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which subsequent generations would make in physical science 

 and other provinces, hut he possessed sufficient perspicacity to 

 perceive the empirical character of the science and learning of 

 his own time, and he believed that he would deserve well of 

 mankind by laughing it out of court. He cudgels every species 

 of scientific pretence, but directs his fiercest attacks against the 

 profession of medicine. He was himself the prey of an incurable 

 disease — consumption. The malady added to his effectiveness 

 as an actor. It gave his voice a sonorous depth of tone. The 

 cough that accompanied it became an important item of his 

 stock-in-trade. He used it with consummate address so as to 

 make his recitations more exquisitely comical. Audiences roared 

 with laughter at what was fretting away the life of the artist. 

 He could forget his buffettiugs amidst the brilliant bewitchments 

 of the theatre, with all the glory of the royal presence, but when 

 the spell of intoxication was over, the consciousness of disease 

 gnawing into the very core of life sank him into deep dejection, 

 and rendered him implacable towards the men whose function 

 was to heal but who brought no heahng to him. 



In Le Malade Imaginaire Argan is represented as a peevish and 

 penurious valetudinarian. He thinks himself miserably Ul and 

 cannot endure the doctors out of his sight. Indeed in order to 

 have a doctor always at his elbow he will make one of his son-in- 

 law. The fact that his daughter's affections are abeady pledged 

 elsewhere is of no moment. The doctor upon whom he has fixed 

 his choice is a pedantic young dry-as-dust, who has just written 

 a treatise against the pestilent new doctrine of the circulation of 

 the blood — a doctrine which he triumphantly demolishes. Argan 

 inquires whether the young physician is pushing his way at 

 court? "No," says he, "it is better to deal with the people 

 than with the quality. With the public you have not to answer 

 for your actions. If you only follow the rules of the art it doesn't 

 matter what happens ; but in high hfe, those who sicken require 

 absolutely that their physicians cure them." In the end Argan 

 becomes a doctor himself, and the drama winds up with an 

 extraordinary scene in which he is formally admitted into the 

 faculty and authorized to purge, bleed, cut and kill throughout 

 the teiTaqueous globe. 



Keligious hypocrisy was the target against which Moliere aimed 

 his keenest shafts. He did not set up as a reformer of either 

 dogma or the Church. His pm-pose was to show that rehgious 

 pretension when it covered a corrupt mind was not only accursed 

 but ridiculous. His satires provoked violent opposition in many 

 quarters, and but for the direct protection of the throne the poet 

 might have been made to taste the sweets of an Auto dafe. 



Considering Moliere only as a moral and social force, he is a 

 force " making for righteousness." His writings were defective, 



