The Pot of Basil by Bernard Capes — Read

Somewhere I have read or heard of a marine invertebrate, which, when its stomach disturbs it, throws the oppressive thing away and gets a new one. It is a beautifully simple solution of the problem of life -- which problem unquestionably has its centre in those regions -- and as triumphant in its utter banality as the method of Columbus with his egg or of Alexander with his Gordian knot. Without doubt, if man had been constructed on that principle, his history would have needed not a thousandth part of the apology which is now a necessary accompaniment of its recital. The myriad ills attendant on digestion, the brutalities, the tremors and the hallucinations, would have entirely lacked their excuse. Conceive the practical humour of the statement that one had no stomach for an enterprise; conceive such a solution of the saturnalian difficulty as Vitellius never dreamed. A permanent and undetachable stomach was certainly the actual curse which Satan inflicted on mankind.

The nearest approach to this impossibly beatific condition consists, as popularised by the Catholic and Universal Church, in throwing away one's conscience and getting a new one. The priest conducts the process, and the medium is the confessional. Therein the distressing load may be cast, and therefrom the patient be discharged re-equipped. It has all the efficacy of the other, though at the same time hardly its simplicity. For one thing, one cannot do it alone by oneself; for another, a dose of penance is conditional on the treatment -- usually a trifle, but sufficient to leave a taste in one's mouth. However, it is a useful alternative.