THE CULTIVATION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. 783 



power for work, which may depend on the answers to all the questions 

 that will come before us, this might be a measure of our responsibility. 

 But we can not count it ; let us imagine it ; we can not even in imagi- 

 nation exaggerate it. Let us bear it always in our mind, and remind 

 ourselves that our responsibility will constantly increase. For, as men 

 become in the best sense better educated, and the influence of scientific 

 knowledge on their moral and social state increases, so among all sci- 

 ences there is none of which the influence, and therefore the responsi- 

 bility, will increase more than ours, because none more intimately con- 

 cerns man's happiness and working power. 



But, more clearly in the recollections of the Congress, we may be 

 reminded that in our science there may be, or, rather, there really is, 

 a complete community of interest among men of all nations. On all 

 the questions before us we can differ, discuss, dispute, and stand in 

 earnest rivalry ; but all consistently with friendship, all wdth readiness 

 to wait patiently till more knowledge shall decide which is in the right. 

 Let us resolutely hold to this when we are apart : let our international- 

 ity be a clear abiding sentiment, to be, as now, declared and celebrated 

 at appointed times, but never to be forgotten ; w^e may, perhaps, help 

 to gain a new honor for science, if we thus suggest that in many more 

 things, if they w^ere as deeply and dispassionately studied, there might 

 be found the same complete identity of international interests as in ours. 



And then, let us always remind ourselves of the nobility of our 

 calling. I dare to claim for it that, among all the sciences, ours, in the 

 pursuit and use of truth, offers the most complete and constant union 

 of those three qualities which have the greatest charm for pure and 

 active minds novelty, utility, and charity. These three, which are 

 sometimes in so lamentable disunion, as in the attractions of novelty 

 without either utility or charity, are in our researches so combined 

 that, unless by force or willful wrong, they hardly can be put asunder. 

 And each of them is admirable in its kind. For in every search for 

 truth we can not only exercise curiosity, and have the delight the 

 really elemental happiness of watching the unveiling of a mystery, 

 but, on the way to truth, if we look well round us, we shall see that 

 we are passing wonders more than the eye or mind can fully appre- 

 hend. And as one of the perfections of Nature is that in all her works 

 wonder is harmonized with utility, so is it with our science. In every 

 truth attained there is utility either at hand or among the certainties 

 of the future. And this utility is not selfish : it is not in any degree 

 correlative with money-making ; it may generally be estimated in the 

 welfare of others better than in our own. Some of us may indeed 

 make money and grow rich ; but many of those that minister even to 

 the follies and vices of mankind can make much more money than wx. 

 In all things costly and vainglorious they would far surpass us if we 

 would compete with them. We had better not compete where wealth 

 is the highest evidence of success ; we can compete with the world in 



