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17“Do you not observe that physicians very rarely resort to surgery and cautery, desiring not to aggravate their patients’ maladies, but for the most part seek to soothe diseases by the application of fomentations and the milder drugs? Do not think that, because these ailments are affections of the body while those we have to do with are affections of the soul, there is any difference between them. 2For also the minds of men, however incorporeal they may be, are subject to a large number of ailments which are comparable to those which visit their bodies. Thus there is the withering of the mind through fear and its swelling through passion; in some cases pain lops it off and arrogance makes it grow with conceit; the disparity, therefore, between mind and body being very slight, they accordingly require cures of a similar nature. 3Gentle words, for example, cause all one’s inflamed passion to subside, just as harsh words in another case will stir to wrath even the spirit which has been calmed; and forgiveness granted will melt even the utterly arrogant man, just as punishment will incense even him who is utterly mild. For acts of violence will always in every instance, no matter how just they may be, exasperate, while considerate treatment mollifies. 4Hence it is that a man will more readily submit to the most terrible hardships—and gladly, too—if he has been persuaded, than if compulsion has been put upon him. And so true it is that, in following both these courses, man is subject to a compelling law of nature, that even among the irrational animals, which have no intelligence, many of the strongest and fiercest are tamed by petting and subdued by allurements, while many even of the most cowardly and weak are aroused to fury by acts of cruelty which excite terror in them.
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