did not want to be cured in spite of nature, we should not be killed
by the doctors. We should do well to steer clear of both, and we
should evidently be the gainers. I do not deny that medicine is
useful to some men; I assert that it is fatal to mankind.

You will tell me, as usual, that the doctors are to blame, that
medicine herself is infallible. Well and good, then give us the
medicine without the doctor, for when we have both, the blunders of
the artist are a hundredfold greater than our hopes from the art.
This lying art, invented rather for the ills of the mind than
of the body, is useless to both alike; it does less to cure us of
our diseases than to fill us with alarm. It does less to ward off
death than to make us dread its approach. It exhausts life rather
than prolongs it; should it even prolong life it would only be to
the prejudice of the race, since it makes us set its precautions
before society and our fears before our duties. It is the knowledge
of danger that makes us afraid. If we thought ourselves invulnerable
we should know no fear. The poet armed Achilles against danger and
so robbed him of the merit of courage; on such terms any man would
be an Achilles.

Would you find a really brave man? Seek him where there are no
doctors, where the results of disease are unknown, and where death
is little thought of. By nature a man bears pain bravely and dies
in peace. It is the doctors with their rules, the philosophers with
their precepts, the priests with their exhortations, who debase
the heart and make us afraid to die.

Give me a pupil who has no need of these, or I will have nothing
to do with him. No one else shall spoil my work, I will educate him