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When I left Russia, Littre's dictum that crime is insanity was all the rage; I come back and I find that crime is no longer insanity, but simply common sense, almost a duty; anyway, a gallant protest. 'How can we expect a cultured man not to commit a murder, if he is in need of money. But these are only the first fruits. The Russian God has already been vanquished by cheap vodka.
Congreve is justified in saying that I speak with a tinge of contempt for his spiritual father, the reason for such colouring of my language is to be found in the fact, that, when I wrote, I had but just arisen from the perusal of a work with which he is doubtless well acquainted, M. Littré's "Auguste Comte et la Philosophic Positive."
A curious reader, in that period of excitement about 'spiritualism, would turn to the Revue, attracted by M. Littre's name. This is not very consistent or helpful counsel. Like the rest of us, who are so far beneath M. Littre in grasp and in weight of authority, he was subject to the idola fori, the illusions of the market-place.
When amber, being rubbed, attracted straws, the force was as much a force, as worthy of scientific study, as when electricity is employed to bring bad news more rapidly from the ends of the earth. These answers are obvious: M. Littre's satire was not the weapon of science, but the familiar test of the bourgeois and the Philistine.
M. Littre's inexorable phrase, "Despite all the researches which have been made, no miracle has ever taken place where it could be observed and put upon record" is a stumbling-block which cannot be moved out of the path.
Littre's ten-volume edition "OEuvres completes d'Hippocrate," Paris, 1839-1861, is the most important for reference. I can only indicate, in a very brief way, the special features of the Hippocratic writings that have influenced the evolution of the science and art of medicine. The first is undoubtedly the note of humanity.
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