Page:Introductory Lecture 109 Medical Department University of Pennsylvania Stille.djvu/8

 Faculty quickened by impulses proceeding from these very directions. And thus it came about that there was begot among the enlightened and at the same time serious and judicious classes of society, a firm faith in the vitality and durability of the school.

If I have seemed to dwell upon the idea that the Medical Department of the University owes its success and reputation to a wise balance of the powers which control it, let me, I beg, be excused, since I am convinced by the history of the times we live in, that the great defect of political, educational, and even scientific movements in the present day is—haste. The slow and deliberate progress of travellers in other days compared with the present lightning-like swiftness of their movements, illustrates in many points a similar contrast in the intellectual world. In the last generation it required a mouth to travel from Edinburgh to Naples, or from Boston to San Francisco, a journey which to-day is accomplished within a week. The end, to be sure, is reached; but in what is the traveller the better of his exploit, in what is he different for it, except by the exhaustion of his laborious and exciting journey? What knowledge has he acquired of the lands he has traversed? of their geographical and geological features, of their monuments of human enterprise, of their inhabitants, and their history, their customs, their intellectual and moral peculiarities? Nothing, or next to nothing; above all nothing exact and trustworthy. If the passion for rapid progress were confined to travelling, the evil would be comparatively small, since the traveller may repeat his journey again and again, and tarry wherever he will, and as long as it pleases him. But, my friends, the journey of life is made but once, and whoever has failed to make it aright has failed forever.

In every department of the busy world haste appears to be the rule. All are hurrying towards a goal, too often without regard to the means employed in reaching it. Everywhere men are making haste to be rich, and they struggle on through bogs and briers, and dark ways, and stony places, and if they do not perish by the way, perhaps at last embrace their golden idol. Or perhaps they are ambitious of social, professional,