INFINITESIMAL LOGIC.
WE agree with Professor Faraday that there is something very startling in the condition of the public mind in regard to scientific reasoning. Here is a specimen—if correctly reported—of the ratiocination of a British Legislator, and a gentleman of more than average education, moreover, a polemic of considerable celebrity; relative to a simple question of evidence. At a recent meeting of the "English Homœopathic Association," according to the Morning Post:—
"Mr. Miall, M.P., moved the adoption of the report, and stated that he had become a convert to the truth of the principles of Homœopathy from seeing their effects as regarded a relative—though, thanks to the goodness of Providence, he had no personal experience of them."
To any one possessed of common understanding and decent information, who is accustomed to exercise the least caution in drawing inferences, who has the slightest glimmering of an idea of the nature of inductive proof, who does not, in short, jump to his conclusions like a kangaroo, it is truly marvellous that any sane human mind should be capable of such a generalization as the above. Mr. Miall says that he became "a convert to the principles of Homœopathy"—whence? From carefully sifting an accumulation of evidence, patiently comparing and analysing hosts of facts? No; but "from seeing their effects as regarded a relative."
This is just the mental process by which an old woman arrives at a faith in Holloway's or Morison's Pills.
Observe, too, that the thing which Mr. Miall is persuaded of with such facility, is one which is, so far from being in itself likely, anteriorly improbable in the very highest degree, and, indeed, ridiculously absurd on the first face of it.
It is curious how nonsensically men, otherwise intelligent, will argue whenever they meddle with a question relative to medicine. A man is reckoned a fool for talking about any other subject which he does not understand; but it seems to be assumed that there is a specialty in medical matters, which admits of sound opinions being formed respecting them by people who are entirely ignorant of them.
Mr. Miall, however, uses a correct expression when he calls himself a "convert" to Homœopathy. Science has no "converts." Scientific truths are either self-evident or demonstrable. Philosophical systems are not "denominations" or "persuasions." It is systems of another kind that exercise faith—such faith as Mr. Miall appears to repose in Homœopathy.
To medical nonconformity, however, let Mr. Miall be welcome, if he will only suffer nonconformity of another kind to constitute him no obstacle to that "secular" education which is so needful a preservative against all manner of humbug.
We say Amen to Mr. Miall's thanksgiving for never having experienced the effects of Homœopathy in his own person; that is to say, never having experienced the effects of a serious illness unchecked by the quackery resorted to for its cure.