Fragment XLVI
◄Fragment XLV - Fragment XLVII►
It is not easy to produce an effect upon soft characters any more than it is to pick up a soft cheese with a hook, but young men of sound nature, even if you turn them away, hold to philosophy all the more. For that reason Rufus frequently discouraged pupils, using this as a means of testing the superior and inferior ones. For he used to say, "Just as a stone, even if you throw it upwards, will fall downwards because of its nature, so the superior man, the more one repels him, the more he inclines toward his own natural direction."