Therefore
let us now come to the ground of disownment and
let us see what the nature of the charge is. It is
necessary to recur once more to the intent of the
lawgiver; for, suppose we grant you briefly the
right to disown as often as you wish and also concede
you this right even against your benefactor, you are
not to disown casually, I take it, or for any and eve
cause. The lawgiver does not say that the father
may disown for any reason that he may chance to
allege—that it is enough just to express the wish
and find a fault. Else why should we need a court?
No, he commits it to you, gentlemen of the jury,
to consider whether the father’s anger is based upon
just and sufficient grounds or not. This, then, is
what you should now look into. And IJ shall begin
with what immediately followed his insanity.



 
 
The first act of his sanity was to set aside the disownment, and I was a saviour, a benefactor, all in
allto him. No charge, I take it, could go with that.
And as to what followed, what do you censure in all
of it? What service, what attention proper to a son
did I omit? When did I sleep away from home?
Of what ill-timed carouses, of what riotous revels do
you accuse me? What licentiousness has there
been? What pander have I assaulted? Who has
filed any charges? Nobody at all. Yet these are
the deeds for which the law especially sanctions disownment.
 
“No, but your stepmother began to be ill.” Well,
do you accuse me of that, and demand satisfaction
for the illness?
 
“No,” he says. What, then?
“That when you are ordered to treat her, you do not
consent; and on that account would merit disownment for disobeying your father.” Deferring for a
moment the question what sort of orders on his
part, when I cannot obey them, cause me to be
considered disobedient, I first assert simply that the
law does not allow him to issue all orders, and that I
am not obliged to obey all orders under all circumstances. In the matter of commands, sometimes
disobedience is unexceptionable, sometimes it justifies anger and punishment. If you yourself are ill,
and I am indifferent; if you bid me manage the
household, and I am neglectful; if you direct me to
oversee the estate, and I am indiligent—all this and
the like of it affords reasonable grounds for a father’s
censure. But these other matters are within the discretion of us children, belonging as they do to our
callings and the exercise of them; particularly if
the father himself is in no way wronged. For

 

really, if a scribe’s father gives him the order,
“Write this, my boy, not that,” or a musician’s
father, “Play this tune, not that,” or a coppersmith’s father, “Forge things like this, not like that,”
would anyone put up with his disowning his son
because the son does not exercise his calling in
accordance with the views of the father? No one,
I think.
 
In the case of the medical profession, the more
distinguished it is and the more serviceable to the
world, the more unrestricted it should be for those
who practise it. It is only just that the art of healing should carry with it some privilege in respect to
the liberty of practising it; that no compulsion and
no commands should be put upon a holy calling,
taught by the gods and exercised by men of learning; that it should not be subject to enslavement
by the law, or to voting and judicial punishment, or
to fear and a father’s threats and a layman’s wrath.
Consequently, if I were to say to you, as clearly and
expressly as this: ‘I am unwilling to give treatment,
and I do not do so, although Ican; my knowledge of
the profession is for my benefit alone and my father’s,
and to others I wish to be a layman,” what tyrant
so high-handed that he would constrain me to practise
my calling against my will? Such things should, in
my opinion, be amenable to entreaties and supplications, not to laws and fits of anger and courts: the
physician ought to be persuaded, not ordered; he
ought to be willing, not fearful; he ought not to be
haled to the bedside, but to take pleasure in coming
of his own accord. Surely his calling is exempt
from paternal compulsion in view of the fact that


 

physicians have honours, precedence, immunities,
and privileges publicly bestowed on them by states.
 
This, then, is what I might say without circumlocution in behalf of my profession if you had had me
taught and had been at much pains and expense that
I might learn, and I were nevertheless reluctant to
undertake this one cure, which was possible. But as
things stand, consider how absolutely unreasonable
a thing you are doing in not allowing me to use my
own possession freely. I did not learn this profession
while I was your son or subject to your jurisdiction,
and yet I learned it for you (aye, you were the first to
profit by it) though I had no help from you towards
learning it. What teacher did you furnish money
for? What supply of drugs? None at all. No,
poor as I was, in want of necessities, and pitied by
my teachers, I got myself educated, and the assistance
towards learning which I had from my father was
grief, loneliness, poverty, the hatred of my family,
and the aversion of my kinsmen. In return for this,
do you now think fit to utilize my profession and wish
to be master of all that I acquired when you were
not my master? Be content if I have already done
you a good turn of my own accord, without previous
indebtedness to you, for then as now nothing could
have been required of meas an expressionof gratitude.