Shunt off the mind, and then do dreadful deeds,but on the contrary, it shuts out sense completely and locks it out, and just like those who burn themselves up in their own homes, it makes everything within full of confusion and smoke and noise, so that the soul can neither see nor hear anything that might help it. For this reason a ship deserted by her crew in the midst of a storm far out at sea3 will more easily be able to take on a pilot from the outside, than will a man who is being tossed upon the billows of passion and anger admit the reasoning of another, unless he has his own powers of reason prepared to receive it. But just as those who expect a siege collect and store up all that is useful to them if they despair of relief from without, so it is most important that we should acquire far in advance the reinforcements which philosophy provides against temper and convey them into the soul in the knowledge that, when the occasion for using them comes, it will not be possible to introduce them with ease. For the soul hears nothing from the outside because of its tumult unless it has its own reason within, which, like a boatswain who directs the rowers, will promptly catch and understand every order given. Yet if the soul has heard words of advice which have been quietly and mildly spoken, it despises them; and toward any who insist in a rougher fashion, it grows exasperated. In fact, temper is overbearing and stubborn and altogether difficult for anyone other than itself to move, and, like a well-fortified tyranny, [p. 101] must have its destroyer born and bred in the same household.
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Fundanus. One of those excellent precepts
of Musonius1 which I remember, Sulla, is : ‘He
that wishes to come through life safe and sound
must continue throughout his life to be under treatment.’ For I do not think that reason should
be used in one's cure as we use hellebore, and be
washed out of the body together with the disease,
but it must remain in the soul and keep watch
and ward over the judgements. For the power
of reason is not like drugs, but like wholesome
food, engendering an excellent state, together with
great vigour, in those who become accustomed to
it; but exhortations and admonitions, if applied
to the passions when they are at their height and
swollen, can scarcely accomplish anything at all,
and that with difficulty. They are no better than
those aromatic preparations which rouse epileptics
when they lie prostrate, but do not rid them
of the disease. Yet the other passions, even at
their height, do in some sort yield and admit
reason, when it comes from without to the rescue,
[p. 99]
into the soul; but temper does not, as Melanthius2
says,