At the same time, in as far as Associations really give help and pledges for progress, are not mere crutches, stereotypes for standing still, let us bid them “God speed” with our whole hearts. We all know what “parasites” are, plants or animals which live upon others and don’t work for their own food, and so degenerate. For the work to get food is quite as necessary as the food itself for healthy active life and development. Now, there is a danger in the air of becoming Parasites in Nursing (and also Midwifery)--of our becoming Nurses (and Midwives) by deputy, a danger now when there is so great an inclination to make school and college education, all sorts of Sciences and Arts, even Nursing and Midwifery, a book and examination business, a profession in the low, not in the high sense of the word. And the danger is that we shall be content to let the book and the theory and the words do for us. One of the most religious of men says that we let the going to Church and the clergyman do for us _instead of_ the learning and the practice, if we have the Parasite tendency, and that even the better the service and the better the sermon and the theory and the teaching, the more danger there is that we may let it do. He says that we may become satisfied to be prayed for instead of praying--to have our work for Christ done by a paid deputy--to be fed by a deputy who gives us our supply for a week--to substitute for thought what is meant as a stimulus to thought and practice. This is the parasite of the pew he says (as the literary parasite thinks he knows everything because he has a “good library”). He enjoys his weekly, perhaps his daily worship, while character and life, will and practice are not only not making progress, but are actually deteriorating. Do you remember Tennyson’s farmer, who says of the clergyman: I ’eärd ’um a bummin’ awaäy ... ower my ’eäd, ... An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to ’a said an’ I coom’d awaäy. We laugh at that. But is the Parasite much better than that? Now the Ambulance Classes, the Registration, the Certificates of Nursing and of Nurses (and of midwifery), especially any which may demand the minimum of _practice_, which may _substitute_ for _personal_ progress in active proficiency, mere literary or word progress, instead of making it the material for growth in correct knowledge and practice, all such like things may tend this way. It is not the certificate which makes the Nurse or the Midwife. It may _un-make_ her. The danger is lest she let the certificate be _instead of_ herself, _instead of_ her own never ceasing going up higher as a woman and a Nurse.