use them. But in Medicine and Surgery, and in Anatomy above all, more particularly since Physiology has been, to a great extent, divorced from it, is the danger especially great; for the required facts are so many, and the time allotted to study and examination is so short. The evil, too, unfortunately, is not limited to the student period. It ranges into the subsequent stages of life, infecting the future guides and teachers and examiners, as well as the practitioners, and so propagates itself irresistibly. How rarely do men continue the study of their profession for any length of time out of pure love of it; and how refreshing, like mother earth touching, is it to come into contact with those who do so. Had Hunter been trained upon the present system, had he been weighed down by tightly compressed facts when a student, and, subsequently, by out-patient seeing, on the one hand, and pupil cramming, on the other, it is scarcely to be supposed that even his mind could have burst the iron fetters and could have regained its elasticity and love of work, or that even he could have found time for those reflections which gave such impulse to the science and practice of Surgery.

What can be done to effect an improvement, to counteract the mind-enslaving influence of accumulating facts and greater stringency of Examinations, and to bring about that larger association of thought with work, in our educational system, which would approach nearer to the Hunterian ideal, which would attach greater interest and pleasure to study, and would render our students more thinking agents, more able to

analyse and deal with the difficulties they encounter and, therefore, better fitted to take their rank as members of a learned and liberal profession?

The Examinations, as I have said, are, and must be, the despots of education. They have probably, for the present at any rate, been made sufficiently severe. What is required is a gradual alteration in their quality. They might well afford to be less exacting in the amount and variety of detail and circumstance, and to throw somewhat more weight into the scale of intelligent appreciation of the knowledge possessed, so that, by their requirements, they may develope a better adjustment of the balance of work and thought. They should not be considered merely as tests of fitness for certain positions and rewards, but, even more, as educational agents, as the guides of teaching and of study. Every question put must be regarded as a drop in the educational current of the future; and Examiners must recognise that they are not simply judges of the students who come before them, but that they are, in no less degree, directors of, and, so, responsible for, the teaching of those who will follow.

I see the objections that may be raised to this, and I have sufficient experience as an Examiner to know the difficulties of carrying it out; but objections and difficulties never fail to grow on the path to improvement. They sometimes seem to point the way and nerve us to overcome them; and they do so by telling that proportionately great efforts are necessary and must be made.

What is really wanted, and what teachers and examiners must combine to promote, is, to use the words of the 'laughing philosopher' Democritus, who was one of the greatest thinkers of antiquity, that "we should strive not after fulness of knowledge, but fulness of understanding," that is, that we should strive for good, clear, solid, intelligent, producible and available knowledge of the kind that will be useful in after life-not so much the refinements of Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology, which, in their aggregate, are likely to perplex, encumber, stupefy, and then pass away like chaff before the wind, but the essential fundamental facts and principles welded together, and so woven into the student's mind that he can hold them firmly and wield them effectually, and that he is conscious of them, not as the goods of other men, or as dogmas which he has because they were imposed upon him, but as his own possessions, of which he appreciates the value because he knows how to use them. "The knowledge which a man can use is the only real knowledge, the only knowledge which has life and growth in it, and converts itself into practical power. The rest hangs like dust about the brain, or dries like rain-drops off the stones1."

It is a hopeful feature of our time that teaching is now occupying the serious attention of thoughtful minds, is beginning to be regarded as a science,— assuredly it is second to none in practical importance, -and that it is likely to receive that recognition at our Universities, as a subject of special study, which it Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, p. 267.

has ever deserved. A good influence thus engendered, and gradually telling upon the general education of the country, will do more than any other thing to promote the improvement of our profession, first, by the better preparation of those who enter it, and, secondly, by the improved methods of teaching in it which are sure to follow; and it will contribute as much as any thing to promote the future welfare of our country, and to give to our people that strength of mind and force of character which are more than ever necessary for the maintenance of our position among the nations of the earth. Whether it be in the workshop, on the exchange, in the sick-chamber, in the senate, or on the battle-field, the best educated, most thoughtful, most able persons, must take the lead. A home-striking confirmation of this is being now given in the lesson, which we ought never to have had occasion thus to learn, that English manufacture is being beaten out of the field, not in consequence of any accident or cause which we could not have foreseen, but, in great measure, because the English workmen are less intelligent, less thoughtful, less given to reading, less self-controlling, less provident, than those of some other competing countries. Must not, and ought not, success to be with the nation in which these qualities are most abounding? The question whether the prosperity and influence of Britain are to continue, whether our flag is to rule the waves of the future, and for a thousand years to brave the battle and the breeze, must depend upon the education of her people, and not upon the amount, but

upon the quality of that education, that is, upon the mental training which it gives, and the thought-producing power which it evolves. Teachers and Examiners are the masters of the world's position. Let them feel their power and combine to use it well.

In this far-reaching work our College has an important part to perform, and is answerable to the profession and the country for the manner in which it fulfils it. It has a great inheritance; and, what is far more to the purpose, it has a great influence, and proportionately great responsibility. The wand, more potent than that of the magician, the arch enemy and sure destroyer of all magic, the wand of observation and thought, handed on to us by Hunter, and, in turn, wielded by Abernethy and Cooper, by Travers and Green, by Brodie, Lawrence and others, is now in our hands, and with it, the future destiny of the Surgery of England-the rank which Surgery is to take as a science, the degree to which it is to be raised above the level of empiricism. There is no one, Mr President, I am sure, who more fully appreciates this than yourself, no one who, from the vantage ground of a well cultivated mind, watches more jealously the curricula of professional study, and is more anxious that they should represent a liberal system of education. This is one of the many grounds which gives us confidence and pleasure in seeing you in the honourable position which you occupy, and which makes this College gratefully accept, and place among the treasured mementoes of its heroes, that expressive cast of a thoughtful mind, which has been lately presented