Topical Guide 545
Mark Dorset
Persuasion, Techniques of: “You Deserve to Win”
Advice: Dangerous
Folly
B. W. Beath to Matthew Barber, Reservations Recommended, Chapter 7:
Try surrendering to me. Just think of the advantages if you let me guide you. There are pleasures for you in my world, Matthew. I guarantee I can teach you to have a good time. […]
Matthew, don’t you deserve some pleasure? I mean, really, aren’t you owed? […] Why not start collecting what you’re owed? […] Start collecting now.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, Praise of Folly (1509), translated by Betty Radice:
The two main obstacles to learning by experience are a sense of propriety, which clouds the judgment, and fear, which advises against an undertaking once danger is apparent. Folly offers a splendid liberation from both of them. Few mortals realize how many other advantages follow from being free from scruples and ready to venture anything. […]
I am here, and with a mixture of ignorance and thoughtlessness, often with forgetfulness when things are bad, or sometimes hope of better things, with a sprinkling too of honeyed pleasures, I bring help in miseries like these. And I do so with such effect that men are reluctant to leave life even when their thread of destiny has run out and life has long been leaving them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (translated by Bayard Taylor):
Faust (solus)
I hail thee, wondrous, rarest vial!
I take thee down devoutly, for the trial:
Man’s art and wit I venerate in thee.
Thou summary of gentle slumber-juices,
Essence of deadly finest powers and uses,
Unto thy master show thy favor free!
I see thee, and the stings of pain diminish;
I grasp thee, and my struggles slowly finish: […]
Here is a juice whence sleep is swiftly born.
It fills with browner flood thy crystal hollow;
I chose, prepared it: thus I follow,—
With all my soul the final drink I swallow, […]Mephistopheles
([…] steps forth from behind the
stove, in the costume of a Travelling Scholar.) […]Faust
What is thy name? […]
With all you gentlemen, the name's a test,
Whereby the nature usually is expressed.
Clearly the latter it implies
In names like Beelzebub, Destroyer, Father of Lies.
Who art thou, then?Mephistopheles
Part of that Power, not understood,
Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.[…]Faust
That’s well! So might a compact be
Made with you gentlemen—and binding,—surely?Mephistopheles
All that is promised shall delight thee purely;
No skinflint bargain shalt thou see. […]
My friend, thou’lt win, past all pretences,
More in this hour to soothe thy senses,
Than in the year’s monotony.
That which the dainty spirits sing thee,
The lovely pictures they shall bring thee,
Are more than magic’s empty show.
Thy scent will be to bliss invited;
Thy palate then with taste delighted,
Thy nerves of touch ecstatic glow!
All unprepared, the charm I spin:
We’re here together, so begin!
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