2 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
complete withdrawal into himself, and a return, by the 
force of an iron will, to an absence of needs and to 
nothingness. ‘ 
In all these endeavours to be reconciled and contented 
with the world, the consciousness of man has made no 
very important progress. Marvellous as are the attain- 
ments of our generation, whether in the domain of 
individual sciences, or in the sphere of commerce and 
industry, it is scarcely less wonderful how little certain 
or advanced is the opinion of the multitude on general 
questions. Even now, as much as in the days of 
Aristophanes, the multitude, and likewise many men 
of “culture,” allow themselves to be imposed upon 
by empty jargon. We no longer burn witches, but 
verdicts of heresy still abound. As the basis of sci- 
entific medicine, our experimental physiology enjoys 
unexampled encouragement, and a general instinctive 
recognition unparalleled in former times;. but these 
do not prevent the door from remaining open, in all 
classes of society, to the most audacious quackery. 
We have only to look round at the spiritualists and 
summoners of souls, who now form special sects and 
societies; at the advocates of cures by sympathy and 
incantation, and we can but marvel at the extensive 
sway of a superstition hardly superior to the Fetichism 
of a race so alien to ourselves as are the negroes. 
These are only individual cases of the very widespread 
lack of judgment, which prevails wherever the supposed 
enigma of human existence is concerned. Millions and 
millions who would turn away indignantly if required to 
believe that anything not entirely natural occurred in the 
most complicated machine, in the most elaborate product 
