Address to the graduating class of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at their annual commencement, March 1st, 1871 / by Charlton T. Lewis.

  • Lewis, Charlton T. (Charlton Thomas), 1834-1904.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the graduating class of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at their annual commencement, March 1st, 1871 / by Charlton T. Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    It is in this view of your profession, gentlemen, that we of the outside world would eorae to press our claims upon you, and to ask for closer communion with your intellectual work. And it is in this aspect, too, that your work will find its best inspiration. It lifts the human race, and the horizon of man is enlarged. You take with you from this school not only the lessons, but the influence and example of more than one man, whose scientific la- bors are a model for your own ; more than one Columbus of the world of mind, who, with his yearning for truth as a compass, has put forth on the immeasurable voyage in search of new continents of knowledge. True, the work is never finished ; what is to be done is the more arduous by what is accomplished; and that which the poet calls artistry's haunting curse, the incomplete, is on our intellectual work forever. But worthy pursuit is itself the crown of enjoyment, and turns this curse into a blessing. Every step which enlarges the field of the known spreads vaster the veil of the unknown,—in the words of a great physician, the larger the world of light, the larger the circle of darkness that surrounds it. ]^ot political history alone, but mind has a West to which the star of empire moves; but it does not, like our measured planet, complete its course and stand in its old place again. Here no sun, forever returning on its path, tells a daily tale of limitation, and rounds the cycle of possible achievement at its starting-point; for our world is the infinite, and its lights are thoughts that wander through eternity. The explorer looks for no end, even in the happy isles, and among the great he once has known ; to him all personal ends sink more and more in the great pursuit before him, and going forth, with all his conscious weaknesses upon him, to bear the light of mind into the abysses of darkness, he cheerfully sings : But blind or lame, or sick or sound, We follow that which flies before; We know the merry world is round, And we may sail for evermore.