A way of life; an address to Yale students Sunday evening, April 20th, 1913

WILLIAM OSLER

A WAY OF LIFE

A WAY OF LIFE

An Address to Tale Students
Sunday evening, April 2oth, 1913

By

WILLIAM OSLER

LONDON

CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
1913

BJ

/c
o?

608254

What each day needs that

shalt thou ask,
Each day will set its proper

task.

Goethe.

PELLOW STUDENTS-

Every man has a philo
sophy of life in thought, in
word, or in deed, worked out
in himself unconsciously. In
possession of the very best, he
may not know of its existence ;
with the very worst he may
pride himself as a paragon. As
it grows with the growth it
5

A WAY

cannot be taught to the young
in formal lectures. What have
bright eyes, red blood, quick
breath and taut muscles to do
with philosophy? Did not the
great Stagirite say that young
men were unfit students of it? —
they will hear as though they
heard not, and to no profit.
Why then should I trouble you ?
Because I have a message that
may be helpful. It is not philo
sophical, nor is it strictly moral
or religious, one or other of
which I was told my address
should be, and yet in a way it
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OF LIFE

is all three. It is the oldest and
the freshest, the simplest and
the most useful, so simple in
deed is it that some of you may
turn away disappointed as was
Naaman the Syrian when told to
go wash in Jordan and be clean.
You know those composite tools,
to be bought for 50 cents, with
one handle to fit a score or more
of instruments. The workman
ship is usually bad, so bad, as
a rule, that you will not find
an example in any good car
penter's shop; but the boy has
one, the chauffeur slips one into
7

A WAY

his box, and the sailor into his
kit, and there is one in the odds-
and-ends drawer of the pantry
of every well-regulated family.
It is simply a handy thing about
the house, to help over the many
little difficulties of the day. Of
this sort of philosophy I wish
to make you a present— a handle
to fit your life tools. Whether
the workmanship is Sheffield or
shoddy, this helve will fit any
thing from a hatchet to a cork
screw.

My message is but a word,
a Way, an easy expression of
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OF LIFE

the experience of a plain man
whose life has never been wor
ried by any philosophy higher
than that of the shepherd in
As You Like It I wish to point
out a path in which the way
faring man, though a fool, cannot
err; not a system to be worked
out painfully only to be dis
carded, not a formal scheme,
simply a habit as easy— or as
hard ! — to adopt as any other
habit, good or bad.

A WAY

I

A few years ago a Xmas
card went the rounds, with the
legend " Life is just one 'denied'
thing after another," which, in
more refined language, is the
same as saying "Life is a
habit," a succession of actions
that become more or less auto
matic. This great truth, which
lies at the basis of all actions,
muscular or psychic, is the key
stone of the teaching of Aris
totle, to whom the formation
of habits was the basis of moral

10

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excellence. "In a word, habits
of any kind are the result
of actions of the same kind ;
and so what we have to do,
is to give a certain character
to these particular actions"
(Ethics). Lift a seven months
old baby to his feet— see him
tumble on his nose. Do the
same at twelve months — he
walks. At two years he runs.
The muscles and the nervous
system have acquired the habit.
One trial after another, one
failure after another, has given
him power. Put your finger
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A WAY

in a baby's mouth, and he
sucks away in blissful antici
pation of a response to a mam
malian habit millions of years
old. And we can deliberately
train parts of our body to per
form complicated actions with
unerring accuracy. Watch that
musician playing a difficult
piece. Batteries, commutators,
multipliers, switches, wires in
numerable control those nimble
fingers, the machinery of which
may be set in motion as auto
matically as in a pianola, the
player all the time chatting as

12

OF LIFE

if he had nothing to do in con
trolling the apparatus — habit
again, the gradual acquisition
of power by long practice and
at the expense of many mis
takes. The same great law
reaches through mental and
moral states. " Character," which
partakes of both, in Plutarch's
words, is " long-standing habit."
Now the way of life that I
preach is a habit to be acquired
gradually by long and steady
repetition. It is the practice
of living for the day only,
and for the day's work, Life
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A WAY

in day-tight compartments. uAh,"
I hear you say, "that is an
easy matter, simple as Elisha's
advice!" Not as I shall urge
it, in words which fail to ex
press the depth of my feelings
as to its value. I started life
in the best of all environments
—in a parsonage, one of nine
children. A man who has filled
Chairs in four universities, has
written a successful book, and
has been asked to lecture at
Yale, is supposed popularly to
have brains of a special quality.
A few of my intimate friends
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really know the truth about
me, as I know it! Mine, in
good faith I say it, are of the
most mediocre character. But
what about those professor
ships, etc.? Just habit, a way
of life, an outcome of the day's
work, the vital importance of
which I wish to impress upon
you with all the force at my
command.

Dr. Johnson remarked upon
the trifling circumstances by
which men's lives are influenced,
"not by an ascendant planet, a
predominating humour, but by
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A WAY

the first book which they read,
some early conversation which
they have heard, or some acci
dent which excited ardour and
enthusiasm." This was my
case in two particulars. I was
diverted to the Trinity College
School, then at Weston, On
tario, by a paragraph in the
circular stating that the senior
boys would go into the drawing-
room in the evenings, and learn
to sing and dance— vocal and
pedal accomplishments for which
I was never designed ; but like
Saul seeking his asses, I found
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OF LIFE

something more valuable, a
man of the White of Selborne
type, who knew nature, and
who knew how to get boys
interested in it.1 The other
happened in the summer of
1871, when I was attending the
Montreal General Hospital.
Much worried as to the future,
partly about the final examina
tion, partly as to what I should
do afterwards, I picked up a
volume of Carlyle, and on the
page I opened there was the

1 The Rev. W. A. Johnson, the founder
of the school.

B 17

A WAY

familiar sentence— " Our main
business is not to see what lies
dimly at a distance, but to do
what lies clearly at hand." A
commonplace sentiment enough,
but it hit and stuck and helped,
and was the starting-point of a
habit that has enabled me to
utilize to the full the single
talent entrusted to me.

II

The workers in Christ's vine
yard were hired by the day;
only for this day are we to ask
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OF LIFE

for our daily bread, and we are
expressly bidden to take no
thought for the morrow. To the
modern world these commands
have an Oriental savour, coun
sels of perfection akin to certain
of the Beatitudes, stimuli to
aspiration, not to action. I am
prepared on the contrary to
urge the literal acceptance of
the advice, not in the mood of
Ecclesiastes— " Go to now, ye
that say to-day or to-morrow
we will go into such a city, and
continue there a year, and buy
and sell and get gain ; whereas
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A WAY

ye know not what shall be on
the morrow"; not in the
Epicurean spirit of Omar with
his "jug of wine and Thou,"
but in the modernist spirit, as
a way of life, a habit, a strong
enchantment, at once against
the mysticism of the East and
the pessimism that too easily
besets us. Change that hard
saying "Sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof" into "the
goodness thereof," since the
chief worries of life arise from
the foolish habit of looking be
fore and after. As a patient
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OF LIFE

with double vision from some
transient unequal action of the
muscles of the eye finds magical
relief from well-adjusted glasses,
so, returning to the clear bin
ocular vision of to-day, the over
anxious student finds peace
when he looks neither back
ward to the past nor forward
to the future.

I stood on the bridge of one of
the great liners, ploughing the
ocean at 25 knots. "She is
alive," said my companion, "in
every plate; a huge monster
with brain and nerves, an
21

A WAY

immense stomach, a wonderful
heart and lungs, and a splendid
system of locomotion." Just at
that moment a signal sounded,
and all over the ship the water
tight compartments were closed.
"Our chief factor of safety,"
said the Captain. "In spite of
the Titanic," I said. "Yes," he
replied, "in spite of the Titanic."
Now each one of you is a much
more marvellous organization
than the great liner, and bound
on a longer voyage. What I
urge is that you so learn to
control the machinery as to livt

22

OF LIFE

with "day-tight compartments"
as the most certain way to
ensure safety on the voyage.
Get on the bridge, and see that
at least the great bulkheads are
in working order. Touch a
button and hear, at every level of
your life, the iron doors shutting
out the Past— the dead yester
days. Touch another and shut off,
with a metal curtain, the Future —
the unborn to-morrows. Then you
are safe,— safe for to-day ! Read
the old story in the Chambered
Nautilus, so beautifully sung by
Oliver Wendell Holmes, only
23

A WAY

change one line to " Day after
day beheld the silent toil." Shut
off the past ! Let the dead past
bury its dead. So easy to say,
so hard to realize! The truth
is, the past haunts us like a
shadow. To disregard it is not
easy. Those blue eyes of your
grandmother, that weak chin of
your grandfather, have mental
and moral counterparts in your
make-up. Generations of an
cestors, brooding over "Pro
vidence, Foreknowledge, Will
and Fate— Fixed fate, free will,
foreknowledge, absolute," may
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OF LIFE

have bred a New England
conscience, morbidly sensitive,
to heal which some of you had
rather sing the 5ist Psalm than
follow Christ into the slums.
Shut out the yesterdays, which
have lighted fools the way to
dusty death, and have no concern
for you personally, that is,
consciously. They are there all
right, working daily in us, but so
are our livers and our stomachs.
And the past, in its unconscious
action on our lives, should bother
us as little as they do. The
petty annoyances, the real and
25

A WAY

fancied slights, the trivial
mistakes, the disappointments,
the sins, the sorrows, even the
joys— bury them deep in the
oblivion of each night. Ah ! but
it is just then that to so many of
us the ghosts of the past,

Night-riding Incubi
Troubling the fantasy,

come in troops, and pry open the
eyelids, each one presenting a sin,
a sorrow, a regret. Bad enough
in the old and seasoned, in the
young these demons of past sins
may be a terrible affliction, and
in bitterness of heart many a
26

OF LIFE

one cries with Eugene Aram,
11 Oh God ! Could I so close my
mind, and clasp it with a clasp."
As a vaccine against all morbid
poisons left in the system by the
infections of yesterday, I offer
" a way of life." "Undress," as
George Herbert says, "your
soul at night," not by self-
examination, but by shedding, as
you do your garments, the daily
sins whether of omission or of
commission, and you will wake
a free man, with a new life. To
look back, except on rare
occasions for stock-taking, is to
27

A WAY

risk the fate of Lot's wife.
Many a man is handicapped in
his course by a cursed combina
tion of retro- and intro-spection,
the mistakes of yesterday para
lysing the efforts of to-day, the
worries of the past hugged to
his destruction, and the worm
Regret allowed to canker the
very heart of his life. To die
daily, after the manner of St.
Paul, ensures the resurrection
of a new man, who makes each
day the epitome of a life.

OF LIFE

III

The load of to-morrow, added
to that of yesterday, carried
to-day makes the strongest
falter. Shut off the future as
tightly as the past. No dreams,
no visions, no delicious fantasies,
no castles in the air, with which,
as the old song so truly says,
"hearts are broken, heads are
turned." To youth, we are told,
belongs the future, but the
wretched to-morrow that so
plagues some of us has no
29

A WAY

certainty, except through to
day. Who can tell what a day
may bring forth? Though its
uncertainty is a proverb, a man
may carry its secret in the hollow
of his hand. Make a pilgrimage
to Hades with Ulysses, draw the
magic circle, perform the rites,
and then ask Tiresias the ques
tion. I have had the answer
from his own lips. The future
is to-day,— there is no to-morrow !
The day of a man's salvation is
now— the life of the present, of
to-day, lived earnestly, intently,
without a forward - looking
30

OF LIFE

thought, is the only insurance
for the future. Let the limit of
your horizon be a twenty-four
hour circle. On the title page
of one of the great books of
science, the Discours de la Methode
of Descartes (1637) is a vignette
showing a man digging in a
garden with his face towards the
earth, on which rays of light are
streaming from the heavens;
beneath is the legend "Fac et
Spera. " Tis a good attitude and
a good motto. Look heaven
ward, if you wish, but never to
the horizon— that way danger

A WAY

lies. Truth is not there, happi
ness is not there, certainty is not
there, but the falsehoods, the
frauds, the quackeries, the ignes
fatui which have deceived each
generation — all beckon from the
horizon, and lure the men not
content to look for the truth
and happiness that tumble out
at their feet. Once while at
College climb a mountain -top,
and get a general outlook of the
land, and make it the occasion
perhaps of that careful examina
tion of yourself, that inquisition
which Descartes urges every
32

OF LIFE

man to hold once in a lifetime,—
not oftener.

Waste of energy, mental dis
tress, nervous worries dog the
steps of a man who is anxious
about the future. Shut close,
then, the great fore and aft bulk
heads, and prepare to cultivate
the habit of a life of Day-Tight
Compartments. Do not be dis
couraged, — like every other
habit, the acquisition takes time,
and the way is one you must
find for yourselves. I can only
give general directions and
encouragement, in the hope
c 33

A WAY

that while the green years are
on your heads, you may have
the courage to persist.

IV

Now, for the day itself! What
first ? Be your own daysman !
and sigh not with Job for any
mysterious intermediary, but
prepare to lay your own firm
hand upon the helm. Get into
touch with the finite, and grasp
in full enjoyment that sense of
capacity in a machine working
smoothly. Join the whole crea-
34

OF LIFE

tion of animate things in a deep,
heartfelt joy that you are alive,
that you see the sun, that you
are in this glorious earth which
nature has made so beautiful,
and which is yours to conquer
and to enjoy. Realise, in the
words of Browning, that
"There's a world of capability
for joy spread round about us,
meant for us, inviting us."
What are the morning sensa
tions ?— for they control the day.
Some of us are congenitally
unhappy during the early hours ;
but the young man who feels on
35

A WAY

awakening that life is a burden
or a bore has been neglecting
his machine, driving it too hard,
stoking the engines too much,
or not cleaning out the ashes
and clinkers. Or he has been
too much with the Lady
Nicotine, or fooling with Bac
chus, or, worst of all, with the
younger Aphrodite— all "messen
gers of strong prevailment in
unhardened youth." To have a
sweet outlook on life you must
have a clean body. As I look on
the clear-cut, alert, earnest
features, and the lithe, active
36

OF LIFE

forms of our college men, I
sometimes wonder whether or
not Socrates and Plato would
find the race improved. I am
sure they would love to look on
such a gathering as this. Make
their ideal yours— the fair mind
in the fair body. The one can
not be sweet and clean without
the other, and you must realise,
with Rabbi Ben Ezra, the great
truth that flesh and soul are
mutually helpful. The morning
outlook— which really makes the
day— is largely a question of a
clean machine — of physical
37

A WAY

morality in the wide sense of
the term. "C'est I'estomac qui fait
les heureux," as Voltaire says;
no dyspeptic can have a sane
outlook on life ; and a man
whose bodily functions are im
paired has a lowered moral resist
ance. To keep the body fit is
a help in keeping the mind pure,
and the sensations of the first
few hours of the day are the
best test of its normal state.
The clean tongue, the clear
head, and the bright eye are
birth-rights of each day. Just
as the late Professor Marsh
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OF LIFE

would diagnose an unknown
animal from a single bone, so
can the day be predicted from the
first waking hour. The start
is everything, as you well know,
and to make a good start you
must feel fit. In the young,
sensations of morning slackness
come most often from lack of
control of the two primal in
stincts—biologic habits— the one
concerned with the preservation
of the individual, the other with
the continuance of the species.
Yale students should by this
time be models of dietetic
39

A WAY

propriety, but youth does not
always reck the rede of the
teacher; and I dare say that
here, as elsewhere, careless
habits of eating are responsible
for much mental disability. My
own rule of life has been to cut
out unsparingly any article of
diet that had the bad taste to
disagree with me, or to indicate
in any way that it had abused
the temporary hospitality of the
lodging which I had provided.
To drink, nowadays, but few
students become addicted, but in
every large body of men a few are
40

OF LIFE

to be found whose incapacity for
the day results from the morning
clogging of nocturnally-flushed
tissues. As moderation is very
hard to reach, and as it has been
abundantly shown that the best
of mental and physical work
may be done without alcohol in
any form, the safest rule for the
young man is that which I am
sure most of you follow — abstin
ence. A bitter enemy to the
bright eye and the clear brain of
the early morning is tobacco
when smoked to excess, as it is
now by a large majority of

A WAY

students. Watch it, test it, and
if need be, control it. That
befogged, woolly sensation reach
ing from the forehead to the
occiput, that haziness of
memory, that cold fish-like eye,
that furred tongue, and last
week's taste in the mouth— too
many of you know them— I
know them — they often come
from too much tobacco. The
other primal instinct is the
heavy burden of the flesh which
Nature puts on all of us to
ensure a continuation of the
species. To drive Plato's team
42

OF LIFE

taxes the energies of the best of
us. One of the horses is a rag
ing, untamed devil, who can
only be brought into subjection
by hard fighting and severe
training. This much you all
know as men: once the bit is
between his teeth the black
steed Passion will take the
white horse Reason with you
and the chariot rattling over the
rocks to perdition.

With a fresh, sweet body you

can start aright without those

feelings of inertia that so often,

as Goethe says, make the

43

A WAY

morning's lazy leisure usher in
a useless day. Control of the
mind as a working machine, the
adaptation in it of habit, so that
its action becomes almost as
automatic as walking, is the
end of education— and yet how
rarely reached ! It can be accom
plished with deliberation and re
pose, never with hurry and worry.
Realise how much time there is,
how long the day is. Realise that
you have sixteen waking hours,
three or four of which at least
should be devoted to making a
silent conquest of your mental
44

OF LIFE

machinery. Concentration, by
which is grown gradually the
power to wrestle successfully
with any subject, is the secret of
successful study. No mind
however dull can escape the
brightness that comes from
steady application. There is an
old saying, "Youth enjoy eth not,
for haste " ; but worse than this,
the failure to cultivate the power
of peaceful concentration is the
greatest single cause of mental
breakdown. Plato pities the
young man who started at such
a pace that he never reached the
45

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goal. One of the saddest of
life's tragedies is the wreckage
of the career of the young
collegian by hurry, hustle,
bustle and tension— the human
machine driven day and night,
as no sensible fellow would use
his motor. Listen to the words
of a master in Israel, William
James: "Neither the nature
nor the amount of our work is
accountable for the frequency
and severity of our breakdowns,
but their cause lies rather in
those absurd feelings of hurry
and having no time, in that
46

OF LIFE

breathlessness and tension, that
anxiety of feature and that
solicitude of results, that lack
of inner harmony and ease, in
short, by which the work with
us is apt to be accompanied, and
from which a European who
would do the same work would,
nine out of ten times, be free." Es
bi/det ein Talent sich in der Stifle,
but it need not be for all day. A
few hours out of the sixteen
will suffice, only let them be
hours of daily dedication — in
routine, in order and in system,
and day by day you will gain in
47

A WAY

power over the mental mechan
ism, just as the child does over
the spinal marrow in walking, or
the musician over the nerve
centres. Aristotle somewhere
says that the student who wins
out in the fight must be slow in
his movements, with voice deep,
and slow speech, and he will not
be worried over trifles which
make people speak in shrill
tones and use rapid movements.
Shut close in hour-tight com
partments, with the mind direct
ed intensely upon the subject in
hand, you will acquire the
48

OF LIFE

capacity to do more and more,
you will get into training; and
once the mental habit is estab
lished, you are safe for life.

Concentration is an art of
slow acquisition, but little by
little the mind is accustomed to
habits of slow eating and care
ful digestion, by which alone
you escape the "mental dys-
pepsy" so graphically described
by Lowell in the Fable for Critics.
Do not worry your brains about
that bugbear Efficiency, which,
sought consciously and with
effort, is just one of those
D 49

A WAY

elusive qualities very apt to
be missed. The man's college
output is never to be gauged
at sight; all the world's coarse
thumb and finger may fail to
plumb his most effective work,
the casting of the mental
machinery of self-education,
the true preparation for a field
larger than the college campus.
Four or five hours daily— it is
not much to ask ; but one day
must tell another, one week
certify another, one month bear
witness to another of the same
story, and you will acquire a
50

OF LIFE

habit by which the one-talent
man will earn a high interest,
and by which the ten-talent
man may at least save his
capital.

Steady work of this sort
gives a man a sane outlook
on the world. No corrective
so valuable to the weariness,
the fever and the fret that are
so apt to wring the heart of
the young. This is the talis
man, as George Herbert says,

The famous stone
That turneth all to gold,

and with which, to the eternally

A WAY

recurring question, What is Life?
you answer, I do not think— I
act it; the only philosophy that
brings you in contact with its
real values and enables you to
grasp its hidden meaning. Over
the Slough of Despond, past
Doubting Castle and Giant
Despair, with this talisman you
may reach the Delectable
Mountains, and those Shep
herds of the Mind— Knowledge,
Experience, Watchful and
Sincere. Some of you may
think this to be a miserable
Epicurean doctrine— no better
52

OF LIFE

than that so sweetly sung by
Horace :—

Happy the man— and Happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own,
He who secure within can say,
To-morrow, do thy worst— for I have
lived to-day.

I do not care what you think,
I am simply giving you a philo
sophy of life that I have found
helpful in my work, useful in my
play. Walt Whitman, whose
physician I was for some years,
never spoke to me much of his
poems, though occasionally he
would make a quotation ; but I
remember late one summer
53

A WAY

afternoon as we sat in the
window of his little house in
Camden there passed a group
of workmen whom he greeted in
his usual friendly way. And
then he said : " Ah, the glory of
the day's work, whether with
hand or brain ! I have tried

To exalt the present and the real,
To teach the average man the glory of
his daily work or trade."

In this way of life each one
of you may learn to drive the
straight furrow and so come to
the true measure of a man.

54

OF LIFE

V

With body and mind in train
ing, what remains ?

Do you remember that most
touching of all incidents in
Christ's ministry, when the
anxious ruler Nicodemus came
by night, worried lest the things
that pertained to his everlasting
peace were not a part of his
busy and successful life ? Christ's
message to him is His message
to the world— never more needed
than at present : " Ye must be
55

A WAY

born of the spirit." You wish to
be with the leaders— as Yale men
it is your birthright— know the
great souls that make up the
moral radium of the world. You
must be born of their spirit,
initiated into their fraternity,
whether of the spiritually-minded
followers of the Nazarene or
of that larger company, elect
from every nation, seen by St.
John.

Begin the day with Christ and
His prayer— you need no other.
Creedless, with it you have re
ligion; creed-stuffed, it will
56

OF LIFE

leaven any theological dough in
which you stick. As the soul is
dyed by the thoughts, let no day
pass without contact with the
best literature of the world.
Learn to know your Bible,
though not perhaps as your
fathers did. In forming char
acter and in shaping conduct, its
touch has still its ancient power.
Of the kindred of Ram and sons
of Elihu, you should know its
beauties and its strength. Fif
teen or twenty minutes day by
day will give you fellowship with
the great minds of the race, and
57

A WAY

little by little as the years pass
you extend your friendship with
the immortal dead. They will
give you faith in your own day.
Listen while they speak to you
of the fathers. But each age has
its own spirit and ideas, just as it
has its own manners and plea
sures. You are right to believe
that yours is the best University,
at its best period. Why should
you look back to be shocked at
the frowsiness and dullness of
the students of the seventies or
even of the nineties? And cast
no thought forward, lest you
58

OF LIFE

reach a period when you and
yours will present to your suc
cessors the same dowdiness of
clothes and times. But while
change is the law, certain great
ideas flow fresh through the
ages, and control us effectually
as in the days of Pericles. Man
kind, it has been said, is always
advancing, man is always the
same. The love, hope, fear and
faith that make humanity, and
the elemental passions of the
human heart, remain unchanged,
and the secret of inspiration in
any literature is the capacity to
59

A WAY

touch the cord that vibrates in a
sympathy that knows nor time
nor place.

The quiet life in day-tight com
partments will help you to bear
your own and others' burdens
with a light heart. Pay no heed
to the Batrachians who sit croak
ing idly by the stream. Life is
a straight, plain business, and
the way is clear, blazed for you
by generations of strong men,
into whose labours you enter
and whose ideals must be your
inspiration. In my mind's eye
I can see you twenty years hence
60

OF LIFE

—resolute -eyed, broad - headed,
smooth-faced men who are in the
world to make a success of life ;
but to whichever of the two great
types you belong, whether con
trolled by emotion or by reason,
you will need the leaven of their
spirit, the only leaven potent
enough to avert that only too
common Nemesis to which the
Psalmist refers : " He gave them
their heart's desire, but sent lean
ness withal into their souls."

I quoted Dr. Johnson's remark
about the trivial things that in
fluence. Perhaps this slight
61

A WAY OF LIFE

word of mine may help some of
you so to number your days that
you may apply your hearts unto
wisdom.

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

AEQUANIMITAS AND
OTHER ESSAYS

H. K. LEWIS, London, and
KENNITH BLAKISTON, Philadelphia.

AN ALABAMA
STUDENT AND
OTHER ESSAYS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,
Oxford and New York.

COUNSELS fcf IDEALS
FROM THE WRITINGS
OF WILLIAM OSLER

Selected by DR. CARMAC.

OXFORD PRESS, Oxford and New York.

TEXT BOOK
OF MEDICINE

Eighth Edition, 1912.
APPLETON &* Co., London and New York.

MODERN MEDICINE-

A SYSTEM Second Edition, in 5 vols.

(With DR. McCRAE).

LEA <&•» FKBIGER, Philadelphia.

BY

WILLIAM OSLER

M.D., F.R.S., Regius Professor oj Medicine at
Oxford.

SCIENCE AND
IMMORTALITY

" We can recommend the volume not only
for Its literary charm , but for the thought
ful and suggestive discussion of the com
forting conception of immortality from the
standpoint of the scientific physician rather
than from that of the philosopher or
theologian. Professor Osier* s little book is
worthy of him as a disciple of Sir Thomas
Browne, and we can only hope that this,
a modern ' Religio Medici,' will be widely
read and thoughtfully studied by both lay
readers and medical readers"

THE LANCET.

EY THE SAME AUTHOR

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