Wilder, Neural Teiins. 291 



because he cannot read the articles based thereon, approximates 

 what has been called "the erection of the limitations of one's 

 individual experience into objective laws of the universe." I 

 sincerely trust that he may some day concede the validity of 

 these two propositions:^(i) A considerable number of investi- 

 gators and advanced instructors on both sides of the ocean have 

 employed the "American" system more or less systematically. 

 (2) Judging from my own experience as learner and teacher, 

 the hundreds of students, general and special, upon whom that 

 system has been practised since 1880, have either saved so much 

 time, or gained so much more information within a given time, 

 as to make its employment "worth while" even when the later 

 environment proved unfavorable to its permanent use. 



§2 [7. In concluding this response to the criticism of "the 

 oldest German anatomist", I venture to call his attention to the 

 different reception accorded my plans for terminologic simplifi- 

 cation by two other anatomic teachers well advanced in years, 

 viz., Joseph Leidy (§56, note) and Oliver Wendell Holmes 

 (§ 79). In order also that I may not appear unmindful of the 

 fact that the assimilation of verbal novelties becomes less easy 

 with increasing age,' I reproduce the concluding paragraph of 

 my second paper upon the subject ('81, b) : 



"The beginner can learn the new terms even more easily than the 

 old, and at any rate he has nothing to forget. But the tramed ana- 

 tomist shrinks from an unfamiliar word as from an unworn boot; the 

 trials of his own pupilage are but vaguely remembered; each day there 

 seems more to be done, and less time in which to do it; nor is it to be 

 expected that he will be attracted spontaneously toward the consider- 

 ation that his own personal convenience and preferences, and even 

 those of all his distinguished contemporaries, should be held of little 

 moment as compared with the advantages which reform may insure to 

 the vastly more numerous anatomical workers of the future." 



'The argumentum ad hominem is ungracious at the best, and the occasions for 

 its employment in this paper have been too numerous already. But when I re- 

 call the delay and mystification inflicted upon me and my students by the va- 

 riety and heterogeneity of terms, Latin and vernacular, with which most German 

 treatises upon encephalic anatomy literally bristle (§§58-60, i6g, note), I can- 

 not but feel that, however sincere may be the repentance therefor among the 

 anatomists of that nation, the needed reform should have been practised for a 

 somewhat longer period before others were rebuked. 



