"
Following this general course of remark, I propose to indicate in a few
words the direction of the main intellectual current of the time, and to
point out more particularly some of the eddies which tend to keep the
science and art of medicine from moving with it, or even to carry them
backwards.
The two dominant words of our time are law and average, both pointing to
the uniformity of the order of being in which we live. Statistics have
tabulated everything,--population, growth, wealth, crime, disease. We
have shaded maps showing the geographical distribution of larceny and
suicide. Analysis and classification have been at work upon all tangible
and visible objects. The Positive Philosophy of Comte has only given
expression to the observing and computing mind of the nineteenth century.
In the mean time, the great stronghold of intellectual conservatism,
traditional belief, has been assailed by facts which would have been
indicted as blasphemy but a few generations ago. Those new tables of the
law, placed in the hands of the geologist by the same living God who
spoke from Sinai to the Israelites of old, have remodelled the beliefs of
half the civilized world. The solemn scepticism of science has replaced
the sneering doubts of witty philosophers. The more positive knowledge
we gain, the more we incline to question all that has been received
without absolute proof.
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