ttempt to diverge. But when the
intelligent man of either class turned his attention out of his ordinary
work, he had, in most cases, the freshness and vigor of a boy at play, and
like the boy, he felt his freedom all the more from the contrast of
school-restraint.

In the case of medicine, and physics generally, the learned were, in some
essential points, more rational than many of their present impugners. They
pass for having put _a priori_ obstacles in the way of progress: they might
rather be reproved for too much belief in progress obtained by _a priori_
means. They would have shouted with laughter at a dunce who--in a review I
read, but without making a note--declared that he would not believe his
senses except when what they showed him was capable of explanation upon
some known principle. I have seen such stuff as this attributed to the
schoolmen; but only by those who knew nothing about them. The following,
which I wrote some years ago, will give a notion of a distinction worth
remembering. It is addressed to the authorities of the College of
Physicians.

"The ignominy of the word _empiric_ dates from the ages in which scholastic
philosophy deduced physical consequences _a priori_;--the ages in which,
because a lion is strong, rubbing with lion's fat would have been held an
infallible tonic. In those happy days, if a physician had given decoction
of a certain bark, only because in numberless instances that decoction had
been found to strengthen the patient, he would have been a miserable
empiric. Not that the colleges would have passed over his returns because
they were empirical: they knew better. They were as skilful in finding
causes for facts, as facts for causes. The president and the elects of that
day would have walked out into the forest with a rope, and would have
pulled heartily at the tree which yielded the bark: nor would they ever
have left it until they had pulled out a legitimate {200} reason. If the
tree had resisted all their efforts, they would have said, 'Ah! no wonder
now; the bark of a strong tree makes a strong man.' But if they had managed
to serve the tree as you would like to serve homoeopathy, then it would
have been 'We might have guessed it; all the _virtus roborativa_ has
settled in the bark.' They admitted, as we know from Moliere, the _virtus
dormitiva_[343] of opium, for no other reason than that opium _facit
dormire_.[344] Had the medicine not been previously _known_, they would,