V NOTES OF AN AFTER-DINNER SPEECH 117 



ter," " force/' or " law " in their scientific senses, 

 but, worse still, he has no notion of what it is to come 

 into contact with Nature, or to lay his mind along- 

 side of a physical fact, and try to conquer it, in 

 the way our great naval hero told his captains to 

 master their enemies. His whole mind has been 

 given to books, and I am hardly exaggerating if 

 I say that they are more real to him than Nature. 

 He imagines that all knowledge can be got out of 

 books, and rests upon the authority of some master 

 or other ; nor does he entertain any misgiving that 

 the method of learning which led to proficiency 

 in the rules of grammar will suffice to lead him to 

 a mastery of the laws of Nature. The youngster, 

 thus unprepared for serious study, is turned loose 

 among his medical studies, with the result, in nine 

 cases out of ten, that the first year of his curricu- 

 lum is spent in learning how to learn. Indeed, he 

 is lucky if, at the end of the first year, by the 

 exertions of his teachers and his own industry, he 

 has acquired even that art of arts. After which 

 there remain not more than three, or perhaps four, 

 years for the profitable study of such vast sciences 

 as Anatomy, Physiology, Therapeutics, Medicine, 

 Surgery, Obstetrics, and the like, upon his know- 

 ledge or ignorance of which it depends whether the 

 practitioner shall diminish, or increase, the bills of 

 mortality. Now what is it but the preposterous 

 condition of ordinary school education which pre- 

 vents a young man of seventeen, destined for the 



