r as mere number of names mentioned is concerned. Freedom of opinion,
beyond a doubt, is gaining ground, for good or for evil, according to what
the speaker happens to think: admission of authority is no longer made in
the old way. If we take soul-cure and body-cure, divinity and medicine, it
is manifest that a change has come over us. Time was when it was enough
that dose or dogma should be certified by "Il a ete ordonne, Monsieur, il a
ete ordonne,"[595] as the apothecary said when he wanted to operate upon
poor de Porceaugnac. Very much changed: but whether for good or for evil
does not now matter; the question is, whether contempt of _demonstration_
such as our paradoxers show has augmented with the rejection of _dogmatic
authority_. It ought to be just the other way: for the worship of reason is
the system on which, if we trust them, the deniers of guidance ground their
plan of life. The following attempt at an experiment on this point is the
best which I can make; and, so far as I know, the first that ever was made.

Say that my list of paradoxers divides in 1825: this of itself proves
nothing, because so many of the earlier books are lost, or not likely to be
come at. It would be a fearful rate of increase which would make the number
of paradoxes since 1825 equal to the whole number before that date. Let us
turn now to another collection of mine, arithmetical books, of which I have
published a list. The two collections are similarly circumstanced as to new
and old books; the paradoxes had no care given to the collection of either;
the arithmetical books equal care to both. The list of arithmetical books,
published in 1847, divides at 1735; the paradoxes, up to 1863, divide at
1825. If we take the process which is most against the distinction, and
allow every year {266} from 1847 to 1863 to add a year to 1735, we should
say that the arithmetical writers divide at 1751. This rough process may
serve, with sufficient certainty, to show that the proportion of paradoxes
to books of sober demonstration is on the increase; and probably, quite as
much as the proportion of heterodoxes to books of orthodox adherence. So
that divinity and medicine may say to geometry, Don't _you_ sneer: if
rationalism, homoeopathy, and their congeners are on the rise among us,
your enemies are increasing quite as fast. But geometry replies--Dear
friends, content yourselves with the rational inference that the rise of
heterodoxy within your pale