And yet if the medical man were to tell his patient this, he would be incontinently shown the door! But the intellectuals are quite as bad as the commonalty in their disparagement of the knowledge of the profession, and none are more easily taken in by some cheap piece of logic-chopping founded on such analogies of the grossly mechanical kind as seem to mirror or parallel their sensations; those suggestions for treatment in particular being peculiarly acceptable which proceed as if some part of the patient's inside were being dried up as by fire, or were turning over like a wheel, or opening and shutting like a door, or being grasped as in a vice, or extending its roots like a tree, and especially if the irregular practitioner has "seen through it with an eye glance, when all those bungling fools of doctors have failed!' When I first met Carlyle, he described to me in detail the symptoms of his dyspepsia, and roundly asserted that the physicians who attended him, and who at that time were at the top of the profession in London, did not really understand anything about his case.

He then proceeded to give me his own opinion, from which, to my amazement, it was evident that he was figuring his stomach as some old teakettle, which was so thickly encrusted with fur, that it only wanted something to scrape or dissolve this away, for all to be well with him again! It is said that at the rate at which Christian Science is spreading in America among all classes, it will have over-run half the religious world before the century is out. That is bad enough, but it would seem that the prospect before the medical profession is still worse. A distinguished friend of mine, who is usually regarded as very level-headed, thinks so cheaply of its knowledge, that he undertook to prove to me not long ago, that in less than a generation there would not be a regular practitioner left, as they would all be driven out and superseded by the efficacy of his own panacea - Swedish massage! Now this curious disparagement of the knowledge of the profession, and at a time, too, when, as I have said, there is not a really diseased structure anywhere in the body but can have the finger laid on it almost unerringly by one or other of the great masters of the profession, is not only to be found here and there among the intellectual and cultured classes, but seems to be the prevalent, the orthodox belief among them.

This is the more regrettable, inasmuch as at the present time, owing to the breakdown of all the old religious beliefs on the one hand, and the suspicion that there is more in the world than mere Scientific Materialism on the other, it has led to the revival of the cult of the magician, the astrologer, and the diviner, as in the days of the Roman Empire before the triumph of Christianity; with the result that flights of impostors are flocking from all the winds to the great metropolitan centres of the world, scenting their prey. And the remedy is, what? To bring them to a rigid test in the hospitals, with the Press looking on to report the results to all the world. If this were done I for one should have no doubts whatever as to the issue.

And now we may pass to the third and most important class of specialisms, those, namely, which deal with Human Life itself, and which make up the History of Civilisation, including as its great divisions, History proper, Religion, Government, Philosophy, Psychology, Political Economy, and Sociology. Of these we have to report that as at present constituted much of the results of their researches, in the condition in which they are delivered over to the public for its instruction and guidance in life, is as futile, misleading, or false as those of the Physical Sciences are fruitful, reliable, and true. And the reason of this is, that they have not as yet found, like the Physical Sciences and the specialisms connected with the Science of Medicine, any general Science of Civilisation under which to work, and by which their labours are to be coordinated and reduced to harmony. For as the work of Civilisation has been the result of the combined action of all the important factors we have mentioned at each and every stage of the world's history, it is evident, is it not, that you can no more get a broad general truth which you can hand over to the public for its guidance from any one or all of these specialisms taken separately, until they have been co-ordinated and knit together by a general Science of Civilisation, than you can get a general truth of the body from its organs taken separately, until their general action and reaction on each other have first been determined by the general Science of Medicine. Indeed, until this has been done, the more History, Theology, Philosophy, Politics, Political Economy, and Sociology are kept apart, and cultivated as independent specialisms, and the more subdivided they are, the more futile and unprofitable they become; the more developed and elaborated, the more false are their conclusions; the farther they go, the more do they lose their way; the more important they are, the more dangerous is it to accept their results as our guides in action and life.

It is true that until enough material had been dug out to construct a general Science of Civilisation, their labours were entirely beneficial, because absolutely necessary; as the planets and stars had to be observed and classified before the Copernican Astronomy and gravitation could be established. But to go on merely collecting and arranging material after enough has been collected with which to construct a Science of Civilisation, without attempting to do so; or to ignore such a science when it is once established, is as great a waste and futility as to continue cataloguing the stars without reference to gravitation, or to go on counting the numbers and marking the positions of old milestones, after the roads have been closed and the entire landscape changed. And this is precisely the condition under which these specialisms are working at the present time. And the reason of it is to be found in those historical antecedents which have made each hate or despise the rest, as if they were neighbouring tribes worshipping-hostile gods.