Now what made these men so easy, but their persuasion that grief and lamentation was not becoming in a man?
Therefore, as some give themselves up to grief from an opinion that it is right so to do, they refrained themselves, from an opinion that it was discreditable; from which we may infer that grief is owing more to opinion than nature.
XXIX.

It may be said, on the other side, Who is so mad as to grieve of his own accord?
Pain proceeds from nature, which you must submit to, say they, agreeably to what even your own Crantor teaches, for it presses and gains upon you unavoidably, and cannot possibly be resisted.

So that the very same Oileus, in Sophocles, who had before comforted Telamon on the death of Ajax, on hearing of the death of his own son, is broken-hearted.

On this alteration of his mind we have these lines: Show me the man so well by wisdom taught That what he charges to another's fault, When like affliction doth himself betide, True to his own wise counsel will abide.[47] Now, when they urge these things, their endeavor is to prove that nature is absolutely and wholly irresistible; and yet the same people allow that we take greater grief on ourselves than nature requires.
What madness is it, then, in us to require the same from others?
But there are many reasons for our taking grief on us.

The first is from the opinion of some evil, on the discovery and certainty of which grief comes of course.