Wise indifference of the wise in anesthesia.

~!T7T€p KaL TO lcupeVEW Kat T6 vyu.f~ew of! TO Ttj-tvew ~ j-t~ TSj-tV€W ~ cpapj-taKdmv ~ j-t~ cpapj-taKeVm • trJ"Tlv, d.A.A.a T?! woi. J OHN Dewey, "the most profound and understanding thinker on education that the world has yet known" (Ernest C. Moore), has said repeatedly that mankind so far has been ruled by things and by words, not by thought. Humanity has not been in possession of the conditions of secure and effective thinking. Unless we master things, we shall continue to be mastered by them; the magic that words cast upon things may indeed disguise our subjection or render us less dissatisfied with it, but after all sdence, not words, casts the only compelling spell upon things. Ideas of this nature have been presented by other philosophers off and on throughout the ages. Indeed, they correspond to the meaning of the title of this paper, "wise indifference of the wise," which is taken from a line in Tennyson's poem, A Dedication. Strabo, the Greek historian and geographer, writing about the year A.D. 18, seems to have been impressed with the great importance which the Stoic philosopheors attached to the virtue of "marvelling at nothing," when he said: "Writers also add the changes resulting from the migrations of peoples, wishing to develop in us, to a still greater extent, that virtue of not marvelling at things (a virtue which is lauded by Democritus and all the other philosophers; for they put it in a class with freedom from dread and from per-turbability and from terror)," (Geography, 1, 3, 21). By heaping up instances of marvellous occurrences, he hoped to remove doubt and encourage the scientific spirit. Cicero, in his de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, says of the philosopher generally , "Even if he supposed happiness to consist in knowledge, still he designed that his study of natural philosophy should procure him peace of mind; since that is his conception of the Chief Good, which he entitles ''freedom from alarm" (V. xxix. 87). It would seem that these illustrations are, from our point of view, included in the sense of the epigraph of this address, taken from Aristotle, namely: ''Just as to practise medicine and healing consists not in applying or not applying the knife, in using or not using medicines, but in doing so in a certain way.'' Elsewhere , Aristotle mentions the quality of high-mindedness as being pre-eminent …