He used the same technique to help others. Once, trying to console a woman who was (unlike some widows, he implies) genuinely suffering grief for her dead husband, he first considered the more usual philosophical methods: reminding her that nothing can be gained from lamentation, or persuading her that she might never have met her husband anyway. But he settled on a different trick: ‘very gently deflecting our talk and diverting it bit by bit to subjects nearby, then a little more remote’. The widow15 seemed to pay little attention at first, but in the end the other subjects caught her
...more
