Preliminary education, or, The general culture required by the student of medicine : a discourse delivered before the Harveian Society of Edinburgh on the 13th April 1868 / by Alexander Wood.

Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Preliminary education, or, The general culture required by the student of medicine : a discourse delivered before the Harveian Society of Edinburgh on the 13th April 1868 / by Alexander Wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    superiority, we always pronounce them that way in London. This was, of course, as he intended it should be—unanswerable. If however, we regard education from Mr Lowe's point of view, and propose as its end the acquisition of a kind of knowledge which shall be immediately convertible into coin, the god chiefly wor- shipped in this money-making age, then am I free to confess that a full and philosophical study of language, and of grammar as a stepping stone to it, would be time misspent; if, however, we are to judge of the effect of education by the extent to whicb the mind has been exercised and developed, by the powers which have been sti-engthened for contests in the battle of life, by the amount of thought which such training has called into active operation, you will admit that the literce humaniores must take the foremost place as educers of the intellect. Add to this what Mr Mill has so well stated, not only in his Kectorial Address, but also in his earlier writings. One sentence only from the former I will quote:— In cultivating, therefore, the ancient languages as om' best literary education, we are all the while laying an admirable foundation for ethical and philosophical culture. In purely literary excellence—in perfection of form—the pre-eminence of the ancients is not disputed. In every department which they attempted, and they attempted almost all, their compo- sition, like their sculptiu-e, has been to the gTcatest modern artists an example to be looked up to with hopeless admiration, but of inappreciable value as a light on high guiding their own endeavours. In prose and in poetry, in epic, lyric, and dramatic, as in historical, philosophical, and oratorical art, the pinnacle on which they stand is equally eminent.^ It does appear to me, that however you may expel the classics from the education of the mere tradesman, shopkeeper, or lower rank of merchant, who does not aspire to associate with educated men, you cannot dispense with them in the case of any who pur- pose to enter one of the learned professions or to exercise an influence on or mould the opinions of his age. Where can we acquire such lessons in the &st principles of politics and social science as from a study of the causes which led to the rise and fall of the ancient commonwealths, and a familiarity with the philosophical system of law framed by the Komans ? Where can the inquiring intellect learn such lessons in the investigation of truth as are taught both by precept and example in the dialectics of the ancients? Who would think of studying philosophy without sitting at the feet of Plato and Aristotle ? or who aspire to a cultivated taste that has not been formed on the models of ancient Greece and Eome, for all our great philosophers, poets, and orators confess to bavino- been nourished with the spirit of antiquity ? Hither as to their fountain other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. ' Rectorial Address, p. 17.
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