and the amendment of his
excesses.

"But men would not submit. To the argument that the State was a father to
the ignorant, they replied that it was at best the ignorant father of an
ignorant son, and that a blind man could find his way into a ditch without
another blind man to help him. And when the State said--But here we have
the Church, which knows all about it, the ignorant community declared that
it had a right to judge that question, and that it would judge it. It also
said that the Church was never one thing long, and that it progressed, on
the whole, rather more slowly than the ignorant community.

"The end of it was, in this country, that every one who chose taught all
who chose to let him teach, on condition only of an open and true
registration. The State was {268} allowed to patronize one particular
Church, so that no one need trouble himself to choose a pastor from the
mere necessity of choosing. But every church is allowed its colleges, its
studies, its diplomas; and every man is allowed his choice. There is no
proof that our souls are worse off than in the sixteenth century; and,
judging by fruits, there is much reason to hope they are better off.

"Now the little body question is a perfect parallel to the great soul
question in all its circumstances. The only things in which the parallel
fails are the following: Every one who believes in a future state sees that
the soul question is incomparably more important than the body question,
and every one can try the body question by experiment to a larger extent
than the soul question. The proverb, which always has a spark of truth at
the bottom, says that every man of forty is either a fool or a physician;
but did even the proverb maker ever dare to say that every man is at any
age either a fool or a fit teacher of religion?

"Common sense points out the following settlement of the medical question:
and to this it will come sooner or later.

"Let every man who chooses--subject to one common law of manslaughter for
all the _crass_ cases--doctor the bodies of all who choose to trust him,
and recover payment according to agreement in the courts of law. Provided
always that every person practising should be registered at a moderate fee
in a register to be republished every six months.

"Let the register give the name, address, and asserted qualification of
each candidate--as licentiate, or doctor, or what not, of this or that
college, hall, university, &c.,