Page:The Harveian oration 1912.djvu/34

30 much, and spend our time in thinking our leeches fools on the one hand or an all-knowing providence on the other, and seem to be prone to handle the wrong end of the stick when it comes to a pinch. But it is not wise to leave these matters entirely to the republic of letters. Let us learn to steer our own craft amid the smoother eddies and currents of life’s stream, so that when the call to the pilot comes we may be able, as we shall be, to help him to apply his principles, derived from wider sources and more tutored insight, to the special needs of our immediate stress. As pilots we also may take heed of this.

And then, what of the prospect?

With problems such as these before an expanding science, it cannot be one of royal pageant or of easy achievement, and it is certain that the future triumphs over disease will only unfold themselves to an ever-widening horizon that embraces all the latest advances of physical science as they bear upon the function of living. Yet would the possibilities seem to be limitless. With all the added information of recent years; the suggestions that have come to us from all directions by way of electricity and light, and the ether that surrounds us; with all the forces that make towards us and for us, merging all nature into one ordered whole, who can do other than put to himself the question: Can it indeed be that we are come to look unto the rock whence we were hewn? Yet with spectroscopic insight, with darkness dawning into light, with mental flashes borne across the storm, with all these new aspects of nature surging on us, who shall say that we are now familiar with all forms of living energy, that there are no other sources still to be made known to us? In the sigh