VIII UXIYEESITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 217 



the supposition that my intention is to suggest 

 that you ought all to be minute anatomists and 

 accomplished physiologists. The devotion of your 

 whole four years to Anatomy and Physiology 

 alone, would be totallv insufficient to attain that 

 end. What I mean is, the sort of practical, famil- 

 iar, finger-end knowledge which a watchmaker has 

 of a watch, and which you expect that craftsman, 

 as an honest man, to have, when you entrust a 

 watch that goes badly, to him. It is a kind of 

 knowledge which is to be acquired, not in the 

 lecture-room, nor in the library, but in the dis- 

 secting-room and the laboratory. It is to be had 

 not by sharing your attention between these and 

 sundry other subjects, but by concentrating your 

 minds, week after week, and month after month, 

 six or seven hours a day, upon all .the com- 

 plexities of organ and function, until each of the 

 greater truths of anatomy and physiology has be- 

 come an organic part of your minds — until you 

 would know them if you were roused and ques- 

 tioned in the middle of the night, as a man knows 

 the geography of his native place and the daily 

 life of his home. That is the sort of knowledge 

 which, once obtained, is a Jife-long possession. 

 Other occupations may fill your minds — it may 

 grow dim, and seem to be forgotten — but 

 there it is, like the inscription on a battered 

 and defaced coin, which comes out when you 

 warm it. 



