PRE-REQUISITES OF CANDIDATES. 915 



g-ive a superhuman power. I pre-suppose, of course, patience in 

 investigation and carefulness in ratiocination ; but such is often the 

 obscurity, intricacy, and complexity of a medical problem, that in 

 the ultimate resort, it is upon intuition rather than upon syllogism 

 that its true solution depends. It is to the man who has the touch 

 of genius, that strength of imagination, which enables him to put 

 himself in his patient's place, and thus do full justice to him, that 

 there ' ariseth up light in the darkness.^ It is for the want of all 

 this that ' great men are not always wise.' There is an example 

 suited to all men, suited eminently to medical men, as it is contained 

 in the history of One who, though now known to us by other names, 

 was known to our Saxon forefathers as the * Healer.' He spent a 

 life to the neglect of Himself in combating the wickedness and in 

 alleviating the misery of others. As regards these two lines of 

 labour, it is, I think, possible to maintain that men's instincts or 

 inclinations have led them, in looking at the history of this life, to 

 give too little prominence to the severity of the outspoken un- 

 sparing denunciations of an evil generation which it records. It is 

 not possible to maintain that men have gone astray in the import- 

 ance they have assigned to the manifestations they have recognised 

 in it of vast pity and boundless sympathy. 



3Na 



