Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/200

you can neither persuade nor break a fool.^[1] May it never be my lot to have a wise fool for my friend: nothing is more untractable. 'I am determined,' the man says. Madmen are also; but the more firmly they form a judgment on things which do not exist, the more ellebore^[2] they require. Will you not act like a sick man and call in the physician?—I am sick, master, help me; consider what I must do it is my duty to obey you. So it is here also: I know not what I ought to do, but I am come to learn.—Not so; but speak to me about other things: upon this I have determined.—What other things? for what is greater and more useful than for you to be persuaded that it is not sufficient to have made your determination and not to change it. This is the tone (energy) of madness, not of health.—I will die, if you compel me to this.—Why, man? What has happened?—I have determined—I have had a lucky escape that you have not determined to kill me—I take no money.^[3] Why?—I have determined—Be assured that with the very tone (energy) which you now use in refusing to take, there is nothing to hinder you at some time from inclining without reason to take money and then saying, I have determined. As in a distempered body, subject to defluxions, the humour inclines sometimes to these parts, and then to those, so too a sickly soul knows not which way to incline: but if to this inclination and movement there is added a tone (obstinate resolution), then the evil becomes past help and cure.

1. The meaning is that you cannot lead a fool from his purpose either by words or force. 'A wise fool' must mean a fool who thinks himself wise; and such we sometimes see. 'Though thou shouldst bray a fool in the mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.' Proverbs, xxvii. 22.
2. Ellebore was a medicine used in madness. Horace says, Sat. ii. 3. 82—

   Danda est ellebori multo pars maxima avaris.

3. 'Epictetus seems in this discussion to be referring to some professor, who had declared that he would not take money from his hearers, and then, indirectly at least, had blamed our philosopher for receiving some fee from his hearers.' Schweig.