hor.??is it a custom?
hamlet. ay, marry, is't:
but, to my mind, though i am native here
and to the manner born, it is a custom
more honoured in the breach than the observance.
hamlet, act i, sc. iv.
if a moralist were to divide his catalogue of immoralities into such as were of general commission, and such as occurred in the conduct of the various trades and professions, we fear the latter division would suggest no flattering position to humanity. an elevation somewhat above gifted creatures it might be; but still we fear it would be at so low a level as to afford man but a humiliating indication of the height from which he had fallen. he would, in too many instances, perhaps, find his real claims to his high destiny about equal to the shadowy difference between a creature who fulfils some only of his responsibilities, and one who has no responsibilities to fulfil. we should like to hear some grave philosopher discourse on fashion: it is surely a curious thing, for there is a fashion in everything. it is very like habit; but it is not habit neither. habit is a garment, which takes some time to fit easily, and is then not abandoned without difficulty. fashion is a good fit instanter, but is thrown aside at once without the smallest trouble. the most grotesque or absurd custom which slowly-paced habit bores us with examining, is at once adopted by fashion with a characteristic assentation.
241
morals are by no means free from this kind of conventionalism: so much the contrary, that few things evince more strongly the power of fashion. it might be imagined that the multiplication of examples would tend to teach the true nature of the thing exemplified; but it would not seem so with error; "tout au contraire." arts or acts, which are tabooed as vicious in the singular number, become, in the plasticity of our moral grammars, very tolerable in the plural. things that the most hardy shrink from perpetrating single-handed, are regarded as easy "compliances with custom" when "joint-stock" vices; practices which, when partial, men are penetrating enough to discover to be unchristian, or sufficiently sensitive to regard as ungentlemanly, pass muster with marvellous lubricity when they become universal. we can anathemize, with self-complacent indignation, vices in which we have no share; but we are abundantly charitable when we discuss those in which we have a common property; and, finally, moral accounts are settled very much to our own satisfaction, as butler says, by compounding
"for sins we are inclined to,
by damning those we have no mind to."
after all, society keeps a pretty good "look-out" after offences distributed in common. the law is tolerably comprehensive of things which are of general commission; and mankind, sooner or later, contrive to catch, or successfully oppose, the numerous little enormities which slip through the finest of our legal meshes.
"raro antecedentem scelestum,
deseruit pede p?na claudo."
from all this it results that moral obliquities, which fall within the observation of society, make but an up-hill game; that which is felt to be prejudicial to the interests of all men, is easily determined to be vicious. but here again there is much in fashion. society has often determined that the immorality of a thing is not to be measured by the nature of the act, nor the motive even on which it has been founded, so much as by the more refined test afforded by the position of the actor. one242 man may, like a sort of commercial megatherium, gorge, with railway velocity, provisions which a once-breathing, fond affection and a cold world had alike determined to be the life-blood of widows and orphans, and yet have noblemen and others for his associate! he may perhaps be a legislator in a great nation; whilst the poor starveling, who steals for the vulgar purpose of satisfying hunger, may be sent to the treadmill, where he may solve at leisure the problem thus set him, by "the most enlightened nation on earth."
again, vices which have a known influence in disturbing the relations of society are in various ways opposed by the more public influence of religion. so that in the end a man finds—although he may arrive at the conclusion, only by exhausting all other views before he hits on those which lead to it—that honesty is as good a way of getting on as any other; or he may advance perhaps even on this utilitarian creed so far as to agree with tillotson: that people take more trouble to get to hell, than would suffice to carry them to heaven. the immoralities of trades and professions lie in a very different position, and involve peculiarities which favour their growth and perpetuity.
they are committed in secret;—people are proverbially cautious of attacking the weak positions of others, who feel that their own are ill-defended. this, and the established man?uvres of each calling, enable an individual to do a good deal "off his own bat," without, as one of our bishops happily expressed it, "being caught out." in trade we are sometimes informed that a thing cannot be sold cheaper; that the price asked is already less than the cost; and people are appropriately addressed as idiots, who every day appear to believe that which common sense shows to be impossible.
your purveyors will sometimes tell you that they are not living by the prices they charge; although you have just ascertained that the same article may be bought at infinitely less cost in the next market. the other day, a watchmaker told us that our watch wanted a good deal of looking to, and, amongst other things, "no doubt cleaning;" but this he discovered, we suppose, by some recondite mesmeric process in a book, which recorded243 when it had been cleaned last, without looking at the watch at all.
as regards professions, lawyers are said to defend right and wrong with indiscriminate avidity, with the encouraging prospect of obtaining more fruit in maintaining one wrong cause, than establishing twenty right.
then the real nature of these things is, like too many in other sciences, obscured by a cloudy nomenclature. we hear of "customs of the trade," "secrets of the trade," or "profession," applied to things which the moralist only recognizes under very different designations. sophisms thus secured, and which appear to minister to a man's interests, have their true colours developed with difficulty; to say nothing of it not being easy to discover that which there is no desire to examine.
if any man should be so "peculiar," or "crotchety," as to consider that names are of little import, and that "vice is vice, for a' that," and venture to anathematize any custom, or even refuse to be an accessory, in declining to wink at it, he may encounter charges of violating professional confidence, of being deficient in a proper esprit de corps, and be outvoted, for no better reason than that he cannot concur in the dogma, that a vicious sophism is more valuable than a simple truth; nor agree with the currier, "that leather is the best material for fortification." he may possibly be let off by conceding his connivance; which is little better than declining to be thief, as too shocking; but having no objection to the more lubricated position of the receiver.
but does any one for one moment believe that all this can be hung on any trade, or profession, with no effect? or that it will not have a baneful influence on every calling, and that in proportion as its real and proper duties are beneficent and exalted? now, whilst we claim for the medical profession a character which, in its single-mindedness and benevolence, yields to no other whatever, we fear it is not entirely free from these technical besettings.
in the medical profession, we trust, that which we, for want of a better term, designate as technical immoralities are exceptions.244 exceptional they may be, and we sincerely hope they are; but, in a crowded island, exceptions, even if relatively few, may be absolutely numerous; and whenever they occur, especially if men hold any position, one case of compromise of duty does more harm than a hundred of the most inflexible adhesions to it can remedy. suppose a patient apply to a surgeon with a complaint requiring one operation, and his fears incline him to another; he is informed it is improper for his case: that so far from relieving him, it will indefinitely increase his sufferings. the patient reiterates his wishes; the surgeon declines doing that which he would not have done in his own person. on lamenting what he believes to be the consequences of the patient's determination, to a brother surgeon, he is met by: "what a fool you must be to throw away —— guineas; if you don't do it, somebody else will."
he is too right in his prediction, and so is the surgeon who refused to operate, and he has lost a large fee; he receives the verification of his prediction subsequently from the patient, who exclaims, "sir, i never have a moment's ease!" and when, after weeks of suffering, the patient dies, the surgeon consoles himself with the melancholy satisfaction of not having contributed to sufferings which he was called in too late to remedy.
the more plastic practitioner has, it is true, taken fifty or a hundred guineas, it may be, out of the one pocket, and put it into his own; but in what way are mankind benefited? or does any one really think that the apparent gainer can ultimately be so? the fault in this, as in many other cases, is the ignorance of the public. there is nothing in the foregoing sketch that was not as easily intelligible to the commonest understanding, as that two and two are equal to four! and is it no evil that one man should pay so large a sum for so plain a piece of honesty? or that another should be rewarded, as the case may be, for ignorance, or a compromise of his duty?
let us take another case. a gentleman was called on to give a certificate; he examined the case, and found that the wording of the certificate called on him to certify to that which was diametrically opposite to the fact. he naturally declined,245 and, as the point was of some importance, went to the parties to explain. he was then informed that two professional men had, the previous day, given the certificate without hesitation. he is complimented on his conscientiousness, but never employed again by that family; and he has the further satisfaction of hearing that his place is supplied by one of his more accommodating brethren! we fear that in such a case there is a balance to be adjusted between the several persons, and an appropriate appellation to be discovered besides. we respectfully leave it to the reader's judgment to adjust the one, and to draw on his aptitude for nomenclature to supply the other.
again, a man is called in to a consultation; he disapproves of the treatment, but declares to the friends of the patient that every thing has been very properly done. in another case of consultation, finding that every thing has been really conducted properly, he commences an apparently different treatment, but essentially the same, without giving his confiding brother the benefit which his acquiescence in his views would necessarily imply.
in an operation, where the course is doubtful and the opinion various, the choice is left to the patient—that is, the decision of how the surgeon is to act is to be determined by him who is confessedly really least capable of judging. can it be right to perform a doubtful operation under such circumstances? should not the patient reflect that the temptations are all on one side? the attempt to dispense with the operation is laborious, time-consuming, anxious, encouraged perhaps only by small, minute accessions of improvement, interspersed with complaints of tedium and delay, and the result admitted to be doubtful; the operation, on the other hand, is a work of a few minutes, the remuneration munificent, the éclat productive, and the labour nothing. all this and much more no man can entirely prevent; the real cause is the ignorance of the public, which a very little of the labour they bestow on many far less important subjects would easily and quickly dispel.
if these and multitudes of similar things are evils; if they contribute to debase a profession and to charge the conscientious246 with unthankful office and unrequited labour, and to confer fame and profit on a triumphant chicanery; we surely must feel indebted—not only as professional men, not merely as patients, but in a far higher and wider sense—to a man who, availing himself of a commanding position for the highest purposes, endeavoured, by precept and example, to oppose all such proceedings, and to cultivate a high morale in the conduct of the profession. now no one more sedulously aimed at this than john abernethy. although we shall not, we trust, be accused of underrating the obligations we owe him in a professional or scientific sense, we think that, great as they are, they are at least equalled by those arising out of that duty-to-your-neighbour spirit which was so universally diffused through every thing he taught, and which, in his intercourse with his pupils, he never on any occasion failed to inculcate. we will endeavour to render what we mean intelligible, and perhaps we cannot do this better than by selecting a few illustrations from observation of "abernethy in consultation."