Solemn Dissertation on the Philosophy of Silence

Nor, I believe, do responders use any other design, passing over the insults of opponents with silence, inasmuch as it is in their interest, while the anger in them is stirred, to disturb their judgment, which they uniquely need in dissipating doubts. Badly, therefore, did D. Danhauer relate such agitation of anger to the stratagems which are specimens of prudence, not of cunning; and badly did he advise those responding in Idea of good debating and malicious Sophistry, Section I, art. VII, §. 44, n. 4, p. 128, and on that account he was refuted by the DN. President in Method of Debating, chap. XI, §. II. For what is more base than a philosophy that courts the clamors which the vehemence of anger has excited? Therefore, how great his madness is, whom the clamors of the ignorant bring down from the auditorium in a cheerful state, Seneca demonstrated clearly in Epistle 52. Nothing delays me (1) that a fool must be answered for his foolishness, lest he seem wise to himself, according to the judgment of the wisest of Kings in Prov. XXVI, verse 5, and is therefore corrected. I respond: The same most prudent King in verse 4, prohibiting a response, lest anyone turn out like the fool, points with his finger as it were to the distinction between the fool, in whom hope of correction remains, to whom he concedes to respond entirely out of a desire to correct him; and the obstinate, where that hope has entirely expired, hindered by the preposterous confidence which the fool nourishes about himself, so that he is less able to come to his senses, as is clear from Prov. XXVII.