First, the clinician, embodied best by Dr. Roscoe Geake, one of Martin’s teachers in medical school, who leaves his position there to become the vice president of the New Ideal Medical Instrument and Furniture Company. In other words, he goes into business, and is anything but sheepish about it.
“Gentleman, the trouble with too many doctors, even those splendid old pioneer war-horses who through mud and storm, through winter’s chill blast and August’s untempered heat, go bringing cheer and surcease from pain to the world’s humblest, yet even these old Nestors not so infrequently settle down in a rut and never shake themselves loose. Now that I am leaving this field where I have labored so long and happily, I want to ask every man jack of you to read, before you begin to practise medicine, not merely your Rosenau and Howell and Gray, but also, as a preparation for being that which all good citizens must be, namely, practical men, a most valuable little manual of modern psychology, ‘How to Put Pep in Salesmanship,’ by Grosvenor A. Bibby. For don’t forget, gentlemen, and this is my last message to you, the man worth while is not merely the man who takes things with a smile but also the man who’s trained in philosophy, practical philosophy, so that instead of day-dreaming and spending all his time talking about ‘ethics,’ splendid though they are, and ‘charity,’ glorious virtue though that be, yet he never forgets that unfortunately the world judges a man by the amount of good hard cash he can lay away. The graduates of the University of Hard Knocks judge a physician as they judge a business man, not merely by his alleged ‘high ideals’ but by the horsepower he puts into carrying them out -- and making them pay! And from a scientific standpoint, don’t overlook the fact that the impression of properly remunerated competence which you make on a patient is of just as much importance, in these days as the new psychology, as the drugs you get into him or the operations he lets you get away with. The minute he begins to see that other folks appreciate and reward your skill, that minute he must begin to feel your power and so to get well.”
In other words, medicine, like everything else, is a business, and material success -- money and comfort -- is its highest goal.
But contrast this with the researcher, embodied best by Dr. Max Gottlieb, one of Martin’s mentors and idols, as dedicated to discovery and truth and Geake is to success and comfort.
“To be a scientist -- it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of very obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious -- he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
“He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equally opposed to the capitalists who t’ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t’ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate!
“He speaks no meaner of the ridiculous faith-healers and chiropractors than he does of the doctors that want to snatch our science before it is tested and rush around hoping they heal people, and spoiling all the clues with their footsteps; and worse than the men like hogs, worse than the imbeciles who have not even heard of science, he hates pseudo-scientists guess-scientists -- like these psycho-analysts; and worse than those comic dream-scientists he hates the men that are allowed in a clean kingdom like biology but know only one text-book and how to lecture to nincompoops all so popular! He is the only real revolutionary, the authentic scientist, because he alone knows how liddle he knows.”
For Gottlieb, seeing the truth is what matters, not taking some veiled understanding of the truth and using it to make a buck.
And it is between these two poles that Martin will vacillate throughout the length of the novel, moving through several positions and marriages as he tries to decide which will finally claim him.
There will be those that pull him towards practical success. Here Dr. Silva, the Dean of Medicine at the hospital where Martin is interning, talks to Martin and his first wife, Leora, about one pole.
“Your husband must be an Artist Healer, not a picker of trifles like these laboratory men.”
“But Gottlieb’s no picker of trifles,” insisted Martin.
“No-o. But with him-- It’s a difference of one’s gods. Gottlieb’s gods are the cynics, the destroyers -- crapehangers, the vulgar call ‘em: Diderot and Voltaire and Elser; great men, wonder-workers, yet men that had more fun destroying other people’s theories than creating their own. But my gods now, they’re the men who took the discoveries of Gottlieb’s gods and turned them to the use of human beings -- made them come alive!
“All credit to the men who invented paint and canvas, but there’s more credit, eh? to the Raphaels and Holbeins who used those discoveries! Laennec and Osler, those are the men! It’s all very fine, this business of pure research: seeking the truth, unhampered by commercialism or fame-chasing. Getting to the bottom. Ignoring consequences and practical uses. But do you realize if you carry that idea far enough, a man could justify himself for doing nothing but count the cobblestones on Warehouse Avenue -- yes, and justify himself for torturing people just to see how they screamed -- and then sneer at a man who was making millions of people well and happy!
“No, no! Mrs. Arrowsmith, this lad Martin is a passionate fellow, not a drudge. He must be passionate on behalf of mankind. He’s chosen the highest calling in the world, but he’s a feckless, experimental devil. You must keep him at it, my dear, and not let the world lose the benefit of his passion.”
But there will also be those that pull him towards esoteric greatness. Just a few days after meeting with Dr. Silva, Martin and Leora accidently encounter Dr. Gottlieb.
But a few days before the end of Martin’s internship and their migration to North Dakota, they met Max Gottlieb on the street.
Martin had not seen him for more than a year; Leora never. He looked worried and ill. While Martin was agonizing as to whether to pass with a bow, Gottlieb stopped.
“How is everything, Martin?” he said cordially. But his eyes said, “Why have you never come back to me?”
The boy stammered something, nothing, and when Gottlieb had gone by, stooped and moving as in pain, he longed to run after him.
Leora was demanding, “Is that the Professor Gottlieb you’re always talking about?”
“Yes. Say! How does he strike you?”
“I don’t-- Sandy, he’s the greatest man I’ve ever seen! I don’t know how I know, but he is! Dr. Silva is a darling, but that was a great man! I wish -- I wish we were going to see him again. There’s the first man I ever laid eyes on that I’d leave you for, if he wanted me. He’s so -- oh, he’s like a sword -- no, he’s like a brain walking. Oh, Sandy, he looked so wretched. I wanted to cry. I’d black his shoes!”
“God! So would I!”
And throughout it all the reader is presented with competing ideals and competing understandings of the world. What is the thing that matters? Practical success? Or esoteric greatness? And why is it not possible to have both? For that, as we read and enjoy all of Lewis’s prose describing Martin’s vacillations, is the underlying truth of it all. Whichever one chooses, the other has to be sacrificed in order to attain it.
Near the very end, Martin Arrowsmith makes his fateful decision.
“Please don’t be vulgar.”
“Why not? Matter of fact, I haven’t been vulgar enough lately. What I ought to do is to go to Birdies’ Rest right now, and work with Terry.”
Martin is arguing with Joyce, his second wife, about his decision to abandon his administrative position at the prestigious McGurk Institute and join his friend and colleague Terry Wickett at the rural retreat he has established for the pursuit of pure research.
“I wish I had some way of showing you-- Oh, for a ‘scientist’ you do have the most incredible blind-spots! I wish I could make you see just how weak and futile that is. The wilds! The simple life! The old argument. It’s just the absurd, cowardly sort of thing these tired highbrows do that sneak off to some Esoteric Colony and think they’re getting strength to conquer life, when they’re merely running away from it.”
“No. Terry has his place in the country only because he can live cheaper there. If we -- If he could afford it, he’d probably be right here in town, with garcons and everything, like McGurk, but with no Director Holabird by God -- and no Director Arrowsmith!”
“Merely a cursing, ill-bred, intensely selfish Director Terry Wickett!”
“Now by God let me tell you--”
“Martin, do you need to emphasize your arguments by a ‘by God’ in every sentence, or have you a few other expressions in your highly scientific vocabulary?”
Notice how Joyce has become the voice for practical success, wholly unimpressed with the esoteric greatness that so bewitched Leora.
“Well I have enough vocabulary to express the idea that I’m thinking of joining Terry.”
“Look here, Mart. You feel so virtuous about wanting to go off and wear a flannel shirt, and be peculiar and very, very pure. Suppose everybody argued that way. Suppose every father deserted his children whenever his nice little soul ached? Just what would become of the world? Suppose I were poor, and you left me, and I had to support John by taking in washing--”
“It’d probably be fine for you but fierce on the washing! No! I beg your pardon. That was an obvious answer. But-- I imagine it’s just that argument that’s kept almost everybody, all these centuries, from being anything but a machine for digestion and propagation and obedience. The answer is that very few ever do, under any condition, willingly leave a soft bed for a shanty bunk in order to be pure, as you very properly call it, and those of us that are pioneers-- Oh, this debate could go on forever! We could prove that I’m a hero or a fool or a deserter or anything you like, but the fact is I’ve suddenly seen I must go! I want my freedom to work, and I herewith quit whining about it and grab it. You’ve been generous to me. I’m grateful. But you’ve never been mine. Good-by.”
At the end of the novel, Martin Arrowsmith has to make the same choice that Charles Strickland makes at the beginning of The Moon and Sixpence. To achieve something, something else must be sacrificed. In the most general of terms, If you want comfort, you must sacrifice art; and if you want art, you must sacrifice comfort. There’s no other way to approach it, and that may be what I like best about Lewis’s novel.
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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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