326 



NATURE 



\_August 4, 1 88) 



be the best defenders of \>hat is true ; they may strengthen and 

 expand the truth, and may ap]ily it in practice with all the 

 advantages of experience ; they may thus secure ^ the posfesKions 

 of science and use them well ; but they will not increase them. 



It is with minds as with living bodies. One of their chief 

 powers is in their self-adjustment to the varying conditions in 

 which they have to live. Generally those species are the strongest 

 and most abiding that can thrive in the widest range of climate 

 and of food. And of all the races of men they are the mightiest 

 and most noble who are, or by self-adjustment can become, most 

 fit for all the new conditions of existence in which by various 

 changes they mny be placed. These are they who prosper in 

 great changes of their social state ; who, in successive genera- 

 tions, grow stronger by the production of a population so various 

 that some are fitted to each of all the conditions of material and 

 mode of life which they can discover or invent. These are most 

 prosperous in the highest civilisation ; these whom nature adapts 

 to the products of their own arts. 



Or, among other i; roups, the mightiest are those who are strong 

 alike on land and sea ; who can explore and colonise, and in every 

 climate can replenish the earth and subdue it ; and this not by 

 tenacity or mere robustness, but rather by pliancy and the pro- 

 duction of varieties fit to abide and increase in all the various 

 conditions of the world around. 



Now it is by no distant analogy that we trace the likeness 

 between these in their successful contests with the material con- 

 ditions of life and those who are to succeed in the intellectual 

 strife with the difficulties of science and of art. There must be 

 minds which in variety may match with all the varieties of the 

 subject-matters and minds which, at once or in swift succession, 

 can be adjusted to all the increasing and changing modes of 

 thought and work. 



Such are the minds we need ; or rather, such are the minds 

 we have ; and these in great meetings prove and augment their 

 worth. Happily the natural increase in the variety of minds in 

 all cultivated races is — whether as cause or as consequence — 

 nearly proportionate to the increasing variety of knowledge. 

 And it has become proverbial, and is nearly true in science and 

 art, as it is in commerce and in national life, that, whatever 

 work is to be done, men are found or soon produced who are 

 exactly fit to do it. 



But it need not be denied that, in the possession of this first 

 and chiefest power for the increase of knowledge, there is a 

 source of weakness. In works done by dissimilar and inde- 

 pendent minds, dispersed in different fields of study, or only 

 gathered into self-assorted groups, there is apt to be discord and 

 great waste of power. There is therefore need that the workers 

 should from time to time be brought to some consent and unity 

 of purpose ; that they should have opportunity for conference 

 and mutual criticism, for mutual help and the tests of free dis- 

 cussion. This it is which, on the largest scale and most 

 effectually, our Congress may achieve ; not indeed by striving 

 after a useless and happily impossible uniformity of mind or 

 method, but by diminishing the lesser evil of waste and discord 

 which is attached to the far greater good of diversity and inde- 

 pendence. Now as in numbers and variety the Congress may 

 represent the whole multitude of workers everywhere dispersed, 

 so in its gathering and concord it may represent a common con- 

 sent that, though we may be far apart and different, yet our work 

 is and shall be essentially one ; in all its parts mutually depen- 

 dent, mutually helpful, in no ] art complete or self-sufficient. 

 We may thus declare that as we who are many are met to be 

 members of one body, so our work for science shall be_ one, 

 though manifold ; that as we, who are of many nations, will for 

 a time forget our nationalities and will even repress our patriot- 

 ism, unless for the promotion of a friendly rivalry, so will we in 

 our work, whether here and now or everywhere and ahvays, have 

 one end and one design — the promotion of the whole science and 

 whole art of healing. 



It may seem to be a denial of this declaration of unity that, 

 after this general meeting, we shall separate into sections more 

 numerous than in any former Congress. Let me speak of these 

 sections to defend them ; for some maintain that, even in such a 

 division of studies as these may encoumge, there is a mischievous 

 dispersion of forces. The science of medicine, which used to 

 be praised as one and indivisible, is broken-up, they say, among 

 specialists, who work in conflict rather than in concert, and with 

 mutual distrust more than mutual help. 



But let it be observed that the sections which we have insti- 

 tuted are only soire of those which are already recognised in 



many countries, in separate societies, each of which has its own 

 place and rules of self-government and its own literature. And 

 the division has taken place naturally in the course of events 

 which could not be hindered. For the partial separation of 

 medicine, first from the other natural sciences, and now into 

 sections of its own, has been due to the increase of knowledge 

 being far greater than the increase of individual mental power. 



I do not doubt that the average mental power constantly in- 

 creases in the successive generations of all well-trained peoples ; 

 but it does not increase so fast as knowledge does, and thus in 

 every science, as well as in our own, a small portion of the whole 

 sum of knowledge has become as much as even a large mind can 

 hold and duly cultivate. Many of us must, for practical life, 

 have a fair acquaintance with many parts of our science, but none 

 can hold it all ; and for complete knowledge, or for research, or 

 for safely thinking-out beyond what is known, no one can hope 

 for success unless by limiting himself within the few divisions of 

 the science for which, by nature or by education, he is best fitted. 

 Thus, our division into sections is only an instance of that divi- 

 sion of labour which, in every prosperous nation, we see in every 

 field of active life and which is always justified by more work 

 better done. 



Moreover, it cannot be said that in any of our sections there 

 is not enough for a full strong mind to do. If any one will 

 doubt this let him try his own strength in the discussions of 

 several of them. 



In truth, the fault of spec'alism is not in narrowness, but in 

 the shallowness and the belief in self-sufficiency with which it is 

 apt to be associated. If the field of any specialty in science be 

 narrow, it can be dug deeply. In science, as in mining, a very 

 narrow shaft, if only it be carried deep enough, may reach the 

 richest stores of wealth and find use for all the appliances of 

 scientific art. Not in medicine alone, but in every department 

 of knowledge, some of the grandest results of research and of 

 learning, broad and deep, are to be found in monographs on 

 subjects that, to the common mind, seemed small and trivial. 



And stitdy in a Congress such as this may be a useful remedy 

 for self-sufficiency. Here every group may find a rare occasion, 

 not only for an opportune assertion of the supreme excellence of 

 its own range and mode of study, but for the observation of the 

 work of every other. Each section may show that its own facts 

 must be deemed sure, and that by them every suggestion from 

 without must be tested ; but each may learn to doubt every 

 inference of its own which is not consistent with the facts or 

 reasonab'e beliefs of others ; each may observe how much there 

 is in the knowledge of others which should be mingled with its 

 own ; and the sum of all may be the wholesome conviction of 

 all, that we cannot justly estimate the value of a doctrine in one 

 part of our science till it has been tried in many or in all. 



We w ere taught this in our schools ; and many of us have 

 taught that all the parts of medical science are necessary to the 

 education of the complete practitioner. In the independence of 

 later life some of us seem too ready to believe that the parts we 

 severally choose may be self-sufficient, and that what others are 

 learning cannot much concern us. A fair study of the whole 

 work of the Congress may convince us of the fallacy of this 

 belief. We may see that ihe test of truth in every part must be 

 in the patient and impartial trial of its adjustment with what is 

 true in every other. All perfect organisations bear this test ; all 

 parts of the whole body of scientific truth should be tried by it. 



Moreover, I would not, from a scientific point of view, admit 

 any estimate of the comparative importance of the several divi- 

 sions of our science, however widely they may differ in their 

 present utilities. And this I would think right, not only because 

 my office as president binds me to a strict impartiality and to 

 the claim of freedom of research for all, but because we are 

 very imperfect judges of the whole value of any knowledge, or 

 even of single facts. For every fact in science, wherever 

 gathered, has not only a present value, which we may be able to 

 estimate, but a living and germinal power of which none can 

 guess the issue. 



It would be difficult to think of anything that seemed less 

 likely to acquire practical utility than those researches of the 

 few naturalists wTio, from Leeuwenhoeck to Ehrenberg, studied 

 the most minute of living things, the Vibrionidje. Men boasting 

 themselves as practical might ask, "What good can come of 

 it ? " Time and scientific industry have answered, "This good : 

 those researches have given a more true form to one of the most 

 important practical doctrines of organic chemistry ; they have 

 introduced a great beneficial change in the most practical part of 



