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ILLNESS NO OBJECTION: Suppressing common illnesses by the regular use of various drugs and medicines usually reflects an audacious attempt by man to cheat nature out of its rightful influence. For whenever a common illness is prevented from running its natural course, it invariably takes revenge upon the assailant by staging a fiercer resistance (much as a soldier will put up a stronger fight when forced into a perilous situation), thereby making one feel a lot worse. Furthermore, it should be remembered that illnesses are not anomalous occurrences which shouldn't happen but, on the contrary, very natural occurrences which, if anything, strengthen one's taste for good health, so that the unnatural and artificial suppression of them tends (except in the most serious cases) to be utopian rather than realistic, the sort of disregard for polarity and the interdependence of antitheses which, in other contexts, would lead to the unhealthy suppression or, more accurately, attempted suppression of hate for the sake of love, illusion for the sake of truth, evil for the sake of good, or sadness for the sake of happiness.

But this disregard for polarity, this attempt to eradicate an illness as quickly as possible (tied-up, as it undoubtedly is, with the materialistic requirements of a consumer society), only serves to complicate and aggravate matters - a salutary lesson which, if properly understood, could lead to the judicious suppression of meddlesome drugs or medicines and to the adoption, if not on the part of the medical profession in general then at least on the part of the general public, of a more dualistic view concerning the legitimacy of illness!

Needless to say, there is obviously something wrong, ignorant, and even cowardly about a man who, at the earliest intimation of a common cold, sore throat, headache, stomach ache, temperature, or some other such minor ailment, rushes to the doctor or chemist in search of a miracle-working cure when, in accordance with the fundamental workings of nature, it is only from the illness itself that a genuine cure can come. Indeed, one might even suppose that the easy availability of an artificial cure induces people to be less thoughtful about their health. For is it not the case that a majority of common illnesses are usually incurred as the consequence of a stupid action, and can thus be seen as a kind of punishment and warning to people to be more careful in future!

Be that as it may, one can nonetheless maintain that illnesses generally contain their own cure, are by no means superfluous occurrences, and should be left, in nine cases out of ten, to run their natural course rather than be meddled with by an impatient consumer society in the grip not only of market forces but of the market as such, and which too often shies away from the dualistic integrity of life instead of facing up to and bearing with it for its own good.