tone of a phrensied man and you boast of it, I shall say to you, man, seek the physician: this is not tone, but atony (deficiency in right tone). In a different way something of the same kind is felt by those who listen to these discourses in a wrong manner; which was the case with one of my companions who for no reason resolved to starve himself to death.[1] I heard of it when it was the third day of his abstinence from food and I went to inquire what had happened. I have resolved, he said.—But still tell me what it was which induced you to resolve; for if you have resolved rightly, we shall sit with you and assist you to depart; but if you have made an unreasonable resolution, change your mind.—We ought to keep to our determinations.—What are you doing, man? We ought to keep not to all our determinations, but to those which are right; for if you are now persuaded that it is night, do not change your mind, if you think fit, but persist and say, we ought to abide by our determinations. Will you not make the beginning and lay the foundation in an inquiry whether the determination is sound or not sound, and so then build on it firmness and security? But if you lay a rotten and ruinous foundation, will not your miserable little building fall down the sooner, the more and the stronger are the materials which you shall lay on it? Without any reason would you withdraw from us out of life a man who is a friend, and a companion, a citizen of the same city, both the great and the small city?[2] Then while you are committing murder and destroying a man who has done no wrong, do you say that you ought to abide by your determinations? And if it ever in any way came into your head to kill me, ought you to abide by your determinations?
Now this man was with difficulty persuaded to change his mind. But it is impossible to convince some persons at present; so that I seem now to know, what I did not know before, the meaning of the common saying, That
- ↑ The word is ἀποκαρτερεῖν, which Cicero (Tusc. i. 34) renders 'per inediam vita discedere.' The words 'I have resolved' are in Epictetus, κέκρικα. Pliny (Epp. i. 12) says that Corellius Rufus, when he determined to end his great sufferings by starvation made the same answer, κέκρικα, to the physician who offered him food.
- ↑ The great city is the world.
