i6S PARACELSt/S 



The Virtues of a Physician 



The object of medical instruction should be to educate 

 the natural talents of those who are born physicians, so 

 that they may make use of the experiences gained by 

 their elders. It is useless and dangerous to make a 

 medical practitioner out of a person who is not a physi- 

 cian at heart. 



'^ The greatest and highest of all qualifications which 

 a physician should possess is Sapientia — i.e., Wisdom — 

 and without this qualification all his learning will amount 

 to little or nothing as far as any benefit or usefulness 

 to humanity is concerned. He alone is in possession of 

 wisdom who is in possession of reason and knows how 

 to use it without error or doubt. The book of wisdom 

 is the recognition of the truth, and the truth is God ; for 

 He who has caused all things to come into existence, 

 and who is Himself the eternal fountain of all things, 

 is also the source of all wisdom and the book in which 

 the truth is to be found without any interpolation or 

 error. In and through Him alone shall we be able to 

 find wisdom and to act wisely, and without Him all our 

 learning will be mere foolishness. As the sun shines 

 upon us from above and causes plants to grow, so the 

 talents necessary for the exercise of this art, whose germs 

 exist in the human heart, must be developed in the rays 

 of the sun of divine wisdom. We cannot find wisdom 

 in books, nor in any external thing ; we can only find it 

 within ourselves. Man cannot create day, nor can he 

 create night ; and he cannot create wisdom, but it must 

 come to him from above. He who seeks wisdom in the 

 fountain of wisdom is the true disciple, but he who seeks 

 it where it does not exist will seek for it in vain." 



Wisdom is not created, manufactured, or " developed " 

 by man, but it becomes manifest in him by its own power, 

 whenever the conditions are favourable. Intellectual 



