Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/41

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

right modified by duty. Man is social, as distinct from gregarious; and, in the highest conceptions of that state, would be governed by love rather than by law; for, as we are taught, "Love is the fulfilling of the law," which latter, to use the expression of a friend, * "is as it were latent in love, like an inscrip- tion in a fountain, becoming visible only when the stream is dry."

And this brings me to speak of a subject now much under discussion, and which touches our duty to society.

We cannot, I think, agree to neglect any means which lie within our power of pre- venting discase. If a rigid scientific method excludes the consideration of final causes where they are so patent, and I may say prominently set forward, as they seem to us, in organic structures; and if it teaches. us that this appearance may be more to human eyes than in the sight of Him who ordereth all things by a wisdom transcend-

"Man and his Dwelling-place," chap. vii. D 2