Organon §26
When two very similar dynamic affections meet in a living organism, the stronger extinguishes the weaker. This is the law of similars upon which every real cure is based.
This rests upon the following homeopathic natural law which was divined here and there from time immemorial, but was not hitherto fully acknowledged, and which lies at the foundation of every real cure that has ever taken place: In the living organism, a weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished by a stronger one, if the stronger one (while differing from it as to mode) is very similar to the weaker one in its manifestation.
Comments:
71 Both physical affections and moral maladies are cured in this way [i.e. by very similar, but stronger dynamic affections].
1. How can luminous Jupiter disappear in the early morning from the optic nerve of the beholder? Jupiter vanishes from sight because the optic nerve is acted upon by a stronger, very similar impinging potence-the brightness of the breaking day!
2. How does one effectively placate olfactory nerves that have been insulted by foul odors? By snuff, which seizes the sense of smell in a similar but stronger way! Neither music nor pastries can cure this olfactory disgust because they relate to other senses.
3. How did the cunning warrior drown out the pitious cries of wounded soldiers from the ears of compassionate bystanders? By the high-pitched sounds of the fife, paired with the noisy drum roll! How did he cover the distant thunder of the enemy's cannon which aroused fear in his army? By the deeply reverberating boom of the great drum! He could not have obtained such results by reprimanding the regiment or distributing glittering uniforms.
4. Mourning and grief are extinguished in the emotional mind on hearing an account of another's still greater bereavement, even if the account is only fictitious.
5. The negative effects of an all-too-lively joy are removed by drinking coffee, which engenders a state of excessive joy.
6. A people like the Germans, who for centuries were gradually more and more degraded into will-less apathy and a subservient sense of slavery, first had to be still more deeply trodden into the dust by the conqueror from the West [Napoleon] until the situation became intolerable. Only in this way was their self-disparagement over-tuned and lifted so that they felt their human dignity again and raised their heads, for the first time, as German men anew.