2 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



complete withdrawal into himself, and a return, by the 

 force of an iron will, to an absence of needs and to 

 nothingness. 



In all these endeavours to be reconciled and contented 

 with the world, the consciousness of man has made no 

 very important progress. INIarvellous as are the attain- 

 ments of our generation, whether in the domain of 

 individual sciences, or in the sphere of commerce and 

 industry, it is scarcely less wonderful how little certain 

 or advanced is the opinion of the multitude on general 

 questions. Even now, as much as in the days of 

 Aristophanes, the multitude, and likewise many men 

 of "culture," allow themselves to be imposed upon 

 by empty jargon. We no longer burn witches, but 

 verdicts of heresy still abound. As the basis of sci- 

 entific medicine, our experimental physiology enjoys 

 unexampled encouragement, and a general instinctive 

 recognition unparalleled in former times ; but these 

 do not prevent the door from remaining open, in all 

 classes of society, to the most audacious quacker}^ 



We have only to look round at the spiritualists and 

 summoners of souls, who now form special sects and 

 societies ; at the advocates of cures by sympathy and 

 incantation, and we can but marvel at the extensive 

 sway of a superstition hardly superior to the Fetichism 

 of a race so alien to ourselves as are the negroes. 

 These are only individual cases of the very widespread 

 lack of judgment, which prevails wherever the supposed 

 enigma of human existence is concerned. Millions and 

 millions who would turn away indignantly if required to 

 believe that anything not entirely natural occurred in the 

 most complicated machine, in the most elaborate product 



