What could be more important than learning this: it's not enough to just make up your mind and refuse to change it. That's the mark of madness, not health. "I'll die before I do this." Why? What happened? "I've made up my mind." Lucky for me you haven't decided to kill me. "I won't take any money." Why not? "I've made up my mind." Here's the thing — the same stubborn energy you're using to refuse money could just as easily make you want to take it later. Then you'll say "I've made up my mind" about that too. Think of a sick body where fluids move around randomly — sometimes here, sometimes there. A sick mind works the same way. It doesn't know which way to lean. But when you add stubborn determination to this random swaying, the problem becomes impossible to fix.
for what is greater and more useful than for you to be persuaded that it is not sufficient to have made your determination and not to change it. This is the tone (energy) of madness, not of health.—I will die, if you compel me to this.—Why, man? What has happened?—I have determined—I have had a lucky escape that you have not determined to kill me—I take no money. Why?—I have determined—Be assured that with the very tone (energy) which you now use in refusing to take, there is nothing to hinder you at some time from inclining without reason to take money, and then saying, I have determined. As in a distempered body, subject to defluxions, the humor inclines sometimes to these parts, and then to those, so too a sickly soul knows not which way to incline; but if to this inclination and movement there is added a tone (obstinate resolution), then the evil becomes past help and cure.