[p. 332]of
the earth. For our natural disposition is, as it were, the soil; the
tenets of our teacher are, as it were, the seed; instruction in youth
is like the planting of the seed in the ground at the proper season;
the place where the instruction is communicated is like the food imparted
to vegetables by the atmosphere; diligent study is like the cultivation
of the fields; and it is time which imparts strength to all things
and brings them to maturity.
Part 4
Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine, and
having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in traveling
through the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in
reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure, and a bad fund to those
who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of self-reliance
and contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For
timidity betrays a want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There
are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes
its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.
Part 5
Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons;
and it is not lawful to import them to the profane until they have
been initiated in the mysteries of the science.