Character : a valedictory address to the graduating class of the Memphis Medical College / delivered by H.V. Wooten, at the annual commencement, February 26th, 1853.

  • Wooten, H. V. (Hardy V.)
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Character : a valedictory address to the graduating class of the Memphis Medical College / delivered by H.V. Wooten, at the annual commencement, February 26th, 1853. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    7/24
    fined sense of our relations to those around us,—a just regard for our duties to our day and generation—and a fostering care for those gentler, and ennobling sentiments and im- pulses of our nature, which elevate and dignify man, above the passions and practices of mere animal sensuality. A great and cultivated intellect, under the control of an im- moral will, is as deadly in its influences upon all that is true, and pure in man, as the exhalations of the famous Upas. Indeed, the most powerful fiends whom Heaven has permit- ted from time to time, to scourge our earth, have been men of the most gifted, and often, of the most cultivated minds. When we look out upon the vast amount of moral waste, that blots and disfigures the race of man, we often find the dis- mal picture lighted up—as if to make its deformity more hid- eous,—by the rays of intellectual splendor which shine forth from its midst, and all around it. We see men, under the light, and in the exercise of the most gifted intellects, pulling down around them all that is good, and noble and true. An immoral public sentiment, as the destroying sirocco, sweeps down, and overwhelms, every monument of intellectual excellence, and blasts even the ground upon which it stood. To support, in healthful vigor, the moral character, re- quires that all of its attributes should be, not only introduced, but faithfully nurtured and exercised. Whatever teachers, and parents may have done, there is still, much for every man to do, in the moral education of himself. The idea that knowledge, or intelligence, will give a proper guidance to the will of men, has been proven by all history to be a delusion. Whatever the intelligence may be, if the will, and the senti- ments are corrupt, and licentious, the wickedness and mis- ery of the individual will be measured only by the capabili- ties of his intellect. But let us examine the individual value of some of these elements of character to which we have alluded. First then, there is one of especial, and paramount importance, because it forms an essential cement, by which all others are held together, and made effective. I refer to that principle which is termed Integrity. What shall we be profited by the posses- sion of any of the higher virtues, if we are deficient in the