future known relations to that which is subtile in the domains of biology and psychology, beyond that which has hitherto been attained.
In this view Science need not despair, and has no right to give over its efforts nor neglect its opportunities to obtain appreciable evidence, however slight it may at first appear, of a future life—one which the doctrine of evolution demands should be a higher development, one of greater possibilities than this. The aspiration after such a life is as much a development of the soul as is intelligence, or reason, or a desire to know causes, and there is the same reason to believe that it has its foundation in a corresponding reality.
And, great as have been the triumphs of science hitherto—great as has been the light which the grand thought of evolution has thrown upon the whole plan and system of the universe—nothing hitherto accomplished could compare in grandeur with the physical demonstration of a higher mode of life and action than that attainable with our present organization and present limitations; a demonstration which would enable man to lie down to sleep with the knowledge that he will awaken to an enlarged and ever-enlarging, conscious, future life.
| ADDRESS TO MEDICAL STUDENTS.[1] |
By Rev. E. A. WASHBURN, D. D.
I AM glad of the privilege, gentlemen of the Medical College, of meeting to-day so many who are masters and students in the school of science. For if, as I believe, all our studies, whether of Nature or mind, are only chapters of one book, there can be nothing wiser in our day, when the growing mass of learning almost compels a microscopic research and somewhat of a microscopic bias—nothing wiser than at times to interchange our points of view. It is, indeed, one of the phases of that heredity, of which so much is said at present, that our callings bequeath their mental habits, so that the clergyman seems often born without the power of inductive reasoning, and the naturalist with a suspicion of all that cannot be analyzed by his blow-pipe. Yet I am sure that you are of a larger school than this; and in that feeling I venture to put before you a few thoughts on the mutual relations of scientific culture. I shall not try your patience by a treatise on the Mosaic cosmogony or evolution; and, indeed, I must ask your allowance beforehand, if I betray in my remarks that surface knowledge of gases or nervous tissues, not strange to one more busied with Greek aorists and primitive-church deposits. It is your noble calling to be students in that branch of science, perhaps the most fruitful of
- ↑ Delivered recently to the graduating class of the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons.
