ainful one: out of these often-asseverated declarations
that "our system is in high order," we come now, by natural sequence,
to the melancholy conviction that it is altogether the reverse. Thus,
for instance, in the matter of Government, the period of the
"Invaluable Constitution" must be followed by a Reform Bill; to
laudatory De Lolmes succeed objurgatory Benthams. At any rate, what
Treatises on the Social Contract, on the Elective Franchise, the
Rights of Man, the Rights of Property, Codifications, Institutions,
Constitutions, have we not, for long years, groaned under! Or again,
with a wider survey, consider those Essays on Man, Thoughts on Man,
Inquiries concerning Man; not to mention Evidences of the Christian
Faith, Theories of Poetry, Considerations on the Origin of Evil, which
during the last century have accumulated on us to a frightful extent.
Never since the beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read of,
so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole relations to the
Universe and to our fellow man have become an Inquiry, a Doubt;
nothing will go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly; but
all things must be probed into, the whole working of man's world be
anatomically studied. Alas, anatomically studied, that it may be
medically aided! Till at length indeed, we have come to such a pass,
that except in this same _medicine_, with its artifices and
appliances, few can so much as imagine any strength or hope to remain
for us. The whole Life of Society must now be carried on by drugs:
doctor after doctor appears with his nostrum, of Cooperative
Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and-Cow systems, Repression of
Population, Vote by Ballot. To such height has the dyspepsia of
Society reached; as indeed the constant grinding internal pain, or
from time to time the mad spasmodic throes, of all Society do
otherwise too mournfully indicate.

Far be it from us to attribute, as some unwise persons do, the disease
itself to this unhappy sensation that there is a disease! The
Encyclopedists did not produce the troubles of France; but the
troubles of France produced the Encyclopedists, and much else. The
Self-consciousness is the symptom merely; nay, it is also the attempt
towards cure. We record the fact, without special censure; not
wondering that Society should feel itself, and in all ways complain of
aches and twinges, for it has suffered enough. Napoleon was but a
Job's-comforter, when he told h