from others; may practice all the combinations until they can carry
them through with a greater or less degree of unconsciousness of brain
and fingers; but there is something needed beside even drill and
experience; every student of medicine should be fitted by nature with
a power of insight, a gift for his business, for knowing what is the
right thing to do, and the right time and way to do it; must have this
God-given power in his own nature of using and discovering the
resources of medicine without constant reliance upon the books or the
fashion. Some men use their ability for their own good and renown, and
some think first of the good of others, and as the great poet tells
the truths of God, and makes other souls wiser and stronger and fitter
for action, so the great doctor works for the body's health, and tries
to keep human beings free from the failures that come from neglect and
ignorance, and ready to be the soul's instrument of action and service
in this world. It is not to keep us from death, it is no superstitious
avoidance of the next life, that should call loudest for the
physician's skill; but the necessity of teaching and remedying the
inferior bodies which have come to us through either our ancestors'
foolishness or our own. So few people know even what true and complete
physical life is, much less anything of the spiritual existence that
is already possible, and so few listen to what the best doctors are
trying their best to teach. While half-alive people think it no wrong
to bring into the world human beings with even less vitality than
themselves, and take no pains to keep the simplest laws of health, or
to teach their children to do so, just so long there will be plenty of
sorrow of an avoidable kind, and thousands of shipwrecked, and
failing, and inadequate, and useless lives in the fullest sense of the
word. How can those who preach to the soul hope to be heard by those
who do not even make the best of their bodies? but alas, the
convenience and easiness, or pleasure, of the present moment is