Page:The Harveian oration 1906.djvu/48

42 But the moving hand reminds your orator, Mr. President, of a bounden duty laid upon him by our great Dictator to commemorate on this occasion by name all of our benefactors; to urge others to follow their example; to exhort the Fellows and Members to study out the secrets of Nature by way of experiment; and, lastly, for the honour of the profession, to continue in love and affection among ourselves. No greater tribute to Harvey exists than in these simple sentences in which he established this lectureship, breathing as they do the very spirit of the man, and revealing to us his heart of hearts. Doubtless, no one more than he rejoices that our benefactors have now become so numerous as to nullify the first injunction; and the best one can do is to give a general expression of our thanks, and to mention here and there, as I have done, the more notable among them. But this is not enough. While we are praising famous men, honoured in their day and still the glory of this College, the touching words of the son of Sirach remind us : ‘Some there be that have no memory, who are perished as though they had never been, and are become as though they had never been born.' Such renown as they had, time has blotted out; and on them the iniquity of oblivion has blindly scattered her poppy. A few are embalmed in the biographical dictionaries; a few are dragged to light every year at Sotheby’s, or the memory is stirred to reminiscence as one takes down an old volume from our shelves. But for the immense majority on the long roll of our Fellows—names! names! names!—nothing more; a catalogue as dry and meaningless as that of the ships, or as the genealogy of David in the Book of Chronicles. Even the dignity of the Presidential chair does not suffice to float a man down the few centuries that have passed since the foundation