above all chance or change, belongs eternally to a spiritual sphere of abiding power and imperishable causality :-and God, as the absolute cause of all reality, Supreme Being, containing all perfection, excluding all want, privation or negation, in the plenitude of goodness, truth, and love.

Gifted with reason man, amid all that is transient imperfect and uncertain within and about him, casts his look at once to the permanent, the absolute, and the perfect;-and if, in meditating on the facts of his consciousness, he ask for the source of those eternal Verities, that are the life and reality of his spiritual being, where shall he find it but in the Supreme Will causative of all reality, and how name it but the Living Truth,

66 whence the soul

Reason receives; and Reason is her being."-MILTON.

But thus conceived there neither is, nor can be, but One Reason:-and, in truth, it is a statement of the Christian doctrine, that the Word by whom all things were made, is essential Light and Life to his creatures;—it is the sublime doctrine revealed by St. John, that the Reason is the light and spiritual presence of the Logos: τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν, ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον.

Finally, Gentlemen, if Reason be the sole universal light of man, it follows that it is the

essence of all Science. There are indeed many sciences; still they must all retain the same inherency in, the same known and understood derivation from, the common trunk, of which they are living and growing branches. And it would be no less interesting than instructive to determine in each instance the approximation to ideal perfection which is due to the greater or less predominance of legislative Reason— which, either in the discovery of Law rests from its labours, or consciously employs the intellectual faculties, with all the aidances of Observation, Experiment, Hypothesis, and Theory, in order to the discovery of that Law, which is to supersede or perfect all these. My time will, however, only permit me to make some remarks on medical science, in connection with the Profession which is grounded upon it and I will conclude by comprising in a few short paragraphs the qualifications of a medical practitioner, considered in relation to the dignity and efficiency of the medical profession according to its ultimate aim.

I need scarcely indeed dwell upon the possession of technical knowledge and skill; since it is evident that the medical practitioner, who aims at the performance of those duties, which his profession demands, will possess himself of the requisites for its practice, which no honest man would be without. But if I am asked, What are we to understand by the amount of skill and knowledge, which may be justly de

manded of the members of a liberal profession, and here of the medical? It is evidently this, that each severally should be capable of applying all the resources of art, which the whole profession can supply. And in this country, and at the present time, in no small proportion of cases, every man, who has fairly and in good earnest availed himself of the advantages, which our medical institutions afford, will have the satisfaction of feeling that he is doing what every other regularly educated physician or surgeon would do under the same or similar circumstances. And where, from the imperfection of our knowledge, we are unable to refer the facts and phenomena to intelligible principles, it should still be our aim and endeavour so to arrange and combine them as to bring them more and more under the conditions, which facilitate the discovery of a principle.

Hence then, in stating the qualifications of the members of the medical profession, we place as the second requisite Scientific Insight, or the possession of those laws, or rational grounds, which form at once the principles and ultimate aims of all professional knowledge. Disjoined from the patient and persevering details of Observation, the search for facts, and the wakeful attention to them when presented, the healing art would soon fall back to the state, in which during a portion of the middle ages it actually existed, when medicine was little better than a fantastic branch of Logic. On

the other hand, wholly separated from all speculative science it would necessarily become a mere collection of cases, of facts without any copula that might render them severally or collectively intelligible-nay, without any security that the supposed facts are actually such, or that the most important incidents may not have escaped the notice of the observer. But this is not all. It is not in the nature of the human mind to remain satisfied with the mere record of always imperfect cases. In the absence of insight the imagination takes its place; ostentatious affidavits supply proofs of the efficacy of the medicine and of the methodus medendi;

"And puffing quacks confiding dupes allure

"To swear the pill or drop has wrought a cure!"

The conflict of science and systematized experience with quackery, of the liberal cultivator of science with the contraband trader in nostrums and stolen fragments of knowledge,will, I fear, endure as long as physical or moral infirmity place men in those states, which eminently favour the predominance of hope, fear, and credulity, over reason and judgment: but, assuredly, if such be the sources of the success of fraudulent empiricism, they ought to excite an honourable solicitude in the legitimate candidate for medical practice to stand aloof, at a far distance, from the very appearance of tampering with such unholy aidances.

"To act in the spirit of science, where I can; by the mere light of experience, without scientific insight, where I must ;-but with the uniform avoidance and contempt of quackery in all cases;"-this is, or ought to be, the moral code for every medical practitioner.

And with these views I hold it as little less than indisputable that the rightful claim of the profession to its due estimation by society at large can be dependent only upon Science, and upon its cultivation in union with the liberal arts and sciences-therefore entitled "Liberal," because they are cultivated without hire or compulsion on the score of their own worth and dignifying influences. It is herein that we find the ground of a liberal education common to the Professions and the Gentry of a country-of an education fitted to maintain the continued succession of a class of Viri Liberales, of Gentlemen, of men imbued with the Liberal sciences, of professional men, who in the full possession of a Liberal science apply it to the needs and benefit of their fellow-citizens. Nor can it be deemed of slight importance that those destined for our profession should partake of that education, which is required for the liberal professions, as an integral part of the gentry of the country, with the sense and habits of a joint training in their duties moral and religious, in their obligations as citizens, and in their sentiments of honor as Gentlemen.

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