That was all that a writer, who was at the same time a public man,
could venture on,--a writer who had once been under violent political
suspicion, and was still eagerly watched, and especially by one class
of public functionaries, who seemed to feel, that with all his
deference to their claims, there was something there not quite
friendly to them, this was all that he could undertake to insist upon
'in that place.' But a writer who had the advantage of being already
defunct--a writer whose estate on the earth was then already done, and
who was in no kind of danger of losing either his head or his place,
could of course manage this part of the subject differently. _He_
would not find it too long to prosecute all, perhaps. And if he had at
the same time the advantage of a foreign name and seignorie, he could
come out in England at this very crisis with the freest exhibitions of
the points which are _here_ only _indicated_. He could even put them
down openly in his table of contents, every one of them, and make them
the titles of his chapters.
There was a work published in England, in that age, in which these
forces, of which only the _catalogue_ is inserted here, these forces
which _are_ in our power, which we _can_ alter, forces from which the
mind _suffereth_, which have operation upon the mind to affect the
will and appetite, are directly dealt with in the most subtle and
artistic manner, in the form of literary _essay_; and in the bolder
chapters, the author's observations and criticisms are clearly put
down; his scientific suggestions of alterations and new compounds, his
scientific doctrine of _careful alterations_, his scientific doctrine
of surgery, and adaptation of regimen, and cure to different ages, and
differing social conditions, are all promiscuously filed in, and the
English public swallows it without any difficulty at all, and
perceives nothing disagreeable or dangerous in it.
_This_ work contains, also, some of those other parts of the new
science which have just been reported as wanting, parts which are said
by the inventor of this science, to have a great ministry to policy,
as well as morality, and the natural history of the creature, which it
is here proposed to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever
to considerations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at
the subject from any less earnest and practical--from any less
_elevated_ point of view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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