There is a great world
of ideas we cannot voluntarily recall,--they are outside the limits of
the will. But they sway our conscious thought as the unseen planets
influence the movements of those within the sphere of vision. No man
knows how much he knows,--how many ideas he has,--any more than he knows
how many blood-globules roll in his veins. Sometimes accident brings
back here and there one, but the mind is full of irrevocable remembrances
and unthinkable thoughts, which take a part in all its judgments as
indestructible forces. Some of you must feel your scientific
deficiencies painfully after your best efforts. But every one can
acquire what is most essential. A man of very moderate ability may be a
good physician, if he devotes himself faithfully to the work. More than
this, a positively dull man, in the ordinary acceptation of the term,
sometimes makes a safer practitioner than one who has, we will say, five
per cent. more brains than his average neighbor, but who thinks it is
fifty per cent. more. Skulls belonging to this last variety of the human
race are more common, I may remark, than specimens like the Neanderthal
cranium, a cast of which you will find on the table in the Museum.
Whether the average talent be high or low, the Colleges of the land must
make the best commodity they can out of such material as the country and
the cities furnish them.
Pages:
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359