4
Whom then do these things render unhappy? The unmanly and irrational, the effeminate and unexercised, with such as retain the foolish and frightful opinions they received in their infancy. Fortune then does not perfectly produce infelicity, unless it has Vice to co-operate with it. For as a thread will cut in sunder a bone that has been steeped in ashes and vinegar, and as workmen bend and fashion ivory as they please, after it has been softened and rendered pliable by beer, when it is otherwise inflexible; so Fortune, coming upon that which is already ill-affected of itself and rendered soft by Vice, pierces into it and hollows it. And as the paroecus,—though hurtful to no other, nor any way prejudicing those who touch it or bear it about them,—if any one who is wounded is but brought into the place where it is, immediately kills him, being already by his wound predisposed to receive the defluxion; so the soul which is to be overthrown by Fortune must have in itself some ulcer of its own, and some malady within its flesh, that it may render those accidents which come from abroad miserable and lamentable.
