Sometimes the whole of this scientific claptrap will consist of the dextrous use of some one long new-coined term, very much like those that are invented for the venders of soaps and perfumes to express the psychology of their most ingenious and philosophical compounds. The lecturer has discovered a new word, and it stands to him in place of a mine of thought. In Martinus Scriblerus we read of a project to banish metaphysics out of Spain. It was to be done by forbidding the use of the compounds and decompounds of the substantive verb. "Take away from the scholastic metaphysician," says this ingenious reformer, "his _ens_, his _entitas_, his _essentia_, &c., and there is an end of him." So also we have known lectures, and even books, on some of these new psychologies from which the abstraction of a single term would cause the whole to collapse. And yet to the quackish lecturer it is the key to unlock all his scientific treasures. He has somehow picked up a _word_, and he is deluding himself, and trying to delude others, into the notion that he has really caught an _idea_. The connection of soul and body is no longer a mystery. Science has at length dragged it out of its dark retreat. Nothing can be simpler than the explanation at length afforded of the fact which had so long baffled all inquiry. It is wholly owing to the _nervo-vital_ fluid. But how is this? Is this connecting medium mind, or matter, or a compound of both, or a tertium quid? If it is either the first or the second, the mystery is just where it was before. If it be said that it is the last (the only answer which does not at once annihilate itself), the further query arises--How is that to be a medium which needs itself a medium, or rather two other distinct media, to serve as connecting links between it and the two worlds it would unite? Or is it a bridge without an abutment on either shore? But what are all such difficulties to our modern Galileo, or to his scientific audience? It is the _nervo-vital_ fluid, whether or no. There is a charming philosophy in the very sound, and it is impossible that so good a term should not mean something. It is an admirable word--a most euphonic word--and since the parts are certainly significant, there can be no reason why the whole compound should not be so likewise. Another of these magic words is _electricity_. It is getting to be the _universal solvent_ for all scientific difficulties. It is life, it is gravitation, it is attraction, it is generation, it is creation, it is development, it is law, it is sensation, it is thought, it is every thing. "Give me a place to put my lever," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world!" Give us electricity and nervo-vital fluids, say our biologists, and we will explain the mystery of all organizations, from the animalcule to the universe!