There was everything in that course that was inexpedient and repulsive. Was he to be silent on opinions which he _knew_ to have been Mr. Hunter's, and of the moral and scientific advantages of which he had a most matured conviction? That would have been a compromise of his duty. It was a difficult dilemma—a real case of the "Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim." If he avoided one difficulty, he fell into another. He tried to take a middle course—he argued in support of the opinions he had enunciated, and aided these by additional illustrations; and, in contrasting them with those opinions which were opposed to him, he endeavoured to avoid a personal allusion to individuals, by arguing against a class, which he termed the "band of modern sceptics." Even this was a little Charybdis, perhaps; because it had a sort of name-calling effect, whilst it was not at all essential thus to embody in any one phrase the persons who held opposite opinions. His position was intensely difficult. It should be recollected that Abernethy had always been a teacher of young men; that he had _always_ taught principles of surgery which he conceived to be deducible from those delivered by Hunter; that he further believed that, to understand Hunter clearly, it was necessary to have a correct notion of the idea Mr. Hunter entertained of "Life;" and lastly, that, in _all_ his Lectures, Abernethy had a constant tendency to consider, and a habit of frequent appeal to, what, under different forms, might be regarded as the moral bearings of any subject which might be under discussion. We readily admit that, usually, in conducting scientific _arguments_, the alleged moral tendencies of this or that view are more acceptable when reserved to grace a conclusion, than when employed to enforce an argument; yet we think that, now, comparatively few persons would think the discussion of any subject bearing on the physical nature of Man, complete, which omitted the very intimate and demonstrable relations which exist between the moral and the physiological laws. The point, however, which we wish to impress, is, that Mr. Abernethy, in pleading the moral bearings of Hunter's views by deductions of his own, was simply following that course which he _had been in the habit_ of doing on most other questions; it was merely part of that plan on which, without the smallest approach at any attempt to intrude religious considerations inappropriately into the discussion of matters ordinarily regarded as secular, he had always inculcated a straightforward, free-from-cant, do-as-you-would-be-done-by tone in his own Lectures. This, while it formed one of their brightest ornaments, was just that without which all lectures must be held as defective, which are addressed to young men about to enter an arduous and responsible profession.