282 MODERN MYSTICISM AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



Scientific testimony, if worthy the name, is ever based on 

 experiment ; the conditions, limitations, and successive steps 

 of which are fully set forth. All science is based upon the 

 belief justified by experience that Nature's laws are 

 immutable. If two and two should be capable of making 

 four to-day and five to-morrow ; if sulphuretted hydrogen 

 should be proved capable of blackening lead to-day and 

 whitening it to-morrow: if not to multiply illustrations 

 Nature were found to be mutable in her operations, there 

 would be an end to science ; there could be no unerring and 

 invariable truth. 



It follows, from a consideration of this immutability of 

 Nature's laws, that, the steps of a scientific investigation 

 being recorded, it is competent for other experimenters to 

 retrace them, and check their issues. If the precise con- 

 dition be not given if the steps be not recorded then, 

 depend upon it, some pretender to science is in the field, and 

 not the true philosopher. By this test shall this form of 

 dishonesty be known. 



Applying the test to Homoeopathy, what does it reveal? 

 Firstly, studying the records of this faith, we learn that 

 Hahnemann, the originator, elected to take his stand, not 

 as a prophet professing a new religion, but as a philosopher 

 w r hose teachings should be based upon me result of inductive 

 experiment. He professed to have based the 'system,' so 

 called, of homoeopathy upon facts elicited during the course 

 of long-continued experiments ; and he seemingly was most 

 precise in recording all the symptoms, educed by the adminis- 

 tration of different agents. 



But mark this Hahnemann rarely affords information 

 concerning the dose he administered. His readers are left 

 in the most complete ignorance on that point : wherefore the 

 conditions are not put in evidence for enabling subsequent 

 experimenters to test the accuracy of his conclusions. 



In sober truth, none of the effects chronicled by Hahne- 



