July 25, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



109 



In his discussion of the energies of men, 

 William James has pointed out some possi- 

 bilities in this direction which both cheer 

 and stimulate. To advance this way some- 

 times calls for the preliminary removal of 

 worn-out mental furniture. Few of us have 

 escaped some forms of undesirable instruc- 

 tion — we have been given details in place of 

 principles, aid instead of exercise, views as 

 substitutes for demonstrations — and thus 

 in respect to some sorts of knowledge it is 

 as important to know how to let it go as in 

 other cases to know how to grasp the parts 

 worth while. Thus the aim of the progres- 

 sive man must be to see life steadily and see 

 it whole — prepared to change when change 

 is growth, unwitting of fatigue, and never 

 a worshiper at the shrine of his own past 

 efforts, no matter how strenuous these may 

 have been. Much more might be said upon 

 this topic of the new demands and the ad- 

 justment for which they call, but if enough 

 has been given to make you see that a seri- 

 ous problem lies that way my purpose is 

 accomplished. 



The moment has now come, as it does to 

 every speaker, to wonder whether success 

 has followed his attempt to reveal what he 

 had in mind. What I have wanted to show 

 you was this : The attitude towards knowl- 

 edge during our student days is almost 

 necessarily such as to throw the idea of 

 cliange into the background and unduly to 

 emphasize the permanency of the things 

 then taught. The facts are otherwise. 



Change has always been — will always be 

 — and in the near future progress will be 

 more rapid even than to-day. It is to this 

 main fact that I urge you to adjust, for 

 which I encourage you to prepare. The 

 progress with which you have to blend your 

 lives comes from work at the bedside, in 

 the hospitals and in the laboratories and is 

 also a by-product from advances in fields 

 often seemingly remote from medicine. 



Moreover, social advances, the growth in 



the attitude of the community at large— 

 which slowly alters like the form of a great 

 cloud — presents an ever-changing back- 

 ground for the activities of the physician. 

 Two important consequences of this touch 

 you as medical men. 



To succeed in truth, you must be pre- 

 pared continually to replace old knowledge 

 by new and to alter old economic methods 

 and customs to meet the disappearance of 

 some familiar forms of disease and their 

 replacement in your life by newer medical 

 problems and demands often of a general 

 and a public nature. 



To the generation of physicians to which 

 you belong this task is allotted and it caUs 

 for the best you have to give. Surely the 

 devotion to human welfare can not be leas 

 strong with you than with your noble pre- 

 decessors and no hampering self-interest 

 should be allowed to obscure from you the 

 larger purposes of science and the sacred 

 responsibilities of your profession. 



Finally, it is through you that the lay- 

 man learns of medical progress and its 

 meaning, it is to you that he brings his 

 questions and his doubts concerning meth- 

 ods of experiment and modes of inquiry 

 needful for the advancement of your sci- 

 ence, and both your appreciation and sup- 

 port of research in medicine are necessary 

 to keep the public so informed that its rep- 

 resentatives and lawgivers shall under- 

 stand the purposes of this work and grant 

 to it intelligent support. 



Henry H. Donaldson 



TEE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOB THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE 



A NATIONAL UNIVEBSITT BASED ON 



NATIONAL IDEALS'^ 



Before such a learned organization it is 

 not necessary to dwell on the development 

 of the modem university from its ancestral 



* Address before the Section, of Education at the 

 Cleveland meeting of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science. 



