re is a class of
minds characterized by qualities like those I have mentioned; minds with
many bright and even beautiful traits; but aimless and fickle as the
butterfly; that settle upon every gayly-colored illusion as it opens
into flower, and flutter away to another when the first has dropped its
leaves, and stands naked in the icy air of truth!

Let us now look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by
believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, emblazoned at the
head of every column, loudest shouted by every triumphant disputant,
held up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an
impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause
against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable
which has been the patrimony of cheats and the currency of dupes from
time immemorial,--Facts! Facts! Facts! First came the published cases
of the American clergymen, brigadier-generals, almshouse governors,
representatives, attorneys, and esquires. Then came the published
cases of the surgeons of Copenhagen. Then followed reports of about
one hundred and fifty cases published in England, "demonstrating the
efficacy of the metallic practice in a variety of complaints both upon
the human body and on horses, etc." But the progress of facts in Great
Britain did not stop here. Let those who rely upon the numbers of their
testimonials, as being alone sufficient to prove the soundness and
stability of a medical novelty, digest the following from the report
of the Perkinistic Committee. "The cases published [in Great Britain]
amounted, in March last, the date of Mr. Perkins's last publication,
to about five thousand. Supposing that not more than one cure in three
hundred which the Tractors have performed has been published, and the
proportion is probably much greater, it will be seen that the number, to
March last, will have exceeded one million five hundred thousand!"

Next in order after the appeal to what were called facts, came a series
of arguments, which have been so long bruised and battered round in the
cause of every doctrine or pretension, new, monstrous, or deliriously
impossible, that each of them is as odiously familiar to the scientific
scholar as the faces of so many old acquaintances, among the less
reputable classes, to the officers of police.

No doubt many of my hearers will recognize, in the following passages,
arguments they may have heard brought fo