and dissipated. The poet's censure of the sons of Aristotle is just as happily expressed : " « They stand Locked up together, hand in hand. Every one leads as he is led; The same bare path they tread, And dance like Fairies a fantastic round, But neither change their motion nor their ground.1'" The ascendency of Aristotle upon the revival of learning could not have become so paramount, but for the fact that he was accepted as authority by the Church equally with the Schools. The methods of the two were precisely the same. Each assumed the truth of the premises upon which the systems of each were constructed. The Church had nothing to fear from one who stood in the way of all inquiry by which truth could be discovered, and, by rendering all progress impossible, gave for a time an historic truth to the famous boast of" Semper Eadem." Uniformity throughout the ages, whether in science or in art, in religion or in dogma, is the uniformity of death. In spite, however, of Church and of Aristotle, discoveries continued to be made, each one of which enlarged the vision and means of those that followed. The spirit of freedom and inquiry came from the new races. They burst the bonds, both physical and religious, in which the world had so long been held. For such an effort, neither Greece nor Rome had the aspiration nor the power. So firm, however, had become the grasp of the Church and the Schools upon the human mind, that it was not till the beginning of the seventeenth century that Bacon, for the first time, displayed to the race, in all their length and breadth, the methods by which truth is to be discovered, methods which cannot fail, so far as the faculties of man can go, to unfold all the laws of the universe. The difference between the methods of Aristotle and Bacon is, that to the Aristotelian, the sun rises and sets; upon the evidence of his senses he immediately constructs a system which assumes to explain all the phenomena of the heavens. To the Baconian, the sun appears to rise and set; but from this appearance he draws no conclusions whatever. His first essay is to test the accuracy of the testimony of his senses. He finds in the end that the phenomena entirely contradict the facts, 1 Whewell, vol. i. p. 234-5. the law, the appearance; that the earth moves about the sun, instead of the sun about the earth as a common centre. The system which he erects, consequently, differs wholly from that of the follower of Aristotle. Both, in one sense, have proceeded inductively, drawing their conclusions from premises which appear to each not to be controverted. Those of one are the testimony of his senses, or propositions framed by his own fancy; from these he immediately proceeds to conclusions. The other draws no conclusions from the testimony of his senses, from phenomena, nor from his fancies; but first proceeds to test their accuracy or truth. This done, his conclusions are demonstrations which irresistibly command assent. The exact sciences - those which deal in space, quantity and number were the first to emancipate themselves from the Aristotelian methods. When these are properly pursued the results are indisputable. Astrology, with all its monstrous fables, as unmeaning to those who proposed them as to the ignorant and unlearned, gave place to astronomy. Alchemy, with all its assumption of creative power, gave place to chemistry, which demonstrates beyond cavil that final causes lie beyond the reach of man. In these, investigation, whatever may be the progress made, at least proceeds by proper methods. In many of the moral sciences, however, in those the truths of which are less demonstrable than those of astronomy and chemistry,the Schoolmen still exert almost paramount authority. As Religion is largely a matter of race, there is probably no solution of the controversies growing out of it, but the law of the stronger. We can, however, already assume that the freer the articulation of the faculties in reference to it, the more effective and capable do man and the race become. The greater part of what we know of Medicine is that the schools are wider apart than ever: there is no concord, for the reason that there are no demonstrations that command assent. In this science the methods of the Schoolmen still hold sway. Negative progress, however, has been made. In the inability to propose remedies, Nature is in great measure allowed to do her own work, a confession of ignorance and incompetency by which mankind has immeasurably gained.1 1 Of what may be termed the Moral Sciences, that of Law seems to be the only one in which any considerable or satisfactory progress has yet been made. Midway between these extremes are a vast number of subjects that relate to the economy of life,-law, government, administration, production, distribution; subjects which result from the joint action of many and often apparently opposing . laws. These become all the more difficult of solution as society advances in civilization and wealth. All, at the outset, so far as they were treated, were necessarily treated after the manner of the Schoolmen. The theories or opinions which related to money, and to loans of money at usury, came directly from Aristotle, and were accepted without examination or res The results or demonstrations in this rank among the highest achievements, — or, rather, the ability to accept them is to be taken as the most decisive and satisfactory proof of the moral elevation of the race. Other kindred sciences are broken up into innumerable Schools, for the reason that, so far, there have in these been no adequate demonstrations, no common points of agreement. Schools are another word for guesses at, or suggestions of probabilities. There are no Schools in Astronomy, for the reason that the truth or falsehood of all propositions in reference to it is a matter of proof. There are, or should be, no Schools in Chemistry. If there are unsolved problems in this science, conclusion is to be held in abeyance. There are Schools in Medicine and Theology for the reason that the claims or propositions put forth by their teachers are inadequate or partial, and are consequently untrue to the general sense of mankind. From a feeling of their inadequacy new hypotheses or explanations are put forth, to give place, in time, to others perhaps equally unfounded and untenable. There are no Schools in Law, in its highest sense, for the reason that its conclusions are based upon sentiments or convictions common to the race. All have a similar sense of right and wrong, and when interest or passion is not involved, every one wishes to see, in the laws, the embodiment of justice, not only for the protection and welfare of others, which every one, ordinarily, desires to see promoted, but for his own, when his rights may be assailed. As every legal proposition is open to criticism, every one that is not founded in justice, or in convenience, is sure to be eventually overthrown. The Civil Law affords a splendid illustration of the progress made in legal science long before others, now so prominent, may be said to have had an existence. It is one of the greatest monuments of human wisdom. There never was a similar necessity or occasion. The Roman Empire embraced the known world, with every variety of race and nationality, and with ideas and institutions appropriate to each. There was, so far as administration was concerned, but one method by which all these incongruous elements could be fused into one homogeneous mass, a Code to which all were subject, and resting upon grounds and reasons appreciable by all, - upon a sense of justice, and of fitness of things. Although it was a maxim of the Roman lawyers, "Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem," yet the legislation of the Emperors, if such it may be called, served as a rule, only to give the force of law to the reasoning and conclusions of the wisest and purest jurists of the Empire. In this way the Civil Law became, as far as possible, the expression of pure reason when it dealt with principles, and of pure convenience when it dealt with their application. It is not probable that the world will ever see a similar code, one so just in principle and so universal and beneficent in its operation, for the reason that the world will never again see a universal Empire. ervation. With him, money was invented for a specific purpose, and was entitled to no consideration, for the reason that such purposes or objects were contrary to Nature. Those that were according to Nature were war, the chase, the care of herds, and the gathering of the fruits of the fields. Such only were worthy of freemen who had a part in the administration of the government. With him, trade and the mechanical arts were contrary to Nature, were servile; and, as such, were worthy only of those who occupied an inferior political or social condition, and of slaves. Money was held in the same indifference or contempt as were those by whom it was chiefly used. It was unworthy of notice or investigation; it was base because those who used it, and the employments in which it was used, were base. Such was the foundation upon which was reared a superstructure which has outlasted the ages. The views of Aristotle on the subject of usury are a necessary sequence of his views upon the subject of money. If moneygetting by trade, or by exchanges in which it was used, was contrary to Nature, loans of it at usury could be no less so. They were only an aggravation of the original wrong. Contemptible as such reasoning now appears, it controlled the judgment of mankind for twenty-two hundred years! "This absurdity of Aristotle," says Lecky,1 "and the number of centuries during which it was so incessantly asserted, without being, so far as we know, once questioned, is a curious illustration of the longevity of a sophism 2 when expressed in a terse form and sheltered by a great name. It is enough to make one ashamed of his species to think that Bentham, so late as 1787, was the first to bring into notice the simple consideration that, if a farmer employs borrowed money in buying bulls and cows, and if these produce calves to the value of ten times the interest, the money borrowed can scarcely be said to be sterile, or the borrower to be a loser!" 1 History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii. page 251. 2 The history of Medicine affords a still more striking instance of the "longevity of a sophism when sheltered by a great name." For more than 1,500 years, the system of Medicine established by the celebrated Galen, a Greek physician, held undisputed sway. By this system, to use the words of Sir William Hamilton, "Four elementary fluids, their relations and changes, sufficed to explain the varieties of natural temperament and the cause of disease; while After Aristotle, the first writer whose works on this subject possess any interest or value was the celebrated John Locke. The silver currency of England (the only one then in use) had become, in 1696, so reduced in value, from clipping and wear, as to cause the greatest inconvenience in all the operations of society. The coins in use, no matter how light, could be still used in the payment of debts and of the taxes due the government. The latter attempted for a long time to correct the evil, by causing large quantities of silver to be coined of the standard weight and fineness; but as the old coins, with one-quarter or one-fifth less of pure metal, were the genius, eloquence, and unbounded learning with which he illustrated this theory mainly bestowed on it the ascendency, which, without essential alteration, it retained from the conclusion of the second to the beginning of the eighteenth century. . . . Nor was this doctrine merely an erroneous speculation; it exerted the most decisive, the most pernicious influence on practice. The various diseased affections were denominated in accommodation to the theory. In place of saying that a malady affected the liver, the peritoneum, or the organs of circulation, its seat was assumed in the blood, the bile, or the lymph. The morbific causes acted exclusively on the fluids; the food digested in the stomach, and converted into chyle, determined the qualities of the blood; and poisons operated through the corruption they thus effected in the vital humors. All symptoms were interpreted in blind subservience to the hypothesis; and those only attracted attention which the hypothesis seemed calculated to explain. The color and consistence of the blood, mucus, feces, urine, and pus were carefully studied. On the other hand, the phenomena of the solids, if not wholly overlooked, as mere accidents, were slumped together under some collective name, and attached to the theory through a subsidiary hypothesis. By supposed changes in the humors, they explained the association and consecution of symptoms. Under the terms crudity, coction, and evacuation were designated the three principal periods of diseases, as dependent on an alteration of the morbific matter. In the first, this matter in all its deleterious energy had not yet undergone any change on the part of the organs; it was still crude. In the second, Nature gradually assumed the ascendent; coction took place. In the third, the peccant matter, now rendered mobile, was evacuated by urine, perspiration, dejection, &c., and equilibrium restored. When no critical discharge was apparent, the morbific matter, it was supposed, had, after a suitable elaboration, been assimilated to the humors, and its deleterious character neutralized. Coction might be perfect or imperfect; and the transformation of one disease into another was lightly solved by the transport or emigration of the noxious humor. It was principally on the changes of the evacuated fluids that they founded their judgments respecting the nature, issue, and duration of diseases. The urine, in particular, supplied them with indications to which they attached the greatest importance. Examinations of the dead body confirmed them in these notions. In the redness and tumefaction of inflamed parts, they beheld only a congestion of blood; and in dropsies, merely the dissolution of that fluid; tubercles were simply coagula of lymph; and other organic alterations, in general, naught but obstructions from an increased viscosity of the humors. The plan of cure was in unison with the rest of the hypothesis. Venesection was copiously employed |