deal more about the schooling.]

[Sidenote: Appreciation of the healing art.]

And the first branch of science to which I felt inclination was
medicine. It had a great attraction for me because I recognised its
excellence and the more I acquired it the more I loved it and the more
earnestly I studied it. Now when I had progressed sufficiently far to
think of treating invalids I took counsel with myself and reflected in
the following manner on the four objects for which mankind so earnestly
strive. "Which of them shall I seek to acquire with the help of my art,
money, prosperity, fame, or reward in the next world"? In the choice of
my calling the decisive factor was my experience that men of
understanding praise medicine and that the adherents of no religion
censure it. I found, however, in medical literature that the best
physician is he who by his devotion to his vocation strives only after a
reward in the next world; and I resolved to act accordingly and not to
think of worldly gain, so that I may not be likened to the merchant who
sold for a worthless bead a ruby by which he could have acquired a world
of wealth. On the other hand, I found in the books of the ancients that
when a physician strives after the reward in the next world by means of
his art he thereby forfeits no fraction of his worldly guerdon but that
therein he is to be compared with the peasant who carefully sows his
plot of ground to acquire corn and who subsequently without further
effort gets along with the harvest all manner of vegetation.

[The cultivator along with the harvest gets grass and vegetation which
may serve as a pasture for cattle.]

[Sidenote: Burzoe starts practice.]