That was all that a writer, who was at the same time a public man, could venture on,--a writer who had once been under violent political suspicion, and was still eagerly watched, and especially by one class of public functionaries, who seemed to feel, that with all his deference to their claims, there was something there not quite friendly to them, this was all that he could undertake to insist upon 'in that place.' But a writer who had the advantage of being already defunct--a writer whose estate on the earth was then already done, and who was in no kind of danger of losing either his head or his place, could of course manage this part of the subject differently. _He_ would not find it too long to prosecute all, perhaps. And if he had at the same time the advantage of a foreign name and seignorie, he could come out in England at this very crisis with the freest exhibitions of the points which are _here_ only _indicated_. He could even put them down openly in his table of contents, every one of them, and make them the titles of his chapters.
There was a work published in England, in that age, in which these forces, of which only the _catalogue_ is inserted here, these forces which _are_ in our power, which we _can_ alter, forces from which the mind _suffereth_, which have operation upon the mind to affect the will and appetite, are directly dealt with in the most subtle and artistic manner, in the form of literary _essay_; and in the bolder chapters, the author's observations and criticisms are clearly put down; his scientific suggestions of alterations and new compounds, his scientific doctrine of _careful alterations_, his scientific doctrine of surgery, and adaptation of regimen, and cure to different ages, and differing social conditions, are all promiscuously filed in, and the English public swallows it without any difficulty at all, and perceives nothing disagreeable or dangerous in it.
_This_ work contains, also, some of those other parts of the new science which have just been reported as wanting, parts which are said by the inventor of this science, to have a great ministry to policy, as well as morality, and the natural history of the creature, which it is here proposed to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever to considerations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at the subject from any less earnest and practical--from any less _elevated_ point of view.