moderation, harmony, and a “sound mind in a sound body.”
There is a lot of talk today about “medical ethics,” which is another way of saying that a doctor must practice medicine according to certain ethical rules. For instance, a doctor may not give healthy people a prescription for narcotics. A doctor must also maintain professional secrecy, which means that he is not allowed to reveal anything a patient has told him about his illness. These ideas go back to Hippocrates. He required his pupils to take the following oath:
I will follow that system or regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider to be for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. 1 will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked nor suggest any such counsel, and in like manner I will not give to a woman the means to produce an abortion. Whenever I go into a house, I will go for the benefit of the sick and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption, and further, from the seduction of females or males, whether freemen or slaves.
Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, I see or hear which ought not to be spoken abroad, I will keep secret. So long as I continue to carry out this oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men in all times, but should I violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot.
Sophie awoke with a start on Saturday morning. Was it a dream or had she really seen the philosopher?
She felt under the bed with one hand. Yes—there lay the letter that had come during the night. It wasn’t only a dream.
She had definitely seen the philosopher! And what’s more, with her own eyes she had seen him take her letter!
She crouched down on the floor and pulled out all the typewritten pages from under the bed. But what was that? Right by the wall there was something red. A scarf, perhaps?
Sophie edged herself in under the bed and pulled out a red silk scarf. It wasn’t hers, that was for sure!
She examined it more closely and gasped when she saw HILDE written in ink along the seam.
Hilde! But who was Hilde? How could their paths keep crossing like this?
Socrates
…wisest is she who knows she does not know…
Sophie put on a summer dress and hurried down to the kitchen. Her mother was standing by the kitchen table. Sophie decided not to say anything about the silk scarf.
“Did you bring in the newspaper?” she asked.
Her mother turned.
“Would you get it for me?”
Sophie was out of the door in a flash, down the gravel path to the mailbox.
Only the newspaper. She couldn’t expect an answer so soon, she supposed. On the front page of the paper she read something about the Norwegian UN battalion in Lebanon.
The UN battalion ... wasn’t that the postmark on the card from Hilde’s father? But the postage stamp had been Norwegian. Maybe the Norwegian UN soldiers had their own post office with them.
“You’ve become very interested in the newspaper,” said her mother drily when Sophie returned to the kitchen.
Luckily her mother said no more about mailboxes and stuff, either during breakfast or later on that day. When she went shopping, Sophie took her letter about Fate down to the den.
She was surprised to see a little white envelope beside the cookie tin with the other letters from the philosopher. Sophie was quite sure she had not put it there.
This envelope was also wet around the edges. And it had a couple of deep holes in it, just like the one she had received yesterday.
Had the philosopher been here? Did he know about her secret hiding place? Why was the envelope wet?
All these questions made her head spin. She opened the letter and read the note:
Dear Sophie, I read your letter with great interest— and not without some regret. I must unfortunately disappoint you with regard to the invitation. We shall meet one day, but it will probably be quite a while before I can come in person to Captain’s Bend.
I must add that from now on I will no longer be able to deliver the letters personally. It would be much too risky in the long run. In the future, letters will be delivered by my little messenger. On the other hand, they will be brought directly to the secret place in the garden.
You may continue to contact me whenever you feel the need. When you do, put a pink envelope out with a cookie or a lump of sugar in it. When the messenger finds it, he will bring it straight to me.
P.S. It is not pleasant to decline a young lady’s invitation to coffee, but sometimes it is a matter of necessity.
P.P.S. If you should come across a red silk scarf anywhere, please take care of it. Sometimes personal property gets mixed up. Especially at school and places like that, and this is a philosophy school.
Yours, Alberto Knox
Sophie had lived for almost fifteen years, and had received quite a lot of letters in her young life, at least at Christmas and on birthdays. But this letter was the strangest one she had ever received.
It had no postage stamp. It hadn’t even been put in the mailbox. It had been brought straight to Sophie’s top-secret hideout in the old hedge. The fact that it was wet in the dry spring weather was also most mystifying.
The strangest thing of all was the silk scarf, of course. The philosopher must have another pupil. That was it. And this other pupil had lost a red silk scarf. Right. But how had she managed to lose it under Sophie’s bed?
And Alberto Knox … what kind of a name was that?
One thing was confirmed—the connection between the philosopher and Hilde Moller Knag. But that Hilde’s own father was now confusing their addresses—that was completely incomprehensible.
Sophie sat for a long time thinking about what connection there could possibly be between Hilde and herself. Finally she gave up. The philosopher had written that she would meet him one day. Perhaps she would meet Hilde too.
She turned the letter over. She now saw that there were some sentences written on the back as well:
Sophie knew that the short sentences that came in the white envelopes were intended to prepare her for the next big envelope, which would arrive shortly thereafter. She suddenly had an idea. If the “messenger” came to the den to deliver a brown envelope, Sophie could simply sit and wait for him. Or was it a her? She would definitely hang on to whoever it was until he or she told her more about the philosopher! The letter said that the “messenger” was little. Could it be a child? “Is there such a thing as natural modesty?” Sophie knew that “modesty” was an old- fashioned word for shyness—for example, about being seen naked. But was it really natural to be embarrassed about that? If something was natural, she supposed, it was the same for everybody. In many parts of the world it was completely natural to be naked. So it must be society that decides what you can and can’t do. When Grandma was young you certainly couldn’t sunbathe topless. But today, most people think it is “natural,” even though it is still strictly forbidden in lots of countries. Was this philosophy? Sophie wondered.
The next sentence was: “Wisest is she who knows she does not know.”
Wiser than who? If the philosopher meant that someone who realized that she didn’t know everything under the sun was wiser than someone who knew just a little, but who thought she knew a whole lot—well, that wasn’t so difficult to agree with. Sophie had never thought about it before. But the more she did, the more clearly she saw that knowing what you don’t know is also a kind of knowledge. The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about things they knew absolutely nothing about.
The next sentence was about true insight coming from within. But didn’t all knowledge come into people’s heads from the outside? On the other hand, Sophie could remember situations when her mother or the teachers at
