\nn UNIVERSITIES : ACTUAL AND IDEAL 217 



supposition that my intention is to suggest that 

 you ought all to be minute anatomists and accom- 

 plished physiologists. The devotion of your whole 

 four years to Anatomy and Physiology alone, 

 would be totally insufficient to attain that end. 

 What I mean is, the sort of practical, familiar, 

 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 

 become an organic part of your minds until 

 you would know them if you were roused and 

 questioned 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 life-long 

 possession. Other occupations may fill your 

 minds it may grow dim, and seem to be for- 

 gotten but there it is, like the inscription on a 

 battered and defaced coin, which comes out 

 when you warm it. 



