jorities, the
greater material powers, have always ruled before. The history of most
countries has been that of majorities, mounted majorities, clad in iron,
armed with death treading down the tenfold more numerous minorities. In
the old civilizations they root themselves like oaks in the soil; men
must live in their shadow or cut them down. With us the majority is only
the flower of the passing noon, and the minority is the bud which may
open in the next morning's sun. We must be tolerant, for the thought
which stammers on a single tongue today may organize itself in the
growing consciousness of the time, and come back to us like the voice of
the multitudinous waves of the ocean on the morrow.

Twenty-five years have passed since one of your honored Presidents spoke
to this Society of certain limitations to the power of our Art, now very
generally conceded. Some were troubled, some were almost angry, thinking
the Profession might suffer from such concessions. It has certainly not
suffered here; if, as some affirm, it has lost respect anywhere, it was
probably for other, and no doubt sufficient reasons.

Since that time the civilization of this planet has changed hands. Strike
out of existence at this moment every person who was breathing on that
day, May 27, 1835, and every institution of society, every art and every
science would remain intact and complete in the living that would be
left. Every idea the world then held has been since dissolved and
recrystallized.

We are repeating the same process. Not to make silver shrines for our
old divinities, even though by this craft we should have our wealth, was
this Society organized and carried on by the good men and true who went
before us. Not for this, but to melt the gold out of the past, though
its dross should fly in dust to all the winds of heaven, to save all our
old treasures of knowledge and mine deeply for new, to cultivate that
mutual respect of which outward courtesy is the sign, to work together,
to feel together, to take counsel together, and to stand together for the
truth, now, always, here, everywhere; for this our fathers instituted,
and we accept, the offices and duties of this time-honored Society.

BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOME PROVINCES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.

An Introductory Lecture delivered before the Medical Class of Harvard
University, November 6, 1861.

[This Lecture appears as it would have been delivered had the time
allowed been