to.

"How so?"

"Ah! it is well masked; but I know you too well to allow me to doubt
that you suspect what I am referring to."

"Upon my word, I am all in the dark."

"Is there not," said I, "a close analogy between the condition of men
in reference to the health of their bodies and the science by which
they hope to conserve or restore it, and the health of their souls and
the science by which they hope to conserve or restore that? Has not
God placed them in precisely the same difficulty and perplexity in both
cases,--nay, as I think, in greater in relation to medicine,--and yet
is not man most willing and eager to apply to its most problematic
aid, imparted even by the most ignorant practitioners, rather than
be without it altogether? The possession which man holds most valuable
in this world, and most men, alas! more valuable than aught in any
other world,--LIFE itself,--is at stake; it is subjected to a science,
or rather an art, proverbially difficult in theory and uncertain in
practice, about which there have been ten thousand varieties of opinion,
--whimsically corresponding to the diversity of sect, creed, and
priesthood, on which sceptics like you lay so much stress; in which
even the wisest and most cautious practitioners confess that their
art is at best only a species of guessing; while the patient can no
more judge of the remedies he consents, with so much faith, to swallow
on the knowledge of him who prescribes them, than he can of the
perturbations of Jupiter's satellites. Yet the moment he is sick,
away he goes to this dubious oracle, and trusts it with a most
instructive faith and docility, as if it were infallible. All his
doubts are mastered in an instant. I strongly suspect yours would
be. Ought you not in consistency to refuse to act at all in such
deplorable deficiency of evidence?"

"Well," said he, "consistent or inconsistent, it must be admitted
that the parallel is very complete,--and amusing." And he then went
on, as he was apt to do, when an analogy struck his fancy. "Let me
see,--yes, our unlucky race is condemned to put its most valued
possession on the hazard of a wise choice, without any of the
essential qualifications for wisely making it; a man cannot at all
tell whether his particular priest in medicine understands and can
skilfully apply even his own theory. Yes," he went on, "and I think
(as you say) we might find, not only in the partisans of different
systems of physic, the