MODEKN MYSTICISM AND MODERN SCIENCE. 283 



maim ever have been educed by subsequent experimenters ; 

 but then the rejoinder lies : ' You may not have administered 

 the physic in proper doses.' Consideration of this fact is 

 quite enough to show that homoeopathy fails in the first 

 requisition necessary to constitute a science. It imposes diffi- 

 culties ; whereas, in its affected character of a science, it 

 should have removed them. Homoeopathy has acquired much 

 of its hold upon the minds of certain people in consequence 

 of the unreasoned ridicule that has been directed against it. 

 Laughter is the usual resource when pure unreason is paraded. 

 Thoughtful people, competent to analyse the postulates on 

 which homoeopathy is based, and the recorded experiments to 

 which its supporters point, can see in it naught but unreason. 

 Still, ridicule without argument is a sort of persecution ; and 

 persecution never yet w r as attended with any other result 

 than promulgating what it had been intended to suppress. 

 The persecution of ridicule has certainly done much to foster 

 the belief in homoeopathy; and interests of truth regarded 

 it is perhaps unfortunate that the recorded experiments of 

 Hahnemann, if quoted literally, are so exceedingly ridiculous, 

 that even the most literal transcript of them is prone to raise 

 the suspicion of travesty or exaggeration. 



Not heeding the distinction between subsequence and 

 consequence, Hahnemann records every manifestation sub- 

 sequent to the administration of a medicament as a symptom. 

 He is led to testify (and the testimony could not well be more 

 provocative of laughter), without argument, that charcoal in- 

 gested produces loss of cuticle after riding. That cayenne 

 pepper causes itching at the roots of the hair after scratching. 

 Why in these cases the riding and the scratching are to be 

 held as non ad rem Hahnemann has not thought well to ex- 

 plain ; and the rules of ordinary ratiocination fail to inform us. 



This insufficiency in setting forth the conditions of ex- 

 periment is ample enough to deprive homoeopathy of the 

 character of science to which it aspires. It is a shortcoming 



