Page:The Hunterian Oration for 1850.djvu/42

26 The second cause of inferiority in rank of the medical profession is founded on the degenerate standard of medical ethics; and if I dwell but briefly on this ungrateful topic, it is because we have in education alone, its legitimate, and only corrective. If we take the body corporate of the profession, as the field of comment, do we not find the want of that high tone that characterises the other professions? ‘There is a moral elevation that should distinguish the cultivator of natural science, from that resulting from conventional laws. Do I wrong our profession when I say that there is a want of tone, a jealousy of the exertions as well as the success of others; a tendency to misconstrue good, or to suggest evil motives ; the absence of that enlightened spirit, that marks the gentleman of education ?

Liberal and generous habits of thought and action, are the indisputable growth of a high degree of civilisation and refinement. What better evidence need be adduced of the want of that cultivation of mind, so indispensable to all ?

There is no profession the conventional refinements of which are more stringent than the higher departments of law. This fact is explained, perhaps, when we consider law to be a purely artificial pursuit.

In a conversation I once had with a notorious burglar, but obviously a man of good education, who had broken into and robbed my house, he told me that the laws of the society he moved in, were also stringent ; that inasmuch as his pro- fession was not altogether indispensable to the well-being of society, so the world was their common enemy, and that no calling or pursuit, exacted a more rigid observance of the authority of conventional regulations. It is the same neces-