Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 3.13

As physicians always have their instruments and knives ready for cases that suddenly require their skill, so you should have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest, with a recollection of the bond which unites the divine and human to one another.

For neither will you do anything well that pertains to man without at the same time having a reference to things divine, nor the contrary.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 3 (tr Long)

We naturally expect the artist or craftsman to be familiar with the tools of his trade, and we assume that he is trained in their use through constant practice. His tools become like an extension of himself. He will know what needs to be done, and what he will need at hand in order to get it done.

We would further expect this to be especially true for a physician, who must diagnose and treat ailments of the body at a moment’s notice, and at the most unexpected times, so he will always try to have his tool of the trades available. I could hardly expect my mechanic to fix my car if I were to show up at his door in the middle of the night, but I would never hesitate to ask my doctor to fix what ails me at any time of the day.

We should rightly be impressed at the training and skill that go into any trade, but especially with those where so much can be at stake so suddenly.

I now think of how much more is at stake, at every moment of our lives, when we make those ultimate decisions about what is true or false, right or wrong. Even the greatest medical skills will be useless if they are not ordered toward the service of the human good. So what are those even more crucial tools we need to pursue our highest meaning and purpose?

Many of us seem to go into the field woefully unequipped. We may have prepared ourselves for years in our professions, in the mastery of the means, but we have paid little attention to the vocation of Nature, to the achievement of the end.

I once had a moment of extreme frustration, resolved only with the application of the most profuse Stoic calm, when I was being repeatedly criticized by someone for wasting so much of my time on philosophy. Politics was the way to go, I was told, the practical arena where things got done, not some ivory tower filled with useless ideas and values.

Instead of feeling angry or hurt, I needed only to remember that we differed on the question of whether ends are superior to means, whether what we lived for should determine the merit of all of the rest of our living.

I will be the first to insist that life should be eminently practical, but I do not assume this excludes questions of meaning and purpose. I work from the premise that the life well lived must of necessity include these questions, because it is precisely what gives direction to every action.

To use a common Classical image, the best seaman, skilled in all the trimming of sails, will be useless without the art of navigation. A politician uninformed by a conscience would be quite similar. He may have all the tools of management and organization, but it will be his moral tools that determine if he employs his professional skills for justice or for tyranny, for service or for slaughter. 

I recognize that the tools I need at hand at all times are those that will allow me to consider myself, and everything that is around me, in relation to such guiding principles. I must try to understand the relationship of the whole and the part, of the unchanging and the changing, of the absolute and the relative, of what is divine and what is human.

Within myself, it is my mind that shares more fully in what is divine, and my body that shares more fully in things of the earth. To know myself is then to know how each aspect must play its part, not in exclusion of one another, but in harmony with one another.

Put another way, it isn’t about the forest or the trees, but about the forest through each one of those trees. The relationship goes both ways, from the top down and from the bottom up. As Marcus Aurelius had previously said, I will understand something more fully when I grasp how all of Nature works together, both the higher and the lower.

I don’t think I could ever have made a good physician, not only because I have a squeamish tendency, but also because I’m hardly clever enough to understand the principles or manage the tools. I maintain hope, however, that I can still muddle my way through becoming a good man, and gain some competence with the use of the tools I need to do so. 

Written in 3/2005

Image: Roman surgical instruments, found at Pompeii