ured the conciliatory suggestion that Marley | will not permit the electorate to be deterwas a good man of business. "Business!" mined by any principle of selection, which cried the ghost, "Mankind was my business; the common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" The moral so sharply pointed by this persuasive message to the living from a spirit in chains of its own forging while in life is that no devotion to mere personal ends can absolve us from the larger obligations we owe society. It is a felicity we enjoy in common to be citizens of a country without a peer, under a political order whose unrivalled excellence excites the admiration and envy of the world. We contemplate with exultant pride the suc cess of a government whose corner stones are the wisdom, virtue, and patriotism of those it was appointed to govern. This trinity of forces has fed the stream of our exuberant national life and reflects upon our history a threefold glory. Intelligence wreathes Columbia's brow with laurel in honor of her victories in all the diversified fields of material progress. Virtue lays upon her snowy bosom the fadeless lily in token of her signal triumphs in the elevated arena of national morals; while patriotism, with the orange blossoms of hope and love unites and interweaves the two, symbolizing the joyful wedlock of lofty intelligence and elevated morals. To love such a country, serve it, and enjoy its protection are blessings which Providence has vouchsafed alone to American citizens. appeals to any standard of moral or intellectual fitness, except within restricted limits. There are no means afforded for those gains which a recent writer describes as "progress due to the opportunity of those individuals who are su perior to their fellows of asserting their su periority." The only means available, under universal suffrage, of securing the best results is the participation of the best qualified in the exercise of suffrage, thus holding up the col lective action to a level commensurate with the average intelligence and virtue of the community. If I may borrow from physics an illustration, I might liken our popular system to the "hydrostatic paradox." It is an academic memory that, in a bent tube, with one arm a foot in diameter and the other no larger than a pipe-stem, the water will stand the same height in both. Similarly universal suffrage equalizes the votes of the philosopher and the fool, the president and the pauper. I am expressing no opinion as to the wisdom of giving ignorance and knowledge equal freedom of franchise. I am only emphasizing the danger under a system which places upon a platform of political equality the most marked intellectual and moral inequality, of relegating the ruling power to the least qualified, by the voluntary surrender of the best fitted of their right of participation. The thought I am seeking to bring into distinct view is that, under our political system, the intelligence and virtue of the citizen and his use of them in the service of the State are The duty of the medical profession, in com- the very breath of our nation's life and progmon with all educated citizens to political so- ress. The influences which make for good ciety, finds its first warrant in the nature of government first act upon the political unit. our political institutions. The form of our Our political infirmities have their roots in government denotes the requirements of citi individual delinquency. A low standard of zenship. In many lines of development prog- character, an enfeebled moral sense, and insenress is due to a principle of selection whose sibility to the claims of society are incompatioperation is continuous through successful va- ble with good citizenship. A good man must riations, to the exclusion of others. In all first exist before he can engage in making good forms of life the fittest have survived where government. The Christian religion, incomcompetition existed. The ascent of human parably the most powerful evolutionary force society has been possible by the prevalence of in the history of civilization, applied its conthe superior and the overthrow of the inferior structive force, its creative energy, to the indiin efficiency. But in the arena of politics the vidual life. Men were transformed before the philosopher is confronted with a situation institutions of society were improved. The which does not admit of the evolutionary first requisite is citizens capable of intelligent mode of securing results by selection and reaction, with resolution and courage to act upon jection. The theory of our political system their convictions. The citizen who is a sover eign should be qualified for his kingdom. He | and the development of our social and indusshould be molded on forms of virtue, self- trial life are inviting fields for the demagogue, restraint, obedience, and loyalty to conscience the quack doctor in politics. But no man and country. He should be self-governing in should be placed in position to prescribe for that wide range of activities and relations the venerated patient whose education, exthat lie outside the sanctions of the statute perience, and training have not in some degree and far away from the policeman's beat. He qualified him to comprehend the nature of the must have fineness and strength in the warp of maladies he is to treat,—to distinguish the intelligence and firmness of texture in the woof chronic diseases of the body politic from its of virtue. He must subject his political con- passing inflammations, the growing pains of duct to the restraints of moral principle and a vigorous and lusty life from the virulent subordinate his private interests to his public distempers of an infected and decaying body. duties. He should be broad-gauged in his views of the questions which every day forces upon his attention. He should be able to take a more commanding view of the world than is possible from his study-window. He should have that "all roundness" of observation which comes from a knowledge of affairs and a touch of elbow with the people. He should not be content with holding right opinions, but should exert himself to make them prevalent. He should not be lulled to repose by the delusion that he does no harm who takes no part in public affairs. He should know that bad men need no better opportunity than when good men look on and do nothing. He should stand to his principles even if leaders go wrong. He should not fly from duty though malaria breaks out in the barracks; he should never go to sleep on his post or desert to the enemy. He should never cease to improve himself and should never consent to call in the enemies of his principles to correct his defects. You may say this is an ideal citizen; but our institutions of learning can transmute the ideal into the real citizen, and they must do so if our institutions are to endure. Our form of government contemplates such a citizen, and only such can be effective in working out the purpose of all our political machinery, to give ascendency to the forces fittest to govern, and to bring the best reason and conscience of the people to an expression in the government of the State. These suggestions derive superadded force from another reflection, namely, that out of this citizenship must emerge, as need requires, intelligent and incorruptible leadership, and a scientific statesmanship. This need grows in urgency as the difficulties of government multiply. The manifold problems being evolved out of the complex growth of our institutions It thus appears how legitimate is the title of the State to the service of its most capable citizens, and with what extreme urgency it presses its claims upon the educated classes. Wonderful, indeed, is the transforming power of education. We have known it to make excellent doctors and lawyers out of the commonest material. It was a curious and ill-considered suggestion of an uninstructed person that the learned professions have a warrant for their existence in the necessity for some place for men of medium faculty who are unsuited to other walks in life. I have read of a man who became very much depressed in spirits on account of a notion he had imbibed, that his sons were to come to very unhappy ends. One was to be a mendicant, another a thief, and a third a murderer. A neighbor offered the solace of a suggestion that would enable his boys to live respectable lives in spite of the fates. It was this: The one that is to be poor, make him a minister, for poverty is the inheritance of the church; the one that is to be a robber, make him a lawyer, and his talents may still be turned to profit; and the one that is to be a murderer, make him a doctor, for that is the only profession in which his propensities will never be questioned. But it is, in all seriousness, an irresistible deduction that no greater calamity could overtake the country than for so numerous a body of educated men as constitute the medical profession to become indifferent to and detached from political affairs. Nevertheless, it is within the observation of all that the scholar in America is apt to feel some repugnance to politics. This is so distinctly marked as to give rise to a current conviction that superior culture does not improve citizenship; that men of liberal education are not aggressive and heroic, are not strong personalities, not capable of controlling the | If it were in sight its presence would be felt. collective action, however exemplary they may be personally; that they are likely to be doctrinâires and not practical, and to think it is enough if they keep the faith without fight ing the good fight; that they lack the quality Sambo boasted of when he said, "Massa has edication and I has 'scretion, and together we get along"; that for lack of that discretion they are likely to make as bad a break as Honestus at the caucus, as described by the "Easy Chair" some years ago. Honestus was honest, sincere, patriotic. He went to the caucus from a commanding sense of duty, but suffered himself to be cajoled and used by political gamesters to secure the nomination of Mr. Sly with a diamond-pin, the most disreputable political shark in the town. Why the politician should look with disfavor upon the scholar in politics and the scholar upon the politician with loathing is not apparent. They are both mistaken. The one is not as good as he is believed to be, nor is the other so bad as he has the credit of being. There is a feeling prevalent that a scholar must contract himself to enter the political arena, as Milton's fallen angels had to grow smaller to enter the infernal council-room. This idea is of the lineage of George the Third's notion, that politics is a trade for rascals and not for gentlemen, which crude error was perpetuated by Wendell Phillips's notable definition of a politician: "as a man who serves God as far as he can, not to offend the devil." These errors have survived their time. They deserve to die. And I would be happy to have the assurance that the bright and cultured young men about leaving their Alma Mater would lend a hand in dealing the death-blow. If there is one respect in which the medical profession is chargeable with neglect of duty more than another, it is their indifference to the results of the primary organization of political power. To this omission is largely due the consequences which have disabused our minds of an impression which, Mr. Fisk intimates, prevailed fifty years ago, that civil government in the United States had dropped from heaven or been specially created by some kind of miracle on American soil. Thoreau said he did not know who was elected to Congress unless some one told him. Thoreau's apathy is the peculiarity of scholarship. The rough and tough flourish because culture hides itself. The inferior recognizes the superior at the poles as well as in the state-house, and acts accordingly. But superiority must put itself into position to be felt, into effective relation with those upon whom it is to exert its influence, and not be invisible as well as ignorant in political affairs. "Jim," said a window-book keeper to a ward-politician, "who is that new 'cove' in our precinct ?" "Why, one of them fellows as teaches political economy in the college and don't know when election-day comes," was the reply. Unless intelligence organizes and assumes control, the collective action will be fashioned by organized ignorance, craft, and venality. There is no point along the great highways of political power traversed by the influences which make or mar the State where human control is so effective as at their source. The primary meeting is the spring from which political power flows, and the absence from it of the best citizens is likely to make it the baldest travesty on popular rule, giving supremacy to the forces least fit to govern; giving faithless servants the opportunity to neglect the public service and corrupt ones a chance to debauch it; clothing incapacity with respectability by official position, in which it masquerades as the people's choice; filling legislative asemblies with incapables who crowd our statute-books with costly records of human folly. Thus, by your omission to make your superior character and attainments effective in controlling action, the State may suffer, the government fall into disrepute, and the public service become ineffectual, its honor tarnished, its power enfeebled, its administration corrupted, and its glory dimmed. When you look at these consequences in cluster, you cannot fail to realize how appalling they are, and will do your part to avert them by not detaching yourselves from the political life of the communities in which you live. Men influence politics in two ways: some improve it by keeping out of it, others by going into it. Medical men, who are trained and educated, ought to go into it in the best and not the worst sense. Not for spoils, not to be ward- bummers or municipal boodlers, but for service, to help secure good government, to keep in the ascendency the forces fittest to govern. To be, as the greatest American citizens have been, slaves to principle and not to party. In its true character and right- | ness of the problems submitted for human soluful domain politics is an elevated and honorable field of service, as necessary as government itself and as noble as patriotism. Professor Freeman was right when he tried to make England see that "history was past politics and politics but present history." It is related to the entire body of social phenomena, under whatever heads they be treated. It is cousin german to history, ethics, economics, and to religion, too; for, while there is not much politics in religion, there ought to be some religion in well-ordered politics. All these related fields of exertion have a common object in the development of human society, or, as Emerson phrased it, "the care, comfort, and culture of the human race." I have said the political duty of the medical profession has its first warrant in the nature of our political system. It has a second warrant in their superior fitness for the service required. They are in touch with the people and in contact with affairs, their duties give them wide acquaintance, and their studies open their minds to the problems relating to man both as an individual and as a member of the social organism. They study him in books and in life. They know him in the abstract and in the concrete. I do not mean to extol them overmuch. I know they are not angels, if Sidney Smith's brother did accuse them of making angels of other people. But who can But who can know so much of a man as his doctor? Who so accurately judge of his fitness for responsible position as the physician whose eyes have followed him from his cradle up? Gentlemen, contemplate your relation to the human race! You welcome the coming and you sometimes speed the departing guest. You stand over the cradle and look into the grave of the human family. What transcendent opportunities for knowledge of men! What superior qualifications for useful service to the State you possess, and what immeasurable responsibility accom panies these opportunities and qualifications! tion. Situations must, indeed, be hard to meet when the complex movements which evolve them are so hard to tell about. Herbert Spencer's formula presents a collection of words which, though not of a character to "shatter the teeth of a crocodile," yet paralyze the mind of a common man. Learned doctors, of course, comprehend these words when they hear them, namely, "a change from a definite, coherent homogeneity, to an indefinite, incoherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations." That tells you in a plain way what is going on in society. Henry Drummond observed that "the universe may well have heaved a sigh of relief when, through the cerebration of an eminent thinker, it had been delivered of this account of itself." This occult process is going on continuously, and, while it augments human perplexity and increasingly taxes human intelligence, it is supposed that, in some manner, at some time, by a mysterious power residing in the nature of things, society will arrive at perfection. This is a swelling theme for the platform at this time. Male lecturers are discoursing on the "New Woman" and female on the "New Man," and, as pictured from the respective points of view, they are superior creatures. It is a splendid thing to believe that the human race will one day flower into perfect beings who can live by the golden rule. Victor Hugo believed with great complacency that "he was the tadpole of an archangel." But there is a doubt, in some minds, of our ability to continue improvement, and some hold that the progress made up to date is not satisfactory. Professor Huxley says: "If there is no hope of a larger improvement in the condition of the greater part of the human family, I would hail the advent of some kindly comet to sweep it away." I do not share this melancholy view. I believe in endless progression, but it can only be realized by the help of the efficient service of Another thought in this connection presses the medical profession and the united exerfor utterance, namely, the need of the future tions of the best intellect and conscience sofor the medical profession in politics will ex- ciety commands. The time that Herbert ceed that of the past. With the increase of Spencer sees through his evolutionary glasses, population and the growth of civilization the when man will be so happily adjusted to his social organism increases in complexity and environment that righteousness will everywhere the difficulties of government multiply. The prevail, and conscience, no longer necessary, results of the evolutionary movement of society will be dispensed with, will never come. An deepen the obscurity and increase the hard-awakened conscience, a resolute will, an en lightened mind, and a loyal devotion to duty | principle and a given measure of another comwill be the chief agencies in human progress bine to produce the best results. Every instiuntil the end of it. Arthur James Balfour is tution, every system, every principle esteemed right in his criticism "that the causes which of value in our time in its application to govwill make conscience superfluous will relieve ernment has its limitations. They are good from the necessity of intellectual effort, and so far, and beyond they are evil. We may say that, by the time we are perfectly good, we of them, as Bagehot says of political economy, will be perfectly idiotic." "they are not questionable things of unlimited extent, but are exceedingly certain and useful to a limited extent." The bounds of their beneficence are to be fixed. The frontiers within which their utility is supreme, and beyond which they become noxious, are to be marked out. We must compound the subtle influences, measure the effect of principles, and forecast the trend of popular movements, evolved in the course of our growth, so as to minimize the peril, while we wrest the maximum of blessing from every situation, securing in each case the least of the worst and the most of the best results. Seeing how bewildering is the attempt to convey an idea of the nature of evolution will help to make us suitably sensible of the accumulating difficulties which will be presented in the course of our social and political development, and of the necessity of a progressively increasing accumulation of intelligence in the body of our citizenship, to keep its equipment in any degree commensurate with the exigencies which will call it into use. The people of the United States are approaching, if they are not already face to face, with social and political problems of extreme gravity. Problems which but a short while ago we contemplated only with enlightened curiosity now lie like lions across our path. Carlyle said, a half century ago, "that America's battle is yet to fight; that new spiritual pythons, enormous megatheriums as were ever born of mud, loom, huge and hideous, in the twilight-future." The pythons and megatheriums which are glaring at us with ferocious eyes to-day were not born of mud, but of the ceaseless and sometimes tumultuous striving of the human family for something better, a reaching out in the dark for succor, from what they feel to be the cruelty of inequality in the distribution of the benefits of civilization. If we are to find a solution for these stupendous problems we must be wiser than our fathers. We cannot guide the ship of state in the tumultuous sea of the future by the observations of the past. The growth of intelligence, public reason, and social insight must keep pace with the conditions which require their exercise. We must know how to treat popular discontent,—when with repressive laws and when with measures of conciliation and relief; how to retire old institutions to make way for new ones; how to make the changes which are inevitable, made necessary by the progress of society, and not to be resisted. There is in social science, as well as in chemistry, a law of definite combining pro portions by which a certain amount of one In this discriminating treatment of these intricate problems we have not one brain too many; no surplus of intelligence; no educated man whose contribution to the sum of the nation's sense and soundness can be dispensed with; no excess of noble aspiration and lofty endeavor; no residue of conscientious purpose that we can spare from the great task of prosecuting our experiment of popular government to a triumphant solution. That we are advancing toward this solution, I never entertain a doubt. My amiable optimism will not permit me to believe that human progress is to be arrested. If our rate of speed is not satisfactory we can improve it by increasing our exertions, leaning closer to duty, and pressing harder in the race. There is warrant for the expectation that the next century will be one of great intellectual and moral awakening. Much fruit will be plucked from the tree of knowledge. Many of the postulates of science will be restated. In the courts of philosophy many motions for new trials will be made on the ground of after-discovered evidence. Statesmanship will mount to higher levels. Economists will make new conquests. Sociology will advance with leaps and bounds. The church will doff her rags of ecclesiasticism and robe herself in living garments of newlydiscovered truth. Religion will break the fetters of creed and bound into the arena of spiritual liberty, and the kingdom of Heaven will visibly advance upon the earth. |