Febbtjaey 24, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



289 



venances of the statutes are not more evi- 

 dent to him than to any other intellectual 

 class in the community, or that he is blind 

 to the mere expediencies of most legisla- 

 tion. Decent regard for the historic corpus 

 of the law which embodies the experiences 

 of self-governing people is essential to our 

 community existence, but among the law- 

 yers I have known best there seems to be 

 ever a really inadequate apprehension of 

 the essence of the law as expressed in 

 Fronde's definition of the term. "Our 

 human laws," says Froude, "are but the 

 copies, more or less imperfect, of the eter- 

 nal laws so far as we can read them, and 

 either succeed or promote our welfare, or 

 tend to bring confusion and disaster, ac- 

 cording as the legislator's insight has de- 

 tected the true principle or has been dis- 

 torted by ignorance or selfishness. ' ' 



In fact, the natural law finds as yet 

 feeble expression in our statutes. Cer- 

 tainly its recognized bearings are becoming 

 incorporated into the laws of this land 

 only as these recognized factors protect or 

 guarantee the material rights of the people. 

 But it is clear that neither the bare fact of 

 legislation nor the decisions of the courts 

 rest on any adequate conception of the work- 

 ings of the natural law. Deference there- 

 fore to the written statute on the part of 

 those whose intellectual energy is devoted 

 to its interpretation or its execution, seems 

 to have well-nigh suffocated the purpose to 

 grasp the higher law on which govern- 

 ments built to endure must be established. 

 Pure science which concerns itself in the 

 search for the actual law regardless of its 

 bearings on the present constitution of so- 

 ciety, finds amongst this class in the com- 

 munity toleration, indeed, but little sym- 

 pathy. 



Of the three so-called learned profes- 

 sions in our early communities, the "doc- 

 tors" constituted one. They do yet. To 



them we owe a debt which can not be ex- 

 pressed. Their contributions to a knowl- 

 edge of the biologic law are immense, far 

 greater indeed than many of that profes- 

 sion realize. Speaking generally and 

 broadly, it is fair to say that the physicians 

 and surgeons of our community have 

 worked out to approaching completeness 

 the anatomy and functions of the most 

 intricate and highly specialized member of 

 the animal creation. It is probably true 

 that, with brilliant exceptions, they have 

 not often looked long or seriously into or- 

 ganic nature beyond or below man, nor 

 sought the solution of his complicated 

 morphology in its earlier expressions or 

 in its history. No doctor of medicine or 

 of human anatomy would have conceived a 

 theory of natural selection or any other 

 procedure of organic evolution. It was 

 bound to come either from the student of 

 pure biology or paleontology or from the 

 poet. Starting at the top instead of the 

 bottom of the ladder of life, by empirical 

 methods fraught with immense conse- 

 quence to humanity, they have solved 

 many of the mysteries of life. 



Concretely viewed, the appealing merit 

 of their part in the revelation of the nat- 

 ural law lies in its contribution to human 

 happiness by the relief of human misery 

 but abstractly this application is of no con- 

 cern in the philosophy of nature. The 

 physical man is an item in the scheme of 

 life and he would be audacious indeed who 

 would say he was more. But it is the most 

 compelling fact of existence that we are 

 that item and it is our comfort and prog- 

 ress that has been and are to be largely en- 

 sured by these conservators of our being. 

 We may smile with some degree of indul- 

 gence over this monopolistic trade-mark of 

 doctor. You who have earned your doc- 

 torates in science or laws by long years of 

 close application to arduous work will find 



