Page:Introductory Address on the General Medical Council, its Powers and its Work.djvu/29

 of a resolution that the fault ought to be amended. And so far as a resolution of the Council can do it, amended it would be. This is an imaginary instance: I don't say that anything exactly like it has ever happened, though, changing "names and numbers," examples not unlike it could be cited. I am concerned only to give you what the engineers call a "force-diagram" of the Council's Constitution, as it operates, and was no doubt intended to operate, in questions of the kind.

Unrestricted individual competition, to continue the mechanical metaphor, would as some think make all examining bodies gravitate to the lowest possible position. By bringing all the bodies together, in the persons of their chosen members, round the Council table, the play of forces is so altered that the position of normal and stable equilibrium is now somewhere about the centre of gravity of the whole. The average standard of all replaces the former minimal standard, and the average tends to be that which "men of good repute and competency," having regard to all the circumstances, think reasonable and "sufficient." If it is not so high as some might think attainable, it is a good deal higher than what, without our machinery, would actually be attained.

Suppose now that the Council has passed a resolution for the improvement in some particular of the requirements of one or more of the constituent bodies. The resolution does not come as an order from an autocratic bureau—sic volo, sic jubeo. It comes from a Council on which the body concerned has as much voice as any other. It is like the utterance of the International Conference at the Hague, in which all the nations are represented, and in whose proceedings all take a part. You, as one of the nations, may not wholly agree with the utterance: but you feel that you can give it the most careful consideration and even embody it in your own national practice or legislation, without derogating one whit from your proper dignity or sacrificing a jot of your rightful independence. You act on the impulse not of servile submission, but of noblesse