Letter 95 — On the Usefulness of Basic Principles (§9)

“I mean something like this: A scholar will blush for shame, not if he makes a grammatical blunder intentionally, but if he makes it unintentionally; if a physician does not recognize that his patient is failing, he is a much poorer practitioner than if he recognizes the fact and conceals his knowledge. But in this art of living a voluntary mistake is the more shameful. Furthermore, many arts, aye and the most liberal of them all, have their special doctrines, and not mere precepts of advice—the medical profession, for example. There are the different schools of Hippocrates, of Asclepiades, of Themison.”