ve lifted the world out of the ruder elements of
barbarism and suffering.

But, as for the class of speculative talkers, whose self-sufficiency
prompts them to assume the name of philosophers, to which they have no
right, what have they ever done either to promote human welfare, or to
assist human enlightenment and reveal the mysteries of life? Have they
not always been as blind as owls, bats, and moles, to daylight
progress? Are they not at this time utterly and _unconsciously_ blind
to the progress of spiritual sciences, to the revelations of
psychometry and anthropology--placing themselves, indeed, in that
hopeless class who are too ignorant to know their ignorance, too far
in the dark to know or suspect that there is any light?

A remnant of these worshippers of antiquity still holds its seances at
Concord, Mass., and publishes its amazingly dry _Journal of Speculative
Philosophy_. With the unconscious solemnity of earnestness, it still
digs into Aristotle's logic and speculations--the dryest material that
was ever used to benumb the brains of young collegians, and teach them
how _not to reason_, for Aristotle never had a glimmering conception
of what the process of reasoning is. Yet all Concordians are not
Aristotelians; some of them have more modern ideas, and a vigorous,
though misdirected, mentality.

Prof. W. T. Harris, the leader of the Concordians, to whose
lucubrations the newspapers give ample space, as those of the
representative man, made a second attempt to explore the Aristotelian
darkness, in which his first essay was totally lost.

If there is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, it is not
even a step from the absurd to the ludicrous and amusing. The
professional wit or joker is never so richly amusing as the man who is
utterly unconscious that he is in the least funny, while heroically in
earnest. The professed comedian never furnishes so much amusement as
the would-be heroic tragedian, who, like the Count Joannes, furnishes
uproarious merriment for the whole evening.

I have seen nothing in our Boston newspapers quite so amusing as the
very friendly and sympathetic report of Prof. Harris' most elaborate
and laborious comments on the SYLLOGISMS, which reminds one of
Hopkinson's metaphysical and elaborate disquisition on the nature,
properties, relations, and essential entity of a salt-box. We do not
laugh at the professor as we did at Daniel Pratt, the "Great American
Traveller," whos