A GERMAN VIEW OF THE "DATA OF ETHICS." 195 



is not more significant than the hopefulness that precedes it. For I 

 believe that instinct is right in both cases, and that in the first stages 

 of its development consumption is really the most curable of all 

 chronic diseases. Chateaubriand, Heinrich Voss, Count Stolberg, Al- 

 fieri, Francis Deak, and Dr. Zimmermann, were descended from con- 

 sumptive parents, but redeemed their constitutions by traveling and 

 out-door exercise, and attained to a more than average longevity. 

 Goethe, in his younger years, was subject to hectic fevers, with fre- 

 quent haemorrhages, but recovered and died as an octogenarian. 



A tendency to emaciation, the most characteristic symptom of tu- 

 berculosis, generally continues to counteract the normal effects of a lib- 

 eral diet, even combined with continence and a tranquil mode of life ; 

 but the limitation of that tendency is a sufficient guarantee that the 

 disease has become non-progressive. But there is a still surer crite- 

 rion : consumptives are generally remarkably fair and smooth skinned. 

 The reason is, that the dross of the cachectic system gravitates toward 

 the diseased lungs. An East-Indian surgeon found that small-pox can be 

 localized by rubbing the chest with croton-oil, and thus concentrating 

 the eruption. Pulmonary consumption is a kind of centralized scrof- 

 ula. Two hundred years ago, when the cutaneous form of the dis- 

 ease was more frequent, surgery was often invoked to remove ulcers 

 that threatened to disfigure the patient or destroy his eyesight. The 

 approved method was to produce an artificial and larger sore, where it 

 could not do so much harm, on the arm, below the chin, or on the 

 nape of the neck. The larger sore attracted the morbific matter ; and 

 thus healed the smaller one. For cognate reasons, a scrofulous affec- 

 tion of the respiratory organs acts, as it were, as a cosmetic. Pimples 

 disappear ; boils head at once, and without suppuration ; intemper- 

 ance, surfeits, a congenital taint of scrofula, do not affect the color 

 of the face ; and (excepting the effect of gross dietetic abuses, which 

 ultimately react on the lungs) the cutaneous excretion of such impuri- 

 ties is therefore not an unfavorable symptom. For their reappearance 

 on the surface of the body proves that the respiratory organs have 

 ceased to attract the cachectic humors of the system ; in other words, 

 that the tubercle-sores have cicatrized, and the lung-destroying virus 

 has been eradicated. 



A GEKMAN VIEW OF THE " DATA OF ETHICS." * 



Br FEIEDEICH VON BAEEENBACH. 



PHILOSOPHICAL thought is tending more and more toward con- 

 centrating itself upon problems of physiological as distinguished 

 from metaphysical psychology, and to the inquiry after those facts 

 which can be ascertained. The best workers in this field are still 



* Translated and abridged for " The Popular Science Monthly " by Thomas Cross. 



