PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHARMACY. 
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tainment of their full dimensions, and acquire but slowly 
their strength and vigour, are firm and unyielding. The 
same rule is applicable to the results of human enterprise, 
in which category may be ranked professional success. 
The first and most important requisite of success, is ade- 
quate preparation to perform the duties appertaining to the 
pursuit that may have been selected. This would seem to 
be a self apparent truth ; but by no means are its full force 
and cogency appreciated. Indeed, if there be an evil preva- 
lent in our own day and generation, it is the assumption of 
duties and responsibilities, for which there is no fitness from 
previous training — physical, moral, or intellectual. The 
presumptuous mind of man is undismayed by ignorance 
and incapacity, and urges to the arrogation of trust and 
confidence on the part of the community, to which there 
can be given not even the shadow of a title. In the me- 
chanical arts, and those that can be comprehended by the 
majority of mankind, such arrogance can be detected, and 
invariably brings upon the individual who ventures upon 
its adoption, contempt and ridicule. But beyond the pale 
of the class alluded to, there exist numerous occupations of 
which the public have not the means of rightly judging, of 
which no correct or adequate opinion can be formed ; and 
in which, for a time at least, faith is accorded lo bold pre- 
tensions and unhesitating promises. Charlatanry, gaunt, 
lean, hideous charlatanry, stalks untrammelled throughout 
the land, assuming forms and hues forever varying, in ac- 
cordance with the depraved and vitiated taste for novelties: 
and like an evil spirit seeking a resting place, but finding 
none, invades the precincts of many an honourable and ne- 
cessary calling. Wealth may be accumulated by it, but all 
the gold of Ophir could not disguise the degradation of its 
nature. I may then insist upon it as a proposition neither to 
be overthrown nor controverted, that nothing but a thorough 
knowledge of the pursuit, which is to constitute the business 
of life, can give the skill that is adequate for its successful 
prosecution. 
