e travels are now ended; for, aside from his
metaphysical follies, Prof. Harris is a man of real merit and great
intellectual industry, whose services in education will entitle him to
be remembered; but when the metaphysical impulse seizes him,

"Who would not laugh if such a fool there be,
Who would not weep if Atticus were he."

The lecture of Prof. Harris was reported in the _Boston Herald_, in
the style of a gushing girl with her first lover, as a "NEW STEP IN
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY," attended by a full audience as "a rare
treat" "_like buckwheat-cakes fresh from the griddle_," for "Prof.
Harris took a decidedly _new step in Philosophy_," giving "an insight
which _no philosopher, ancient or modern, has attained_." Again,
speaking of it privately, Prof. Harris said, "I got hold of the idea
three or four years ago, and I have been trying to work it out since.
I regard it as my _best contribution to philosophy_." "_Montes
parturiunt_," What do they bring forth? Is it a mouse of respectable
size? The _Boston Herald_, which is generally smart, though never
profound, says of the symposium, "It has set up Aristotle this year as
its golden calf to be worshipped." "But when you ask the question,
what does all this talk amount to, it is difficult to give an
affirmative answer." "It is simply threshing straw over, again and
again." But it is not aware that the Concord straw is merely the dried
weeds that Lord Bacon cut up and threw out of the field of respectable
literature over two hundred and sixty years ago. "What man (says the
_Herald_), with any serious purpose in life, has any time to waste
over what somebody thinks Aristotle ought to have thought or said."
And my readers may ask, why give the valuable space of the JOURNAL OF
MAN to examining such trash? Precisely because _it is trash_, and yet
occupies a place of honor, standing in the way of progress and
representing the tendencies of education for centuries, which still
survive, though they may be said to have gone to seed. Concord
represents University philosophy, as a dude represents fashion, and as
University philosophy is a haughty antagonist of all genuine
philosophy, it is important to illustrate its worthlessness.

The subject of Prof. Harris' lecture was "Aristotle's Theory of the
Syllogism, Compared with that of Hegel." As these two were the great
masters of obscurantism, the lecture should have been, of course, as
perfect a specimen as either of da