'Tis to much purpose that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre.

Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter?
Some men have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy.

Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more frail, more miserable, or more nothing?
Wisdom does not force our natural dispositions, "Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri, Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus, Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus." ["Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened, there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the influence of fear."-- Lucretius, iii.

155.] he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice: "Humani a se nihil alienum putet." ["Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to men in general."-- Terence, Heauton, i.

1, 25.] The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their greatest heroes of tears: "Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas." ["Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet." -- Aeneid, vi.