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.

4. Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine,
and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in
travelling 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 lack of skill. They are, indeed, two
things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its
possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.

5. Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to
sacred persons; and it is not lawful to impart them to the
profane until they have been initiated in the mysteries of the
science.




JOURNEYS IN DIVERSE PLACES