Maxims of Goethe 60

In art and knowledge, as also in deed and action, everything depends on a pure apprehension of the object and a treatment of it according to its nature. 

William Hogarth, The Company of Undertakers

Doctors get a lot of flak, surpassed only by the invectives hurled at lawyers. Though any man, in any trade, has it within himself to become a total scoundrel, I suspect that the quacks and the shysters have targets painted on their backs, because their vocations ought to be so noble, and yet far too many of them are instead seduced by fortune and fame. 

Did you honestly think those mercenary mothers nagged their daughters to marry a surgeon on account of  the rich moral lives they would surely share together? 

In my own neck of the woods, I can confirm that academics are just as likely to be vainglorious blowhards, but the difference is that only other academics will bother to notice. Furthermore, an incompetent plumber will quickly lose his customers, while an incompetent doctor can still hide behind the magnificent appearance of his profession. 

When students see this work by Hogarth, their first reaction is invariably to comment on how ignorant people were back then, and how blessed we are to now be so scientifically enlightened. I encourage them to see the human condition more broadly, and to recognize how charlatans can be found in any time or place, but they remain convinced that modern medicine can do no wrong. I fear some of them will learn otherwise, sooner rather than later. 

Of all the parish priests I had in my adult years, only one stood out as a man of true faith, and the rest were abusers or frauds. Similarly, of all the doctors who ever treated my family, only one was a true healer, and the rest left us both sicker and poorer. You can counter with your clever statistics, and I will rely on my education from the school of hard knocks. I will leave it at that. . . . 

Hogarth presents his doctors in a caricature of a coat of arms, with three infamous snake oil peddlers of his time on the top—John Taylor, Sarah Mapp, and Joshua Ward—and a dozen "reputable" physicians below them. The "quack-heads" and the "cane-heads" differ only by their professional trappings. In modern terms, one dispenses his cures from a storefront in a seedy strip mall, while the other receives junkets from the pharmaceutical corporations. 

The description further mocks their posturing with the refined language of heraldry: 

The company of undertakers beareth, sable, a urinal, proper, between twelve quack-heads of the second, and twelve cane-heads, or consultant. On a chief, nebulae, ermine, one complete doctor, issuant, checkie, sustaining, in his right hand, a baton of the second. On his dexter and sinister sides two demi-doctors, issuant, of the second, and two cane-heads, issuant of the third; the first having one eye, couchant, towards the dexter side of the escutcheon; the second, faced, per pale, proper, and gules guardant. With this motto—Et plurima mortis imago. 

"And many are the faces of death." 

William Hogarth, A Consultation of Physicians, or the Company of Undertakers (1736) 

Delphic Maxims 69

Ἐγγύην φεῦγε 

Flee a pledge 

IMAGE: Jean-Francois de Troy, Jason Swearing Eternal Affection to Medea (1742) 

Seneca, Moral Letters 74.6

It is a result of complaints like these that we are unappreciative in our comments upon the gifts of heaven; we complain because they are not always granted to us, because they are few and unsure and fleeting. 
 
Hence we have not the will either to live or to die; we are possessed by hatred of life, by fear of death. Our plans are all at sea, and no amount of prosperity can satisfy us. And the reason for all this is that we have not yet attained to that good which is immeasurable and unsurpassable, in which all wishing on our part must cease, because there is no place beyond the highest. 
 
Do you ask why virtue needs nothing? Because it is pleased with what it has, and does not lust after that which it has not. Whatever is enough is abundant in the eyes of virtue. 
 
Dissent from this judgment, and duty and loyalty will not abide. For one who desires to exhibit these two qualities must endure much that the world calls evil; we must sacrifice many things to which we are addicted, thinking them to be goods. 
 
Gone is courage, which should be continually testing itself; gone is greatness of soul, which cannot stand out clearly unless it has learned to scorn as trivial everything that the crowd covets as supremely important; and gone is kindness and the repaying of kindness, if we fear toil, if we have acknowledged anything to be more precious than loyalty, if our eyes are fixed upon anything except the best. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 74 
 
When I grumble about how I didn’t get what I wanted, did I first bother to ask about what I needed? My frustrations come from loving the wrong things, not from receiving the wrong things. 
 
It took me some time to realize how many of our efforts are wasted on griping, and now I discipline myself to avoid whining about the whiners. It is enough for me to manage my own resentments, while offering a kind word to my neighbor who also struggles. Even a solidarity of silence is healthier than incessantly casting blame. 
 
I long assumed that other people were far happier and more fulfilled than me, but I was allowing myself to be misled by the outer impressions. Once I got to know something more of their souls on the inside, I saw the very same anxiety and pain, all because we had lost our way. 
 
We too easily forget who we are, and what we were made for, by seeking out a remedy in all the wrong places. If I am only tinkering with the accidents, while neglecting the very essence, I will never find peace. 
 
The philosophy of it is simple, though it feels so formidable because its demands are absolute: as a creature of reason and will, I will achieve happiness, the fulfillment of my nature, by perfecting those powers. The rest is relative, becoming good or bad through the exercise of my judgments about whatever may happen. 
 
To speak of virtue or honor may sound so stuffy, but what other terms can describe the pinnacle of human excellence? I suspect our apprehension about first and foremost being good people has to do with a fixation on the lower at the expense of the higher, a fear of risking an ascent from the base to the noble. 
 
No, the virtuous man will not surrender to the vulgar, the lowest common denominator, because he chooses what is best, not what is easy. Without such a moral conviction, a man fails to freely embrace his total responsibility for himself, and so he can hardly practice any justice or compassion for others. 
 
Each moment spent complaining could be better spent improving. When there is virtue in here, there is no threat from obstacles out there. 

—Reflection written in 10/2013