502 
VETERINARY SCIENCE DEFENDED. 
lightened age, remarkable for its thirst after knowledge, there was 
never a period in which there prevailed greater or more numerous 
extremes of opinion. In fact, however, it is the lot of every 
country that has taken a forward step towards the advancement 
of civilization, to have repeatedly undergone a prevalence of ex- 
treme opposite opinions. This seems to be the indispensable 
price at which the progress of science is purchased. It is never 
by fits and sallies, but by steady and easy gradations, that its 
movements ensue, and not from several impulses operating col- 
lectively in one direction, but by a combination of opposing forces 
which direct its steps in the medium course. 
Whatever they who are opposed to the acquirement of know- 
ledge, and to the thorough and scientific education of a veterinary 
surgeon, may do or think in the case, no true friend of his profes- 
sion would attempt to destroy existing modes of thought, or endea- 
vour to disparage scientific institutions, unless he had means of 
replacing them by something better. Whether a man be in him- 
self virtuous or vicious, he has no moral right to deal severely 
with our present mode of arrangement in veterinary instruction — 
at least, until he has himself put it fairly to the test, and tried 
the proposed mode of training upon his own senses, and by his 
own experience found them deserving of sarcasm or approbation. 
The real benefactors of mankind have always thought it their first 
duty to forward that which was calculated to be capable of ad- 
vancing practical knowledge, and, in itself, contingently useful ; 
and it is only when they have seen their way clear to the substi- 
tution of a better order of things, that they have endeavoured 
to break in pieces the present incongruous method of inquiry. 
He who takes the mere accidents of a system for its essential 
qualities, and proceeds therefrom to argue and pour forth his 
wrath, may mislead the unwary, but cannot fail to make the 
judicious and thinking man either smile or grieve, or both. No 
man of reasonable, liberal, and rightly-directed mind, would 
take exceptions for examples. Such a man would justly forfeit 
all his claims to our confidence ; nor has he any right to be con- 
sidered an impartial or trust-worthy judge who has a tongue and 
an eye only for the faults and deficiencies of the accused. In the 
very extravagance of some notions, now pandering for popularity, 
the consequence will be twofold, viz. by depreciating in the esti- 
mation of every man of ordinary education the very system it 
was intended to elevate, and elevating the system it wished to 
annihilate. The more universally the cause of veterinary science 
is advanced, and the more extensive the establishment of true 
philosophy, the shorter will be the feverish state of that sys- 
tem whose confutation is in its own absurdity. The greater the 
