Page:Advice to Medical Students (1857) William Henry Fuller.djvu/12

12 But I am addressing you as youug men to whom an insight into the practical issue of any course of conduct is always valuable; I am addressing you as friends and fellow-students, for whose welfare and future happiness I cannot but entertain a deep feeling of anxiety; I am addressing you as your teacher—as one who is desirous of seeing you take a proper position in the world as useful and respectable members of an honorable profession, and who feels that he is in some measure answerable for your so doing. Bear with me, then, if I seem to have said more than is absolutely necessary, and believe me when I add, that if you firmly resolve to follow my advice and act up to your resolutions, you will one day thank me for having endeavoured, however prosily, to impress these truths on your minds.

There is yet one point to which I would allude before we cross the threshold of your future career. You are collected here from all parts of England, you are strangers to each other, and hitherto have not had any opportunity of testing, by competition, your respective talents and acquirements. Some of you will soon perceive that you have knowledge and ability above the average of your fellow-students; whilst others, whose early education has been neglected, will feel themselves unable to cope in the first instance with their more highly gifted or better grounded competitors. But let not these inequalities under which you will begin your race prevent you from exerting yourselves to the utmost. After a very short time, if you steadily persevere, the differences between you will be less than you now imagine. The mental faculties admit of development to a degree of which, perhaps, you have little conception; and you will soon discover that moderate ability, backed by well-directed mental discipline and steady industry, will place any one of you in a position to compete with the most talented of your neighbours. Barely, indeed, in a profession like ours, does innate talent determine