Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/120

104 is, in more matters than this one, in much the same awkward state of mind as the Irish legislator, who declared himself to be "for the bill and agin its enforcement."

Divinopathy has one great advantage over other schools of medicine: by the very preparation for healing others the physician heals himself. For mere qualification to be a practitioner is itself a preventive to earthly ills; much as vaccination precludes small-pox. The only question might be whether the cure be not worse than the complaint. After an account of the rigid self-discipline to be undergone before a diploma be possible, and then largely kept up for it to continue in force, I think it will seem uncommonly open to the doubt. Yet there are plenty of men who lead this life of daily hardship and renunciation for the explicit purpose of enjoying the life they renounce; just as many an invalid will give up all that makes life worth living for the sake of living the undesirable residue longer.

But if the self-martyrdom be duly performed, the god practically always descends on application, and vouchsafes his opinion as to the cure of the complaint. Of course his