284: MODEEN MYSTICISM AND MODERN SCIENCE. 



not to be palliated, much less explained away. Thus, based 

 as it is upon dishonesty, the philosopher, the believer in the 

 immutability of Nature's laws, the experimenter, is forth- 

 with prepared to find, that the more he examines into the 

 propositions of this so-called system, the more untenable will 

 the so-called system be. Its propositions are found not only 

 unsupported by experiment, but adverse to experiment. Test- 

 ing the pretensions of this form of medical belief inductively, 

 the experimenter soon arrives at the issue, that if homoeopathy 

 be true, the whole of chemical science must be false. At 

 this point, if the judgment be honest to its keeper, the be- 

 liever, in spite of himself, will be driven to confess that he 

 accepts homoeopathy as a religion a faith not as a demon- 

 strative science. 



It is because beliefs are not thus roughly followed up to 

 their issues, that the revelations, real or assumed, of table- 

 turning and spirit-rapping hold a position so unsatisfactory as 

 to evidence. Is it pretended that these phenomena are only 

 some new revelation of the laws of Nature, or that they are 

 wholly supernatural lawless ? Is it pretended that they are 

 a science, or that they are a mysticism? A compound of 

 both they cannot be : the choice has to be made. 



If a science, they must have their immutable laws ; there 

 must be no caprice as to their manifestations. Let us have 

 no shrinking from inquiry. Men of science, on their part, 

 have assuredly good right to press for this candid election. 

 It is their privilege to foster, knowingly, 110 delusion. They 

 profess to open the book of Nature, and reveal her truths. 

 They desire to be assured that, under shelter of the confidence 

 begotten by a name, quacks and cheats do not assume the 

 attributes of scientific men do not promulgate deception 

 under the name of science. 



Perhaps it is an unconscious tribute to the scientific cha- 

 racter of our age, that the designations ' scientific man' and 

 ( science' are so lightly assumed on behalf of people who have 



