152 TRUTH, PATHOLOGY, AND PUBLIC. 
the strength of conviction, and so keep adding to 
what you call your experience—never verifying, and 
perhaps altogether wrong in your ideas as to what 
had really happened in the interesting cases on 
which you have built. Will it be remarkable if 
your notions become crude, if your own belief in 
pathology and in precise diagnosis become dulled, 
and your practice degenerate to a stupid supersti- 
tion? This picture is by no means an altogether 
imaginary one. It is the record of what I have 
seen, The cure is to be found in the increase of 
facilities for comparing the theories formed in at- 
tendance on’ the living With the revelations that are 
offered by the dead ; and that is a matter which 
rests with the general public. 
The general public is a vague and not altogether 
satisfactory body to deal with. It is possible to 
have the greatest respect for your fellow-men indi- 
vidually, and have little for the general public: and 
justly so ; because the opinions, passions, and pre- 
judices that pass most current in the throng are by 
no means the secretly cherished and better judg- 
ments of the individuals who compose it. We do 
not air most blatantly on all occasions the wisdom 
which we privately think the best ; I fear we should 
be prigs if we did; but so it happens that it is some- 
thing a good deal worse than our best by which in 
