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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: cure, a country doctor, or a justice of the peace. It is not without
reason that people speak collectively of the priest, the lawyer, and
the doctor as 'men of the black robe'--so the saying goes. They
represent the three principal elements necessary to the existence of
society--conscience, property, and health. At one time the first, and
at a later period the second, was all-important in the State. Our
predecessors on this earth thought, perhaps not without reason, that
the priest, who prescribed what men should think, ought to be
paramount; so the priest was king, pontiff, and judge in one, for in
those days belief and faith were everything. All this has been changed
in our day; and we must even take our epoch as we find it. But I, for
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