THE CULTIVATION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. jjy 



so various that some are fitted to each of all the conditions of material 

 and mode of life which they can discover or invent. These are most 

 pros23eroiis in the highest civilization ; these whom nature adapts to 

 the products of their own arts. 



Or, among other groups, the mightiest are those who are strong 

 alike on land and sea ; who can explore and colonize, and in every 

 climate can replenish the earth and subdue it ; and this not by tenacity 

 or mere robustness, but rather by pliancy and the production of varie- 

 ties fit to abide and increase in all the various conditions of the world 

 around. 



Now, it is by no distant analogy that we trace the likeness between 

 these in their successful contests with the material conditions of life 

 and those who are to succeed in the intellectual strife with the diffi- 

 culties of science and of art. There must be minds which in variety 

 may match with all the varieties of the subject-matters and minds 

 which, at once or in swift succession, can be adjusted to all the increas- 

 ing and changing modes of thought and work. 



Such are the minds we need ; or, rather, such are the minds we 

 have ; and these in great meetings prove and augment their worth. 

 Happily the natural increase in the variety of minds in all cultivated 

 races is whether as cause or as consequence nearly proportionate to 

 the increasing variety of knowledge. And it has become proverbial, 

 and is nearly true in science and art, as it is in commerce and in na- 

 tional life, that, w^hatever work is to be done, men are found or soon 

 produced who are exactly fit to do it. 



But it need not be denied that, in the possession of this first and 

 chiefest power for the increase of knowledge, there is a source of 

 weakness. In works done by dissimilar and independent minds, dis- 

 persed in different fields of study, or only gathered into self-assorted 

 groups, there are apt to be discord and great waste of power. There is, 

 therefore, need that the workers should from time to time be brought 

 to some consent and unity of purpose ; that they should have oppor- 

 tunity for conference and mutual criticism, for mutual help and the 

 tests of free discussion. This it is which, on the largest scale and most 

 effectually, our Congress may achieve ; not indeed by striving after a 

 useless and happily impossible uniformity of mind or method, but by 

 diminishing the lesser evil of waste and discord which is attached to 

 the far greater good of diversity and independence. Now, as in num- 

 bers and variety the Congress may represent the whole multitude of 

 workers everywhere dispersed, so in its gathering and concord it may 

 represent a common consent that, though we may be far apart and dif- 

 ferent, yet our work is and shall be essentially one ; in all its parts 

 mutually dependent, mutually helpful, in no part complete or self- 

 sufiicient. We may thus declare that as we w^ho are many are met to 

 be members of one body, so our work for science shall be one, though 

 manifold ; that as we, who are of many nations, will for a time forget 



