1. _Mental Invalidism._ The disease of certain literary doctrinaires whose natural defects have been aggravated by education and fixed by training. Prof. John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, is a fine type of this arrogant school of dogmatism. 2. _Legend and Sentiment._ The exploitation of legends, inherited ideas, race and family myths, made current and passing into literature by the efforts of those whose faith in folklore as historical data is profound, and to whom facts and documentary evidence are unimportant. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, an amateur historian, is the high priest of this cult; he is the custodian and incense swinger of the deified Puritan, the marvel and fountain of the graces of the modern age. 3. _Imagination._ The school of writers who add to the gayety of nations, who make history from their own inner consciousness, and who record it as they imagine it ought to be, not as it is. Under this head comes that humorless horde of scribblers, the Scotch-Irish littérateurs, and the intellectual giant of Tennessee, Judge Temple, author of _Covenanter, Cavalier, Puritan_. 4. _Carelessness and Credulity._ Writers who accept any evidence stated with solemnity and the air of authority, but who subject it to no tests to ascertain its verity and genuineness. Under this head I take exceptions to the statements made by Prof. John Fiske in a recent work, a writer hitherto regarded as safe and reliable. I will now devote a few minutes to a work entitled _Political Science and Constitutional Law_, written by Prof. John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, and designed to be a text-book for that and other educational institutions. Mr. Burgess is a rampant type of what a coldly critical and remorselessly correct writer, John M. Robertson, of London, calls a Celtophobe—a Celt hater. The learned Professor asserts dogmatically that the Celt never has, never can, and never will amount to anything nationally or politically; and that all law, order, and scientific government have sprung from and are due to what he calls the Teutonic races. Professor Burgess is a product of German training and education, and his views have received the cordial endorsement of such a calm and dispassionate authority as the London _Times_. The careful writer in stating his theory will fortify it with facts and figures and marshal his authorities before proceeding to erect a fabric on it; but Professor Burgess isn’t that kind of a man. He states his theory with an air of profound conviction and authority and goes ahead. His theory, like a good many other fabrics “made in Germany,” looks well, is calculated to deceive the unwary and unthinking, but under very ordinary scrutiny proves to be very commonplace, shoddy. Let me show you a few of the gems from his treasury: