would regard as the signs of an age wanting in original power.

Turning from literature and the arts to law and politics, again we fall
under the lash of Socrates. For do we not often make 'the worse appear the
better cause;' and do not 'both parties sometimes agree to tell lies'? Is
not pleading 'an art of speaking unconnected with the truth'? There is
another text of Socrates which must not be forgotten in relation to this
subject. In the endless maze of English law is there any 'dividing the
whole into parts or reuniting the parts into a whole'--any semblance of an
organized being 'having hands and feet and other members'? Instead of a
system there is the Chaos of Anaxagoras (omou panta chremata) and no Mind
or Order. Then again in the noble art of politics, who thinks of first
principles and of true ideas? We avowedly follow not the truth but the
will of the many (compare Republic). Is not legislation too a sort of
literary effort, and might not statesmanship be described as the 'art of
enchanting' the house? While there are some politicians who have no
knowledge of the truth, but only of what is likely to be approved by 'the
many who sit in judgment,' there are others who can give no form to their
ideal, neither having learned 'the art of persuasion,' nor having any
insight into the 'characters of men.' Once more, has not medical science
become a professional routine, which many 'practise without being able to
say who were their instructors'--the application of a few drugs taken from
a book instead of a life-long study of the natures and constitutions of
human beings? Do we see as clearly as Hippocrates 'that the nature of the
body can only be understood as a whole'? (Compare Charm.) And are not
they held to be the wisest physicians who have the greatest distrust of
their art? What would Socrates think of our newspapers, of our theology?
Perhaps he would be afraid to speak of them;--the one vox populi, the other
vox Dei, he might hesitate to attack them; or he might trace a fanciful
connexion between them, and ask doubtfully, whether they are not equally