with money to buy pictures for him, he stole it to
spend on his wife. Such cases are not confined to eminent artists.
Unsuccessful, unskilful men are often much more scrupulous than
successful ones. In the ranks of ordinary skilled labor many men are to
be found who earn good wages and are never out of a job because they are
strong, indefatigable, and skilful, and who therefore are bold in a high
opinion of themselves; but they are selfish and tyrannical, gluttonous
and drunken, as their wives and children know to their cost.

Not only do these talented energetic people retain their self-respect
through shameful misconduct: they do not even lose the respect of
others, because their talents benefit and interest everybody, whilst
their vices affect only a few. An actor, a painter, a composer, an
author, may be as selfish as he likes without reproach from the public
if only his art is superb; and he cannot fulfil his condition without
sufficient effort and sacrifice to make him feel noble and martyred in
spite of his selfishness. It may even happen that the selfishness of
an artist may be a benefit to the public by enabling him to concentrate
himself on their gratification with a recklessness of every other
consideration that makes him highly dangerous to those about him. In
sacrificing others to himself he is sacrificing them to the public he
gratifies; and the public is quite content with that arrangement. The
public actually has an interest in the artist's vices.

It has no such interest in the surgeon's vices. The surgeon's art is
exercised at its expense, not for its gratification. We do not go to the
operating table as we go to the theatre, to the picture gallery, to the
concert room, to be entertained and delighted: we go to be tormented and
maimed, lest a worse thing should befall us. It is of the most extreme
importance to us that the experts on whose assurance we face this horror
and suffer this mutilation should leave no interests but our own to
think of; should judge our cases scientifically; and should feel about
them kindly. Let us see what guarantees we have: first for the science,
and then for the kindness.

ARE DOCTORS MEN OF SCIENCE?

I presume nobody will question the existence of widely spread popular
delusion that every doctor is a titan of science. It is escaped only in
the very small class which understands by science something more than
conjuring with retorts and spirit lamps, magnets and