Discourses: Book 2 15 : 3

Well, it was hard work to persuade that man; but there are some men of to-day whom it is impossible to move. So that I feel that I now know what I formerly did not understand—the meaning of the proverb, "A fool you can neither persuade nor break." God forbid that I should ever have for a friend a wise fool! There is nothing harder to handle. "I have decided," he says! Why yes, and so have madmen; but the more firm their decision is about what is false, the more hellebore they need. Will you not act like a sick man, and summon a physician? "I am sick, sir; help me. Consider what I ought to do; it is my part to obey you." So also in the present instance. "I know not what I ought to be doing, but I have come to find out." Thus one should speak. No, but this is what one hears, "Talk to me about anything else, but on this point I have made my decision." "Anything else" indeed! Why, what is more important or more to your advantage than to be convinced that it is not sufficient for a man merely to have reached decisions, and to refuse to change? These are the sinews of madness, not health. "If you force me to this, I would gladly die." What for, man? What has happened? "I have decided!" It was fortunate for me that you did not decide to kill me! Or again, another says, "I take no money for my services." Why so? "Because I have decided." Rest assured that there is nothing to prevent you from some day turning irrationally to taking money for your services, and that with the same vehemence with which you now refuse to take it, and then saying again, "I have decided"; precisely as in a diseased body, suffering from a flux, the flux inclines now in this direction and now in that. Such is also the sick mind; it is uncertain which way it is inclined, but when vehemence also is added to this inclination and drift, then the evil gets past help and past cure.