n only
arise out of exceptional things. A parallel with any of the other
learned professions will make the point plain. If I am prosecuted for
trespass, I will ask my solicitor which of the local lanes I am
forbidden to walk in. But if my solicitor, having gained my case, were
so elated that he insisted on settling what lanes I should walk in; if
he asked me to let him map out all my country walks, because he was
the perambulatory adviser of the community--then that solicitor would
solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through
woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and
attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying: "Sir,
I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman-French,
which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of
England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know
England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking
at it." As are the limits of the lawyer's special knowledge about
walking, so are the limits of the doctor's. If I fall over the stump
of a tree and break my leg, as is likely enough, I shall say to the
lawyer, "Please go and fetch the doctor." I shall do it because the
doctor really has a larger knowledge of a narrower area. There are
only a certain number of ways in which a leg can be broken; I know
none of them, and he knows all of them. There is such a thing as being
a specialist in broken legs. There is no such thing as being a
specialist in legs. When unbroken, legs are a matter of taste. If the
doctor has really mended my leg, he may merit a colossal equestrian
statue on the top of an eternal tower of brass. But if the doctor has
really mended my leg he has no more rights over it. He must not come
and teach me how to walk; because he and I learnt that in the same
school, the nursery. And there is no more abstract likelihood of the
doctor walking more elegantly than I do than there is of the barber or
the bishop or the burglar walking more elegantly than I do. There
cannot be a general specialist; the specialist can have no kind of
authority, unless he has avowedly limited his range. There cannot be
such a thing as the health adviser of the community, because there
cannot be such a thing as one who specialises in the universe.

Thus when Dr. Saleeby says that a young man about to be married should
be obliged to produce his health-book as he does his bank-book, the
expre