I think that lawyers are often superior to philosophers in their sense of what is relatively important in human affairs with reference to limited spaces of time, such as half a century. They especially know the enormous importance of custom, which the speculative mind very readily forgets, and they have in the highest degree that peculiar sense which fits men for dealing with others in the affairs of ordinary life. In this respect they are remarkably superior to clergymen, and superior also to artists and men of science. The profession of medicine is, of all fairly lucrative professions, the one best suited to the development of the intellectual life. Having to deal continually with science, being constantly engaged in following and observing the operation of natural laws, it produces a sense of the working of those laws which prepares the mind for bold and original speculation, and a reliance upon their unfailing regularity, which gives it great firmness and assurance. A medical education is the best possible preparation for philosophical pursuits, because it gives them a solid basis in the ascertainable. The estimation in which these studies are held is an accurate meter of the intellectual advancement of a community. When the priest is reverenced as a being above ordinary humanity, and the physician slightly esteemed, the condition of society is sure to be that of comparative ignorance and barbarism; and it is one of several signs which indicate barbarian feeling in our own aristocracy, that it has a contempt for the study of medicine. The progress of society towards enlightenment is marked by the steady social rise of the surgeon and the physician, a rise which still continues, even in Western Europe. It is probable that before very long the medical profession will exercise a powerful influence upon general education, and take an active share in it. There are very strong reasons for the opinion that schoolmasters educated in medicine would be peculiarly well qualified to train both body and mind for a vigorous and active manhood. An immense advantage, even from the intellectual point of view, in the pursuit of medicine and surgery, is that they supply a discipline in mental heroism. Other professions do this also, but not to the same degree. The combination of an accurate training in positive science with the habitual contempt of danger and contemplation of suffering and death, is the finest possible preparation for noble studies and arduous discoveries. I ought to add, however, that medical men in the provinces, when they have not any special enthusiasm for their work, seem peculiarly liable to the deadening influences of routine, and easily fall behind their age. The medical periodicals provide the best remedy for this.