THE CULTIVATION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. 781 



that fallacy to which we are all too prone, that we have at length 

 reached an elevated sure position on which we may rest, and only think 

 and guide. In this way specialism in doctrine or in method of study 

 has hindered the progress of science more than the specialism which 

 has attached itself to the study of one organ or of one method of 

 practice. This kind of specialism may enslave inferior minds : the 

 specialism of doctrine can enchant into mere dreaming those that 

 should be strong and alert in the work of free research. 



I speak the more earnestly of this because it may be said, if our 

 Congress be representative, as it surely is, may we not legislate ? May 

 we not declare some general doctrines which may be used as tests and 

 as guides for future study ? We had better not. 



The best work of our International Congress is in the clearing and 

 strengthening of the knowledge of realities ; in bringing, year after 

 year, all its force of numbers and varieties of minds to press forward 

 the demonstration and diffusion of truth as nearly to completion as 

 may from year to year be possible. Thus, chiefly, our Congress may 

 maintain and invigorate the life of our science. And the progress of 

 science must be as that of life. It sounds well to speak of the temple 

 of science, and of building and crowning the edifice. But the body 

 of science is not as any dead thing of human work, however beautiful ; 

 it is as something living, capable of development and a better growth 

 in every part. For, as in all life the attainment of the highest con- 

 dition is only possible through the timely passing-by of the less good, 

 that it may be replaced by the better, so is it in science. As time 

 passes, that which seemed true and was very good becomes relatively 

 imperfect truth, and the truth more nearly perfect takes its place. 



We may read the history of the progress of truth in science as a 

 paleontology. Many things which, as we look far back, appear, like 

 errors, monstrous and uncouth creatures, were, in their time, good and 

 useful, as good as possible. They were the lower and less perfect 

 forms of truth which, amid the floods and stifling atmospheres of error, 

 still survived ; and just as each successive condition of the organic 

 world was necessary to the evolution of the next following higher 

 state, so from these were slowly evolved the better forms of truth 

 which we now hold. 



This thought of the likeness between the progress of scientific 

 truth and the history of organic life may give us all the better courage 

 in a work which we can not hope to complete, and in which we see 

 continual and sometimes disheartening change. It is, at least, full 

 of comfort to those of us who are growing old. We that can read in 

 memory the history of half a century might look back with shame and 

 deep regret at the imperfections of our early knowledge if we might 

 not be sure that we held, and sometimes helped onward, the best things 

 that were, in their time, possible, and that they were necessary steps 

 to the better present, even as the present is to the still better future. 



