Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/36

32 of legal drudges, yet still that the nation looked to them, in some measure, for the protection of its legal rights.

Let us imagine also, that in our fabulous country the physicians were in the same state of ignorance with the lawyers. That they had inherited from their fathers a few traditional rules of medical practice, which they applied mechanically to all sorts of cases, but never thought of looking into the cause or process of disease, of discovering the laws of health, of devising new remedies, or making the old more efficacious. That they took little care to get an accurate knowledge of their own profession, and no pains at all to increase their stock of general knowledge, acquire mental skill, and give a generous and healthful development to all the faculties with which God endows the race of men. That they made their calling a drudgery, which gave them daily bread, but nothing more. That their whole life was mere handicraft. That they started in their profession with a slender outfit of education, either special or general; usually grew more and more stupid after they were five-and-twenty, and only in rare instances made a continual and life-long progress in what becomes a man, thus growing old in being taught, and attaining in life a complete manhood; but still that the public depended on this class for the preservation of the general health.

To go still further, let us fancy that the clergy also wandered in the same way of ignorance, and that class, which in some countries is the best instructed, had here the least cultivation. That, taking the advice which the devil, in a popular legend, gives to a student of divinity, they “stuck to words, and words only.” That they could repeat a few prayers, learned by rote from their predecessors; took their religion on trust from their fathers, never asking if the one were perfect, or the other true. That they both trembled and cursed when the least innovation was made in either. That they could go through the poor mummery of the African ritual with sonorous unction, by their bigotry making an abomination of what should be a delight, but never attempting to understand what the service meant. That they could give official advice to the people on days of religious ceremony, which advice consisted solely of commonplace maxims of prudence, virtue, and religion, which all but the children knew as