Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/19

 have secured a talisman against despair, or even discontent, in the love of knowledge that your education will have given you.

I have in this discourse held before you, as motives for acquiring a thorough professional education, the love of knowledge, and the happiness it confers; but it must not be forgotten that a still higher motive is to be found in the benefits it will enable you to confer upon your fellow men. This is, indeed, the very reason why the profession of medicine exists. Health is one essential condition of human happiness, for all possessions lose half their value if the ability to enjoy them is wanting. But it is life, as well as health, that will be entrusted to your keeping; life, with its hopes and plans, its loves and friendships, its duties and responsibilities, that will often depend upon your knowledge and skill, and the sense which you may here acquire of the dignity of your office. If your time is misspent in idleness and frivolity, or in pursuing a false method of study, your after life will seem to you a perpetual mistake, will be a life of failure, perhaps mingled with self-reproach, and possibly of disgrace. But if you now devote yourselves to the acquisition of professional knowledge, energetically and systematically, you will be secure of public confidence and professional esteem; and whether you are destined to be eminent leaders in medicine, or merely honorable members of the profession, you will enjoy that reward which is independent of fame and wealth—the consciousness of having done your duty.