EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 



15 



duced, have been allowed for. Whatever conflicts there may be 

 among accounts of events that occurred during the feudal ages, com- 

 parison of them brings out the incontestable truth that there was 

 a Feudal System. By implication, chronicles and laws indicate the 

 traits of this system ; and on putting side by side narratives and 

 documents written, not to tell us about the Feudal System but for 

 quite other purposes, we get tolerably clear ideas of these traits in 

 their essentials ideas made clearer still on collating the evidence 

 furnished by different contemporary societies. Similarly throughout. 

 By making due use not so much of that which past and present wit- 

 nesses intend to tell us, as of that which they tell us by implication, it 

 is possible to collect data for inductions respecting social structures 

 and functions in their origin and development : the obstacles which 

 arise in the disentangling of such data in the case of any particular 

 society being mostly surmountable by the help of the comparative 

 method. 



Nevertheless, the difficulties that have been enumerated must be 

 ever present to us. Throughout, we hope to depend on testimony ; 

 and in every case we have to beware of the many modes in which evi- 

 dence may be vitiated have to estimate its worth when it has been 

 discounted in various ways ; and have to take care that our conclu- 

 sions do not depend upon any particular class of facts gathered from 

 any particular place or time. 







EPIDEMIC DELUSIONS. 



By Dr. CAEPENTEE, P.E.S., LL.D. 



A LECTURE, DELIVERED IK THE HCLME TOWN-HALL, MANCHESTER. 



OUR subject to-night links itself in such a very decided manner to 

 the subject in which we were engaged last week, and the illus- 

 trations which I shall give you are so satisfactorily explained on the 

 scientific principle which I endeavored then to expound to you, that I 

 would spend a very few minutes in just going over some of the points 

 to which I then particularly directed your attention. My object was 

 to show you that, between our Mental operations and our Will, there 

 is something of that kind of relation which exists between a well- 

 trained horse and his rider; that the Will if rightly exercised in 

 early infancy in directing and controlling the mental operations ; in 

 directing the attention to the objects to which the intellect should be 

 applied ; in controlling and repressing emotional disturbance ; restrain- 

 ing the feelings when unduly excited, and putting a check upon the 

 passions that the will in that respect has the same kind of influence 



