. If the electors are all Church of England people, they are not the people, but a class; and their representative might yet be out of accord even with the Church people of the parish; they might elect an Anglican Catholic for an Evangelical parish. If the electors are the people of the parish, they are not the people; and they would, especially in poor town parishes, often elect a Dissenter, and then the Church would be disestablished in that parish until the next election. If the electors are the Church people of the parish, they are still further from being the people; but they might indeed then elect a clergyman of the Church whom the majority might like after election. It is obvious, then, that there is only one way of representing the people in a parish without disestablishing the Church-namely, by making the Church people of the parish the electors. But they are not the people, not the Church people, not the people of the parish, but the Church people of the parish, and the majority only of them. The grand word, the people, is an illusion.

Is the proposal in any form a better mode of choice than that which exists? Two maxims are