Solemn Dissertation on the Philosophy of Silence

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SILENCE

§. XVI.

Nor, I believe, do responders use any other design when they pass over the insults of opponents in silence, inasmuch as it is in their interest, while the anger in those opponents is stirred, to disturb the judgment which they uniquely need for clearing up doubts. Badly, therefore, did D. Dannhauer original: "D. Danhauerus" relate such agitation of anger to the stratagems that are specimens of prudence, not of cunning; and he advised those responding poorly in his Idea of good debating and malicious Sophistry, Section I, art. VII, §. 44, n. 4, p. 128, and for that reason, he was refuted by the honorable President in his 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, Seneca demonstrated clearly in Epistle 52 how great the madness is of the man whom the clamors of the ignorant bring down from the auditorium in a cheerful state. 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 Proverbs 26, 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 stultum fool, in whom hope of correction remains, and to whom he concedes the right to respond entirely out of a desire to correct him; and between the pertinacem obstinate person, where that hope has entirely expired, hindered by the preposterous confidence which the fool nourishes about himself, which prevents him from coming to his senses, as is clear from Proverbs 27.