115 



merit may be accorded them that they constitute an 

 impartial and un partisan attempt to portray the present 

 status of this vexed question. And this I hope, not on 

 personal grounds, but because a suspicion of insincerity 

 in the portrayal would retard acquiescence in what I 

 must and do regard as truth. 



If these lectures shall serve as a vehicle for conveying 

 to the busy practitioner facts which he has not time to 

 seek amid the mass of current literature ; shall contri- 

 bute, however little, to the more general discrimination 

 between theories and facts, between observations and 

 deductions, between assertions and demonstrations ; 

 shall tend to confirm the belief that much may be hoped 

 for, though perhaps but little is already completed in this 

 direction their object will be accomplished, and your 

 lecturer will hope that he was not inexcusably presump- 

 tuous in consenting to appear upon a platform which 

 has been honored by a Bartholow and by a Dalton. 



