‘Every one,’ says Plato, ‘will pardon a man for admitting that he has a
strong affection for himself,’ but—not to mention [Sidenote: F] numerous
other defects to which he is subject—there is one chief weakness which
precludes him from giving a just and incorruptible verdict in his own
case. ‘The lover is blind where the beloved object is concerned,’ unless
he has learned the habit of prizing things, not because they are his own
or related to himself, but because they are beautiful. Hence, there is
ample opportunity for the flatterer to obtain a place among our friends.
He delivers his attack from an excellent point of vantage in the shape
of that self-love which makes every man his own [Sidenote: 49] first and
greatest flatterer, ready and willing to welcome such external testimony
as will endorse his own conceits and desires. For the man who is
reprobated as a lover of toadies is an ardent lover of himself. Out of
fondness for himself he not only entertains the wish to possess, but
also the conceit that he possesses, all manner of qualities; and though
the desire may be natural enough, the conceit is fallacious and calls
for the greatest watchfulness.
And if truth is divine, and—as Plato asserts—the first principle
[Sidenote: B] of ‘all good things both with Gods and men’, the toady
must be an enemy of the Gods, and especially of the Pythian. For, in
perpetual antagonism to the doctrine of _Know Thyself_, he produces
self-deception in a man, self-ignorance, and error as to his virtues and
vices. The virtues he renders defective and abortive; the vices he
renders incorrigible.
Now if the flatterer had been like most other mischievous things, and
had solely or chiefly attacked mean and petty victims, the harm would
have been neither so great nor so difficult to prevent. But it is into
soft and sweet kinds of wood that worms prefer to bore, and it is
estimable and capable characters—characters with a love of
approbation—that give access and supply nourishment to the flatterer who
fastens upon [Sidenote: C] them. ‘_The breeding of the steed_,’ says
Simonides, ‘_sorts not with Zacynthus,[48] but with wheat-bearing
plains_.’ Similarly we do not find toadyism in attendance upon the poor,
the insignificant, or the uninfluential, but sapping and debilitating
great houses and great fortunes, and frequently subverting rulers and
thrones. Consequently no slight effort or common precaution is required
in considering how it can be most readily detected and so prevented from
doing injury and discredit to friendship.
[Sidenote: D] Vermin quit a dying man and desert the body when the blood
which feeds them becomes exhausted. So with the time-server. You will
never find him approaching a person whose fortune is destitute of sap
and warmth. It is the famous and influential whom he attacks; it is out
of them that he makes capital; and when their circumstances change he
promptly beats a retreat. We should not, however, wait for that test; it
is then not merely useless but fraught with injury and danger. It is a
grievous thing to find out who is not your friend only at the moment
when a friend is needed, since the discovery does not enable you to
exchange the uncertain and counterfeit for the genuine and certain. You
should possess friends as you possess coin—tested [Sidenote: E] before
the occasion, not waiting to be proved by the occasion. Discovery should
not come through injury, but injury should be prevented by our acquiring
a scientific insight into the nature of the toady. Otherwise we shall be
in the position of those who distinguish a deadly poison by tasting it;
we shall meet our death in the effort of judging.
One can neither approve of such a course, nor yet of those who, because
they regard a ‘friend’ as implying a high and wholesome influence,
imagine that an agreeable associate is immediately and manifestly proved
to be a time-server. For there is nothing disagreeable or
uncompromisingly severe about a friend, nor does the high respect we pay
to friendship depend upon harshness or austerity. Nay, its high
influence and claim to respect are actually an agreeable and desirable
thing in themselves, [Sidenote: F]
_And close at its side do the Graces and Longing Desire set their
dwellings._
Not only may the unfortunate man say, with Euripides,
_’Tis sweet to look into a friend’s fond eyes_,
but friendship is a comrade who adds as much pleasure and gratification
to our blessings as it brings relief to the pains and perplexities of
our mishaps. According to Euenus ‘_the best of [Sidenote: 50] seasonings
is fire_‘. So, by making friendship an ingredient of life, God has
rendered all things bright and sweet and enjoyable through its presence
and participation. How, indeed, could the fawner have wormed himself
into our pleasures, if he had seen that friendship refuses all
admittance to what is pleasant? The thing is absurd. No; the toady is
like the mock-gilt and tinsel which merely mimic the sheen and lustre of
gold. It is in order to imitate the attractiveness and charm of a friend
that he makes a constant show of agreeableness and amiability, and never
opposes or contradicts you. It is therefore wrong, [Sidenote: B] when a
person praises you, to suspect at once that he is simply a flatterer.
Friendship is quite as much called upon to praise in season as it is to
blame. In fact, perpetual peevishness and fault-finding is the negation
of friendship and sociability; whereas, when affection bestows zealous
and ungrudging praise upon our good deeds, we also submit readily and
cheerfully to its candid remonstrances, being satisfied with the belief
that the man who is glad to praise will only blame because he must.
[Sidenote: C] ‘It is a hard matter then,’ we may be told, ‘to
distinguish between flatterer and friend, if they are equally pleasant
and equally laudatory, especially when we find that toadyism is often
more than a match for friendship in the tendering of services.’
Naturally so, we reply, if the object of our search is the genuine
toady, with a past-master’s skill at the business; if, that is, we do
not adopt the common view and mean by ‘toady’ your poverty-stricken
trencherman, who ‘begins’—as some one has said—‘to declare himself with
the first course,’ and whose lickspittle character betrays itself by
gross and vulgar [Sidenote: D] buffoonery at the first dish and the
first glass. It needed no test to expose Melanthius, the parasite of
Pherae. It was enough that, when asked ‘how Alexander was stabbed,’ he
replied, ‘Through the ribs, into my belly.’ Nor is there any such need
with those who besiege ‘an opulent table’, and whom
_Not fire, nor steel, nor bronze can keep_
from making their way to a dinner. Nor yet with those female toadies of
Cyprus, who, after their transference to Syria, were [Sidenote: E]
called ‘pair o’ steps’ from the fact that they used to allow the king’s
wife to mount her carriage over their bent backs.
Against whom, then, are we to be on our guard? Against the man who is
not confessedly or apparently a toady; one who is not to be found
hanging about the kitchen, nor to be caught watching the dial with a
dinner in prospect; one who is not to be made tipsy and then pitched
into any corner; but one who for the most part keeps sober and bustling,
thinking it his business to take part in all your doings, and to be
privy to your confidential talk—the man, in short, who acts the rôle of
friend, not in the satyric[49] or comic style, but in the high tragic.
According to Plato, ‘the extreme of dishonesty is to appear honest when
you are not.’ So with time-serving. It is [Sidenote: F] to be regarded
as dangerous, not when confessed, but when undetected; when it wears a
serious, not an amusing, air. In this form, unless we are careful, it
casts a slur of discredit even upon genuine friendship, the points of
coincidence being numerous. When the Mage was trying to escape and
Gobryes had plunged with him into a dark room and was grappling with
him, Darius stood at a loss what to do. ‘Stab,’ said Gobryes, ‘though
you stab both.’ With us it is not so easy, inasmuch as we can by no
means give any sanction to the maxim: ‘_Perish friend, if so perish
foe._’ There are so many points of similarity to complicate the fawner
with the friend that we must find it a most parlous business to tear the
one from the other. We may either be casting out the good thing along
with the bad, [Sidenote: 51] or, in trying to spare the right thing, we
may let the wrong one bring us to grief. There are wild plants of which
the seeds are similar in shape and size to those of wheat. When the two
are mixed it is difficult to sift these out; they will not fall through
smaller holes, and, if the holes are wider, one falls through as much as
the other. No less difficult is it to separate time-serving from
friendship, when it blends itself with every feeling, every movement,
need, and habit.
Friendship being the most pleasant and delightful thing in the world, it
follows that the toady also uses pleasure for his [Sidenote: B] bait. To
give pleasure is his main concern. And since agreeableness and
usefulness are concomitants of friendship—whence the saying that ‘_a
friend is more indispensable than fire and water_‘—it follows that the
toady insists on rendering services, and is all eagerness to show
unfaltering promptitude and zeal. But the surest foundation of
friendship is similarity of pursuits and character. The foremost agent
in mutual attraction is similarity of temperament—the liking and
disliking of the same things. This the time-server perceives, and
therefore he adapts himself [Sidenote: C] like wax to the proper shape
and form, endeavouring by imitation to mould himself so as exactly to
fit his victim. His supple versatility, his genius for mimicry, is so
great that it is a case of
_Thou art
Achilles’ self, and not Achilles’ son._
And note his craftiest device. He observes that candour is called (what
it appears to be) ‘the characteristic note of friendship’, while lack of
candour is the negation of friendship and spirit. He does not fail,
therefore, to imitate this quality also. As a skilful _chef_ will use
some bitter or piquant juice for a sauce in order to prevent sweets from
cloying, so with the candour [Sidenote: D] of the toady. It is not
genuine, nor is it useful; it is given, as it were, with a wink, and
serves simply as an excitant. The result is that he is as hard to detect
as one of those creatures which possess the natural power of altering
their colour so as to match the spot on which they happen to lie. Since,
therefore, it is under cover of resemblances that he deceives us, our
proper course is to find in the non-resemblances a means of stripping
off his disguise and showing that—as Plato puts it—he is ‘beautifying
himself with borrowed forms and colours through lack of any of his own’.
Let us begin at the very beginning. In most instances, we remarked,
friendship commences with similarity of temperament [Sidenote: E] and
disposition, a taste for very much the same habits and principles, and a
delight in the same pursuits, occupations, and pastimes. Such a
similarity is implied in the lines:
_Most welcome to the old is old men’s speech;
Child pleaseth child, and woman pleaseth woman,
Sick men the sick, and one who meets disaste
Brings solace to another suffering it._
The toady knows that it is natural to find pleasure in one’s like and to
be fond of his society. This, therefore, is his first device [Sidenote:
F] for approaching you and getting neighbours with you. He acts like
herdsmen on a pasture. He works gently up to you and rubs shoulders with
you in the same pursuits, amusements, tastes, and way of life, until you
give him his chance and let yourself grow tame and accustomed to his
touch. He condemns such circumstances, such conduct, and such persons as
he notices you dislike; while of those that please you he cannot say too
much in praise, exhibiting boundless delight and admiration [Sidenote:
52] for them. He thus confirms you in your loves and hatreds, as being
the results, not of feelings, but of judgement.
How, then, is he to be exposed? By what points of difference are we to
prove that he is not, nor is on the way to be, our like, but only a
pretender thereto? In the first place we must look for consistency and
permanence in his principles. We must see whether he takes pleasure in,
and gives praise to, the same things at all times; whether he directs
and establishes his own life after one pattern, as a frank and free
lover of single-minded friendship and fellowship ought to do. A friend
does act in this manner. On the other hand, the time-server possesses no
one fixed hearthstone to his character. He does not live a life
[Sidenote: B] chosen for himself, but a life chosen for another.
Moulding and adapting himself to suit others, he possesses no singleness
or unity, but adopts all manner of varying shapes. Like water poured
from one vessel into another, he is perpetually flowing hither and
thither and accommodating himself to the form of the receptacle.
The ape, we are told, is captured through endeavouring to imitate man by
copying his motions in dancing. The time-server, on the contrary, is one
who allures and decoys others. Nor does his mimicry take the same form
in all cases. One person he will help to dance and sing: with another he
will share a taste for wrestling and athletics. If he gets hold of a
sportsman devoted to hunting, he follows his lead, and all but shouts,
in the words of Phaedra, [Sidenote: C]
_I long, ye Gods, to cheer the hounds
Close-pressing on the dappled deer_,
whereas he feels no interest whatever in the animal, but is setting his
toils to catch the huntsman himself. If his next quarry is a young man
with a taste for study and intellectual improvement, he is all for
books, and grows a beard down to his feet; it is a case of wearing the
philosopher’s cloak and his air of ‘indifference’,[50] and of prating
about Plato’s ‘numbers’ and ‘right-angled triangles’. If, next, there
happens along some easy-going bibulous person with plenty of money,
_Then forthwith are his rags cast off by the wily Odysseus._
[Sidenote: D] Away goes the cloak; shorn off is the beard—’tis a crop
that bears no corn: to the fore are wine-coolers and wine-cups, laughter
in the streets and mockery of the philosophic student.
We are told, for instance, that at Syracuse, when Plato visited the
place and Dionysius was seized with a mania for philosophy, the host of
geometricians turned the palace into a perfect whirl of dust.[51] But
when Dionysius came to logger-heads with Plato, had had enough of
philosophy, and abandoned himself to drink and women and to silly talk
and wanton [Sidenote: E] behaviour, in a moment it was as if Circe had
transformed them every one, and there came a reign of vulgarity,
oblivion, and folly. Examples are also to be found in the conduct of
time-servers on a large scale, such as demagogues. Greatest was
Alcibiades. At Athens he joked, kept horses, and lived like a wit and a
man of the world. At Lacedaemon he cropped his hair close, wore a short
cloak, and bathed in cold water. In Thrace he fought and drank. But when
he attached himself to Tissaphernes, he indulged in luxury, effeminacy,
and ostentation, and sought to win the good graces of his company by
adapting himself in all cases to their likeness and becoming one of
them. Not so Epaminondas or Agesilaus. Despite [Sidenote: F] all their
intercourse with so many persons, communities, and standards of conduct,
they everywhere maintained—in dress, way of life, speech, and
behaviour—their own proper character. So with Plato. He was the same at
Syracuse as at Athens, the same to Dionysius as to Dion.
Our easiest method of exposing the polypus-like changes of the
time-server is to make a show of frequent changes on our own part,
finding fault with conduct of which we formerly approved, and all of a
sudden countenancing actions, conduct, [Sidenote: 53] or talk which used
to fill us with disgust. We shall then perceive that he has no sort of
settled and specific character; that his loves, hatreds, pleasures, and
pains are not matters of his own feeling; that he is merely a mirror
reflecting extraneous moods, principles, and emotions. For observe the
man’s ways. Should you speak disparagingly to him of one of your
friends, he will remark: ‘You have been slow in finding the fellow out;
_I_ never did like him.’ If, on the contrary, you change your tone and
speak in his praise, he will declare that he is ‘right glad and thankful
on the man’s behalf’, because he ‘believes in him’. If you propose to
adopt a different mode of life—if, for example, [Sidenote: B] you are
converted from a political career to a life of quiet inactivity—he will
say, ‘We ought to have got quit of brawlings and jealousies long before
this.’ If, on the other hand, you appear eager for office and the
platform, he seconds you with, ‘A very proper spirit! A quiet life is
pleasant, no doubt, but it lacks honour and distinction.’ We ought
immediately to answer that kind of man with the words:
‘_Different, sir, dost thou show thyself now from the man thou wert
erstwhile._
I do not want a friend who shifts his ground when I do and who nods when
I nod—my shadow can do that better—but one who helps me to truth and
sound judgement.’
[Sidenote: C] Such is one way of applying a test. There is a second
point of difference to be watched, as against the points of resemblance.
It is not in all matters that a genuine friend is prompt to copy or
commend us, but only in the best.
_Not his to share our hates, but share our loves_,
as Sophocles has it. Yes, and to share our right conduct and high
principles, not our wrong and wanton deeds, unless perhaps—as a result
of familiar association—some contaminating effluence, like that of
ophthalmia, affects him to some extent with a blemish or a fault against
his will. For instance, it is said that [Sidenote: D] Plato’s stoop,
Aristotle’s lisp, King Alexander’s crook of the neck and harshness of
voice in conversation, were tricks borrowed by their respective
intimates. There are persons who, without knowing it, pick up from both
the temperament and conduct of their friends most of what is
characteristic of them. The time-server, however, is exactly like the
chameleon. As the latter assimilates himself to every colour but white,
so the time-server, though utterly unable to arrive at a likeness to
your valuable qualities, leaves no discreditable one uncopied. He is
like a bad painter, who, because beauty lies beyond the reach of his
weak capacity, makes the strikingness of his portraiture [Sidenote: E] a
matter of wrinkles, moles, and scars. So the toady becomes an imitator
of dissoluteness, superstition, irascibility, harshness to servants, and
distrust of friends and relatives. Not only is he by nature and of his
own accord prone to the lower course; it is by imitating a baseness that
he appears to be farthest from blaming it. A man who takes the higher
line, and shows distress and vexation at his friends’ misdeeds, is
dubiously regarded—a fact which accounts for the ruin of Dion with
Dionysius, of Samius with Philip, and of Cleomenes with Ptolemy. But
when a man desires to be, and to be thought, agreeable and to be
depended upon, the worse the thing is, the more display he makes of
liking it, as if the strength of his affection will not permit him to
dislike even your vices, but makes him your [Sidenote: F] natural
sympathizer in all circumstances. Such persons therefore insist upon
sharing even involuntary and accidental shortcomings. When toadying an
invalid, they pretend to suffer with the same complaint. In company with
a person who is somewhat blind or deaf, they pretend to be dim-sighted
and hard of hearing, like the flatterers of Dionysius, whose sight was
so dull that they stumbled against each other and knocked over the
dishes at dinner.
Sometimes they work themselves into closer and more intimate touch with
a trouble or a malady, till they come to participate in afflictions of
the most secret kind. If they see [Sidenote: 54] that the patron is
unhappy in his marriage or on bad terms with his sons or his relatives,
they do not spare themselves, but make lamentations about their own
children, or wife, or relatives, or friends, on certain alleged grounds
which they divulge as a miserable secret. Such similarity creates a
closer understanding with their patron. He has received a sort of
hostage, thereupon betrays to them some secret or other, and, because of
that betrayal, keeps friends with them and is afraid to leave his
confidence to its fate. I know of one time-server who, when the patron
divorced his wife, turned his own wife also out of doors. It was,
however, found out—through a discovery [Sidenote: B] of the patron’s
wife—that he was visiting and sending messages to her in secret. The
toady must have been but little known to the man who thought that the
lines:
_Body all belly, and an eye that looks
All round; a thing that crawls upon its teeth_,
were as apt a description for a crab as they are for the flatterer. The
picture is that of the parasite:
_The friend of saucepan-time and dinner-hour_,
as Eupolis expresses it.
This point, however, we will reserve till its proper place. Meanwhile we
must not omit to mention another shrewd trick played by the time-server
when he imitates you. If he goes so far as to copy some good quality in
the person whom he [Sidenote: C] toadies, he is careful to leave the
advantage with him. Friends in the true sense are neither jealous nor
envious of each other, and, whether they reach or fail to reach the same
degree of excellence, they accept the situation fairly and without a
grudge. But the toady—who never forgets to play second rôle—lets his
resemblance fall short of equality, and owns to being distanced at
everything but vices. In vices, however, he insists on first prize. If
the patron is irritable, he says, ‘_I_ am all bile;’ if superstitious,
‘_I_ am a mass of fears;’ if love-sick, ‘_I_ am frantic.’ [Sidenote: D]
‘It was wrong of you to laugh,’ he will say, ‘but _I_ was absolutely
dying with laughter.’ But where virtues are concerned it is the other
way about. ‘I am a fast runner, but _you_ positively fly.’ ‘I am a
tolerable horseman, but nothing to a centaur like our friend here.’ ‘I
have a neat turn for poetry, and can write a line better than some, but
_Thunder is not for me, ’tis work for Zeus._’
He thus appears to do two things at once—to give an air of merit to his
patron’s tastes by imitating them, and of unapproachableness to his
ability by failing to match it.
So much for the differences between fawner and friend in the midst of
their resemblances.
Since, as we have observed, pleasure is another point in common—a good
type of man taking as much delight in his friends as a weak man does in
his flatterers—we may proceed to make a distinction here also. The
distinction lies in the relation between the pleasure and its end. Thus,
not only unguents [Sidenote: E] have an agreeable smell; a medicine may
have it also. But there is the difference that the object of the former
is pleasure and nothing else, while in the other case the purgative,
warming, or flesh-making quality happens to be combined with fragrance.
Again, a painter mixes engaging colours and dyes, and there are also
certain medical preparations with a taking appearance and an attractive
colour. Where is the difference? Clearly our distinction will lie in the
end for which they are used. Just so with the case before us. In the
agreeable relations of [Sidenote: F] friend with friend the
pleasant-giving element is a kind of gloss upon a substance of high
value and utility. Sometimes sportiveness, the table, wine, and even
mockery and nonsense are used by them as a seasoning to high and serious
purposes. Hence such expressions as:
_Then had they joyance in talk and in speaking the one to the
other_;
or:
_Nor should aught else have parted us twain in our love and our
joyance._
But, with the time-server, it is his function and end to be [Sidenote:
55] perpetually dishing up in a spicy form something amusing, something
done or something said which pleases and is meant to please.
To put it briefly, the toady thinks the purpose of his every action
should be to make himself agreeable, whereas the friend will only do
what is right, and therefore, though often agreeable, he is often the
contrary, not because he wishes it, but because, when it is the proper
course, he does not avoid it. It is as with the physician. When it helps
matters he will throw in a pinch of saffron or spikenard, and will
frequently order a pleasant bath and an inviting diet. But there are
times when he will have none of these, but will shake in a dash of
castor
_Or polium foul of odor, that men e’en shudder to smell it._
[Sidenote: B] Or he will pound a dose of hellebore and make you drink it
off. Neither the unpleasantness in the one case nor the pleasantness in
the other is the end in his mind, but in both cases he has only one
object in view for the patient, and that object is his good. In the same
way there are times when a friend will lead you in the path of duty by
inspiriting you with praise or gratifying you with courtesies, as the
speaker does in
_Teucer, Telamon’s son, dear prince of a warrior people,
Shoot as now thou dost_,
or in:
_How then should I, if ’tis so, be forgetful of godlike Odysseus?_
But when, on the contrary, you need calling to attention, he will
upbraid you in biting terms and with the plain-speaking of a guardian:
[Sidenote: C]
_Foolish art thou, Menelaus Zeus-foster’d: no time is this present
For folly like thine._
There are also times when he makes the deed accompany the word, like
Menedemus, when he taught the prodigal and dissolute son of his friend
Asclepiades a wholesome lesson by shutting the door in his face and
refusing to speak to him. Similarly Arcesilaus forbade Bato the
lecture-room for having attacked Cleanthes in a verse of a comedy. He
was reconciled to him, however, when he repented and made his peace with
Cleanthes. For though one must give a friend pain when it does him good,
one must not, while giving the pain, make an end of the friendship. The
sting should be used only as a medicine, for the care and salvation of
the patient. A friend is therefore [Sidenote: D] like a musician. In
converting us to right and salutary courses he will sometimes loosen and
sometimes tighten the strings. Pleasure you will get from him often,
profit always. On the other hand, the time-server, who harps in a single
key and is accustomed to strike no note but that of your pleasure and
gratification, has no notion of any action to check you or word to pain
you. He merely plays the accompaniment to your wishes, with which both
his time and his words are invariably in accord. Xenophon says of
Agesilaus that he welcomed praise from those who were no less ready to
blame. So we should regard that which gives pleasure and gratification
as in the category of ‘friend’, if it can also on occasion oppose us and
give us pain. But a companionship which is uniformly pleasurable and
maintains [Sidenote: E] a perpetual graciousness unqualified by any
sting, calls for suspicion. We ought, in fact, to be ready to ask, like
the Laconian on hearing praise of King Charillus, ‘How can a man be
honest, when he cannot be angry even with a rascal?’
It is close to the ear, we are told, that the gadfly gets into a bull
and the tick into a dog. In the case of a man of ambition, the
time-server with his flatteries takes hold of his ears and sticks so
fast that it is hard to rub him off. Particularly, therefore, in such
circumstances must we keep our judgement vigilant. It must be on the
alert to see whether the praise is given to the [Sidenote: F] thing or
to the man. It is given to the thing when men praise us in our absence
more than in our presence; when they wish and strive for the same
objects themselves, and praise not only us but every one else who does
the like; when we do not find them doing and saying first one thing and
then the opposite; and—most important of all—when our sense does not
tell us that we are repenting or ashamed of the things for which we are
praised, or wishing that we had rather done and said the [Sidenote: 56]
contrary. This inward judgement, which testifies against a flattery and
refuses to accept it, is immune from contamination, and proof against
the time-server.
It is a strange thing that most men, when they meet with a misfortune,
cannot bear to be consoled, but are better pleased with those who will
join in the lamentations; but when they are guilty of a blunder or a
fault, if you make them feel the sting of repentance by means of a
reproof or a reprimand, they think you an enemy and an accuser; whereas,
if you eulogize their conduct, they regard you as a loyal friend and
receive you with open arms.
Now when people give you praise and applause for something [Sidenote: B]
you do or say, whether in sober earnest or in careless jest, the harm
they do is only for the moment, and only affects the matter in hand. But
when their praises go so far as to influence your moral being, and their
flatteries to affect your character, they are as bad as servants who
pilfer ‘_not from the stack, but from the seed_‘. For the moral
disposition and the moral character—first principle and fountain-head of
conduct—are the seed of actions, and these they corrupt by clothing vice
in the titles of virtue. Thucydides tells us that in the midst of war
and faction ‘_the customary acceptation of words was arbitrarily changed
to suit an end. Reckless daring came to be thought devoted courage;
[Sidenote: C] cautious hesitation, an excuse for cowardice; moderation,
weakness in disguise; complete insight, complete inertia_‘. So, when
flattery is at work, we should warily note how prodigality is called
‘generosity’; cowardice, ‘caution’; light-headed caprice, ‘life and
vigour’; meanness, ‘moderation’; the amorous man, ‘amiable and
affectionate’; the arrogant and irascible person, ‘a man of spirit’; a
poor meek creature, ‘civil and obliging’. [Sidenote: D] Remember, how
Plato tells us that the lover—the flatterer of the beloved—calls a snub
nose ‘piquant’, a hook-nose ‘regal’, a swarthy face ‘virile’, a white
face ‘saint-like’, while ‘honey-colour’ is simply the coinage of a lover
who indulgently invents a pretty name for pallor. Yet when an ugly man
is persuaded that he is beautiful, or a little man that he is tall, his
deception is short-lived, and the harm which he sustains is slight and
easily repaired. But flattery may teach him to treat vices as if they
[Sidenote: E] were virtues, and to rejoice in them instead of sorrowing.
It may remove all sense of shame at misconduct. Such flattery spelled
destruction to the Siceliots, when it called the cruelty of Dionysius
and Phalaris a ‘hatred of wickedness’. It spelled ruin to Egypt, when it
gave to Ptolemy’s effeminacy, to his hysterical superstition, to his
shriekings and bangings of tambourines, the name of piety and worship.
It came once within an ace of utterly subverting Roman morals, when it
glossed over Antony’s dissolute and ostentatious self-indulgence with
pretty terms as a ‘festive and genial appreciation of the boons of
unstinted [Sidenote: F] power and fortune’. What made Ptolemy tie on the
mouth-strap and its pair of flutes? What made Nero cultivate the tragic
stage and don the mask and buskin? What else but praise from flatterers?
Is not a king regularly called an Apollo if he warbles, a Dionysius if
he gets drunk, a Hercules if he wrestles? And is he not so pleased with
it, that there is no way of disgracing himself to which flattery will
not lead him? It is therefore in the matter of praise that we should
chiefly beware of the time-server. He is himself alive to the fact, and
[Sidenote: 57] is deft at avoiding suspicion. If therefore he gets hold
of some dull-witted and thick-skinned grandee, he fools him to the top
of his bent. Remember how Strouthias makes a hobby-horse of Bias and
dances his fling upon the man’s stupidity by praising him with:
_You have drunk more than royal Alexander_,
or:
_I laugh to think o’ the quip you gave the Cyprian._
But with persons of more discernment he perceives that in this direction
they are particularly on the alert, that in this quarter they keep a
special watch. He does not therefore adopt a direct line of attack with
his flattery, but fetches a circuitous course from a distance, and
_Advances noiselessly, as when a beast_
[Sidenote: B] is tentatively approached and fingered. At one moment he
will describe how you have been praised by some one else, using the
public speaker’s device of putting the words in another person’s mouth.
He will say, for instance, that he had the great pleasure of being
present in the market-place when some ‘visitors’—or some ‘elderly
people’—were relating a good many admiring and complimentary stories
about you. At another time he will concoct a number of trivial and
fictitious charges against you, which he purports to have heard from
others, and he will say that he has hastened to find you and desires to
know where you said such-and-such a thing or did so-and-so. If you deny
them—as you naturally will—he at [Sidenote: C] once has you in the trap
for his compliments: ‘It did surprise me that you should speak ill of a
friend, seeing that it is not your nature to do so even of an enemy;’ or
‘that you should have designs on other people’s property, when you are
so liberal with your own’.
Others, again, are like a painter who brings the light and bright parts
into relief by the juxtaposition of dark and shaded portions. By
blaming, abusing, belittling, and ridiculing the opposite qualities,
they give a concealed praise and encouragement to the defects of the
person flattered. To a spendthrift they disparage economy and call it
stinginess. To a grasping knave [Sidenote: D] who makes money by mean
and shabby practices they depreciate honest self-support and call it
want of enterprise and business capacity. When they associate with some
careless idler who shuns the busy centres of affairs, they are not
ashamed to style public life a ‘meddling with other people’s business’,
and public spirit a ‘sterile vanity’. Sometimes, in order to flatter a
public speaker, a philosopher is belittled, or the favour of profligate
women is won by miscalling faithful and loving wives ‘provincial and
unattractive’. Most pitiful in its baseness is the fact that the toady
does not even spare himself. As a wrestler crouches his body in order to
throw another, so he insidiously contrives to compliment his neighbour
by disparaging himself. [Sidenote: E] ‘I am a nervous wretch at sea,’
says he. ‘I cannot face trouble. Hard words make me frantically angry.
But our friend here has no nerves; nothing troubles him. He is a
peculiar person, always good-tempered, never ruffled.’ But if a man
thinks himself particularly sensible, and is so desirous of being
severely matter-of-fact that—out of what he calls straightforwardness—he
is always on the defensive with
_Tydeus’ son, bepraise me not much, nor, prithee, upbraid me_,
the artist in flattery will not adopt this manner of approaching
[Sidenote: F] him. Such cases are met by another device. He will come
and consult him, as a person of superior wisdom, about affairs of his
own. ‘Though,’ he will say, ‘there are others with whom I am more
intimate, I am compelled to trouble you. For where are we to take refuge
when we need advice? In whom are we to put confidence?’ Then, after
listening to what he has to say, he will take his leave with the remark
that what he has received is ‘not an opinion; it is an oracle’. And if
he sees that you make pretensions to being a judge of literature, he
gives you something he has [Sidenote: 58] written himself, and asks you
to read and correct it. When King Mithridates had a fancy for doctoring,
some of his courtiers actually put themselves in his hands to be lanced
and cauterized. This was flattery by deeds in place of words, since he
accepted their confidence as a sufficient voucher for his skill.
_Of many shapes are means divine_,
and this negative class of praise requires to be countered with some
craftiness. The way to confute it is by deliberately offering counsel
and suggestion which are nonsensical, and making corrections [Sidenote:
B] which are absurd. If your man objects to nothing, says ‘Yes’ to
everything, and exclaims ‘Good!’ ‘Capital!’ at every item, he exposes
himself as one who
_The watchword asks, while other are his aims_,
—those aims being to encourage your self-conceit with his laudations.
Take another case. Painting has been styled ‘silent poetry’. So there is
a way of praising by silent flattery. The sportsman’s purpose is better
concealed from the game when he pretends to be upon other
business—walking, tending cattle, or tilling the soil. In the same way a
toady drives home his eulogies most effectively when the eulogy is
disguised under some different form of action. It may be by giving up
his seat, or his place [Sidenote: C] at table, when you appear upon the
scene. Or if he is addressing the Assembly or Council, and notices that
some wealthy man desires to speak, he may stop his speech and yield him
the platform. His silence indicates more clearly than the loudest
acclamation that he regards the person in question as a better man and
his intellectual superior. Such persons may therefore be seen taking
possession of the front seats at an entertainment or in the
meeting-hall, not because they claim any right to them, but in order
that they may play the toady by giving up their places to rich people.
Or you may see them begin the discussion at a congress or a
board-meeting, and subsequently give way to ‘superior argument’ and
shift round with the [Sidenote: D] greatest readiness to the opposite
view, if their opponent is a person of influence, wealth, or note. The
clearest exposure of such complaisances and concessions is to be sought
in the fact that it is not to knowledge or high abilities or age that
the deference is paid, but to riches and reputations. When Megabyzus
took a seat at Apelles’ side and wanted to prate to him about ‘line’ and
‘shading’, the painter remarked, ‘Do you see those boys yonder grinding
my mixing-earth? When you were silent, they were all eyes of admiration
for your purple and your jewels. But now that you have begun to talk
about things [Sidenote: E] you do not understand, they are laughing at
you.’ Similarly Solon, when Croesus questioned him about ‘happiness’,
declared that Tellus, an Athenian of humble rank, as well as Cleobis and
Biton, were more favoured by fortune. A flatterer, on the contrary, not
only avers that a king, a rich man, or a man in power, is prosperous and
fortunate; he also declares that he is pre-eminent in wisdom, art, and
every form of excellence. Hence while there are persons who have no
patience to listen when the Stoics describe the sage as at the same time
‘rich, beautiful, noble, and king’, a toady will make out that the rich
man is at the same time an orator, a poet, and—if he so wishes—a painter
and a musician. He makes him out swift of foot and [Sidenote: F] strong
of thew by letting himself be thrown in wrestling and outstripped in
running, as Criso of Himera did in a race against Alexander—much to
Alexander’s disgust when he detected it. Carneades used to say that the
only thing that kings’ and rich men’s sons understand is how to ride;
they receive no proper instruction in anything else. For their teacher
flatters them in school with his praises, and their antagonists in the
wrestling-ring by courting defeat; whereas a horse, who neither knows
nor cares whether you are in or out of office, poor or rich, pitches you
head first if you cannot keep your seat. It was therefore a silly and
stupid thing for Bion to say: ‘If by [Sidenote: 59] eulogizing a field
we could make it bear a prolific crop, would it not be a mistake for a
man to go digging and moiling instead? Neither, then, is it irrational
for you to praise a human being, if your praise is productive of good
fruit.’ A field suffers no injury from being praised, whereas insincere
and undeserved compliment puffs a man up and ruins him.
On this point we have said enough. The next consideration is that of
candour.
[Sidenote: B] When Patroclus, on going out to fight, dressed himself in
Achilles’ armour and drove his team, the one thing he let alone and did
not venture to touch was the Pelian spear. So it might have been
expected of the flatterer that, when dressing himself up carefully for
the part of ‘friend’, with its proper tokens and badges, the one thing
he would leave untouched and uncopied would be plain-speaking—a special
attribute,
_Heavy and huge and stubborn_,
to be wielded only by friendship. But in his fear that laughter, strong
drink, jest, and fun may mean his betrayal, we find him [Sidenote: C]
putting a solemn face on the business, flattering with a frown and
administering dashes of blame and admonition. Here again, therefore, we
must apply our tests. In a comedy of Menander, the Mock-Hercules comes
in carrying a club which has no strength or solidity, but is merely a
hollow sham. So, I take it, with the flatterer’s plain-speaking. On
trial you will find that it is soft and without weight or vigour; that
it behaves like a woman’s cushion, which, while seeming to offer a firm
support to the head, actually yields it more of its own way. [Sidenote:
D] This spurious candour, with its hollow fullness, its false and
superficial puffiness, is merely meant to shrink and collapse, so as to
induce the person who leans upon it to make himself more comfortable.
The genuine candour of a friend attacks only our misdeeds; it hurts only
out of care and protection; like honey, it merely stings our sores in
cleansing them, its general uses being grateful and sweet. This,
however, is a theme for special discussion.
With the flatterer it is different. In the first place, when he displays
sharpness or heat or inflexibility, it is in dealing with others than
yourself. He is severe upon his own servants; he is terribly hard upon
the misdeeds of his own relations; he shows no admiration or respect for
a stranger, but treats [Sidenote: E] him with contempt; his scandalizing
is merciless when exacerbating other people. His object is to make it
appear that he detests low practices, and that he would not consent to
abate a jot of his candour in your behalf, or to do or say anything to
curry favour. In the next place, when there is something really and
seriously wrong, he pretends to be completely ignorant and unconscious
of it, while he will pounce upon some little immaterial shortcoming and
take it rigorously and vehemently to task—if, for instance, he sees an
implement carelessly placed, or a fault of domestic management, or
negligence in the cut of your hair or the wearing of your clothes, or
lack of [Sidenote: F] proper attention to a dog or a horse. But should
you slight your parents, neglect your children, humiliate your wife,
despise your relatives, and waste your money, it becomes no business of
his. In such circumstances not a word does he venture to utter, but he
is like a trainer who permits an athlete to get drunk and dissipated,
while he is severe upon him in the matter of an oil-flask or a
scraping-iron; or like a grammar-master who scolds a boy for the state
of his slate and pencil, but pretends not to hear his slips of grammar
and expression. The toady is the kind of man who, in dealing with a
ridiculously incompetent public speaker, has nothing to say about his
matter, but finds fault with his voice-production, and blames him
severely for spoiling [Sidenote: 60] his larynx by drinking cold drinks;
or who, when requested to peruse some miserable composition, finds fault
with the roughness of the paper and calls the copyist a slovenly wretch.
It was so in the case of Ptolemy, when he made pretence to literary
tastes. They would fight with him about some out-of-the-way word or bit
of a verse or point of information, and would keep it up till midnight.
But to his indulgence in cruelty and outrage, to his tambourine-playing
and initiating, not one of [Sidenote: B] all their number offered any
opposition. Imagine a man suffering with tumours and abscesses, and some
one taking a surgeon’s knife and cutting—his hair or his nails! That is
what the flatterer does. He employs his candour upon those parts which
feel no pain or soreness.
There is a still craftier species, who make their plain-speaking and
fault-finding an actual means of pleasing. When Alexander was once
making large gifts to a jester, envy and vexation drove Agis, the
Argive, to bawl out, ‘How utterly absurd!’ The king turned upon him
angrily and asked, ‘_What_ is that you say?’ ‘I confess,’ was the reply,
‘to being annoyed and [Sidenote: C] indignant when I see how much alike
all you sons of Zeus are in your fondness for flatterers and ridiculous
persons. Heracles found pleasure in his Cercopes, Dionysus in Sileni,
and we can see what a high regard you have yourself for people of the
kind.’ One day when the emperor Tiberius entered the Senate, one of his
flatterers got up and said that, as free men, they were bound to speak
frankly and to treat important interests without reticence or
reservation. When he had thus aroused every one’s interest and had
secured silence and the attention of Tiberius, he said, ‘Listen, Caesar,
to the charge which we all make against you, but which no one dares to
utter openly. You are neglecting yourself, sacrificing your health and
wearing it out by perpetually working and thinking for us, and giving
yourself [Sidenote: D] no rest day or night.’ As he continued with a
good deal more in the same strain, the orator Cassius Severus is said to
have exclaimed, ‘Such plain-speaking will be the man’s death!’
These devices, however, are of minor moment. The matter becomes grave—as
meaning ruin to foolish people—when a man is accused of the opposite
disorders to those with which he is afflicted; as when the parasite
Himerius used to scold the meanest and most avaricious plutocrat in
Athens by calling him a reckless prodigal, bent on bringing himself and
his children to starvation; or when, on the contrary, a toady reproaches
[Sidenote: E] a prodigal spendthrift with sordid parsimony, as Titus
Petronius did Nero; or when he urges a ruler who behaves with savage
cruelty towards his subjects to divests himself of ‘all that gentleness
and ill-timed and mistaken clemency’.
To the same class belongs the man who pretends to look upon some silly
nincompoop as a clever rogue of whom he is afraid and wary. Or if an
ill-conditioned person who delights in perpetual fault-finding and
scandalizing does happen to be led into praising some distinguished man,
he may take him to task and raise objections, for ‘it is a weakness of
yours, this praising [Sidenote: F] of even quite insignificant people.
What remarkable thing has he ever said or done?’
Love-affairs are favourite ground for the flatterer to play upon his
victim by further inflaming his passion. If he sees you at variance with
your brothers, or neglecting your parents, or contemptuous towards your
wife, he offers neither remonstrance nor reproach, but actually
intensifies the bad feeling. ‘No: you don’t appreciate yourself,’ or,
‘It is you that are to blame, for always playing the humble servant.’
But if anger [Sidenote: 61] and jealousy provoke a tiff with a mistress
of whom you are enamoured, in comes flattery at once with a fine blaze
of frankness, and adds fuel to the fire by pleading cause and accusing
the lover of all sorts of unloverlike, unfeeling, and unforgivable
conduct:
_O ingrate! after all that rain of kisses!_
Thus, when Antony was becoming passionately enamoured of the Egyptian
queen, his friends did their best to persuade him that the love was on
her side, and they upbraided him with being ‘cold and supercilious’.
‘The lady has forsaken all that royal state and that life of delightful
enjoyments to go wandering [Sidenote: B] about on the march with you,
like any concubine.
_But, for thee, the heart in thy breast is past all moving or
charming_,
and you leave her to suffer as she will.’ It gratified Antony to be thus
put in the wrong; no praise could please him like these accusations; and
unconsciously he became perverted to the standard of the man who
pretended to be reproving him. For candour of this kind is like the bite
of a lascivious woman; while pretending to give pain, it arouses a
provoking sensation of pleasure.
Though unmixed wine is, generally speaking, a corrective of hemlock,
yet, if you add it to that drug in the form of a mixture, [Sidenote: C]
you make it impossible to counteract the power of the poison, the heat
driving it rapidly to the heart. So, while aware that candour is a
potent corrective of flattery, your rogue actually uses ‘candour’ as his
instrument for flattering you. Bias was therefore wrong in his answer to
the question: ‘What animal is the most dangerous?’ when he replied,
‘Among wild animals, the despot, among tame animals, the toady.’ It
would have been truer to say that, among toadies, those who merely
frequent your bath and your table are tame, while those who thrust the
[Sidenote: D] tentacles of their slanderous and malicious meddling into
bedchamber and boudoir are savage and unmanageable beasts.
The one method of protecting ourselves appears to lie in recognizing and
never forgetting that our mental being is made up of two parts—one
high-principled and rational, the other irrational, mendacious and
passionate—and that a friend is the unfailing supporter and champion of
the better part—a physician who promotes and watches over good
health—while a flatterer acts as prompter to the passionate and
irrational part, exciting, titillating, coaxing, and divorcing it from
reason by inventing [Sidenote: E] low forms of self-indulgence on its
behalf. There are some kinds of food which yield no benefit to blood or
breath, and put no vigour into muscle or marrow, but simply excite the
sensual appetites and make the flesh flabby and unsound. So with the
advice of a fawner. If does nothing to help sane thought and judgement;
but watch it, and you will find it cosseting an amorous pleasure,
aggravating a foolish fit of anger or provoking an attack of envy,
puffing you up with vulgar and empty pride, encouraging your doleful
dumps, or, where there is a tendency to be ill-natured or mean-spirited
or mistrustful, making the [Sidenote: F] feeling more bitter or shy or
suspicious by constantly suggesting and anticipating evil. For he is
perpetually in wait for some passion or other, which he proceeds to feed
up; and whenever there is a festering or inflammation of your mental
state, you will always find him a kind of bubo, bringing it to a head.
Are you angry? ‘Then punish.’ Do you crave a thing? ‘Then buy it.’ Are
you afraid? ‘Then let us run away.’ Are you suspicious? ‘Then trust the
feeling.’
If it is hard to catch him in connexion with such affections as
these—their strength being so overpowering as to baffle the reason—he
will give you a better opening in smaller matters; for he will be just
the same with them. If you are apprehensive [Sidenote: 62] of a headache
or a surfeit, and are doubtful as to bathing or taking food, a friend
will try to check you and will urge you to be cautious, whereas the
toady will drag you to the bath, or ask them to put some novel dish on
the table, begging you not ‘to keep so tight a hand upon your body as to
be cruel to it’. If he sees you inclined to shirk a journey, a voyage,
or a piece of work, he will say that there is no immediate hurry, and
that it will do just as well if you postpone the matter or send someone
else. If, after promising a friend to make him a loan or a present of a
sum of money, you repent, but have your scruples, the toady [Sidenote:
B] throws his weight into the less honourable scale; he corroborates
‘the argument of the purse’, and makes short work of your sense of shame
by urging you to be economical, ‘seeing that you have so many expenses
and so many persons to support.’
If, therefore, we are able to perceive our own covetousness,
shamelessness, or cowardice, we shall also be able to see when a man is
a toady. Such he is when he is always playing the advocate to those
passions and ‘speaking his mind’ when we deviate from them.
Enough having been said upon this topic, we may next proceed to the
question of the practical services rendered. In this [Sidenote: C]
respect the flatterer makes his distinction from the friend a very
obscure and perplexing matter; he always appears so prompt and
indefatigable in his zeal. While a friend’s way, like the ‘speech of
truth’ as described by Euripides, is ‘single’, open, and unaffected,
that of the flatterer
_Sick in itself, needs antidotes full shrewd_
—uncommonly so, indeed, and plenty of them. When you meet a friend, he
sometimes passes on without uttering or receiving a word, and with no
more than a glance or a smile; he simply manifests by his expression,
and gathers from yours, the kindly [Sidenote: D] understanding within.
But the toady is on the run to overtake you, greets you from a long way
off, and, if you catch sight of him and speak to him first, he excuses
himself over and over again, calling his witnesses and taking his oath.
So in the matter of actions. A friend will neglect many a trifle; he is
no precisian and makes no fuss; he does not insist upon serving you at
every turn. But the other is persistent, unremitting, unwearied; he
leaves no opportunity or room for any one else to serve you; he is eager
to receive your orders, and, if he does not get them, he is piqued, nay,
absolutely heart-broken with disappointment. A sensible man, then, may
take these as some indications that a friendship is not sincere and
single-minded, [Sidenote: E] but is like a harlot who forces her
embraces upon you before they are asked for.
The first place, however, in which to look for the difference is in
promises. It has already been well said by previous writers that a
friend will put his promise in the form familiar in
_If I have power to achieve it, and if ’tis a thing for
achievement_,
while a time-server will put it in this:
_Voice me the thought in thy mind._
The comedians present us with such characters:
_Nicomachus, pit me against the soldier.
I’ll make ripe pulp of him; I’ll make his face
Softer than sponge: if not, then flog me soundly._
In the next place no friend will be a party to your actions [Sidenote:
F] unless he has first been a party to planning them. He must first have
looked into the business and helped to put it on a right and proper
footing. Not so the flatterer. Even if you do grant him a share in
weighing the matter and expressing an opinion about it, he is not only
so anxious to gratify you with his complaisance, but is in such dread of
leading you to suspect him of unreadiness to face the action, that he
leaves you to take your course, or only lends spurs to your desire. It
is not easy to find a rich man or a grandee who is ready to say:
[Sidenote: 63]
_Give me a man, a beggar—nay, no matter,
Lower than beggar, if he means me well—
To put fear by, and speak his heart to me._
Like the tragedian, he must have the support of a chorus of friends who
keep his tune, or of an audience who give applause. Merope in the
tragedy advises:
_Get thee for friends such men as, when they speak,
Yield not; but when a man will for thy pleasure
Make himself knave, lock thou thy door against him._
[Sidenote: B] But such persons do the opposite. If, ‘when you speak’ you
‘yield not’, but oppose them for their good, they abominate you; but if
‘for their pleasure’ you are a ‘knave’ and a servile charlatan, they
receive you not merely inside their locked doors but inside their most
secret passions and concerns. The simple kind of flatterer, it is true,
does not aim at so much. What he asks in such important matters is not
to be your adviser, but your minister and servant. But the more crafty
person will stand still—puzzling over the question with puckered brow
and appropriate changes of countenance—but will say nothing. And if you
give your own idea, he will exclaim, ‘How strange! You just managed to
anticipate me. I was about to make exactly your suggestion.’
[Sidenote: C] Mathematicians tell us that lines and surfaces, being
mental perceptions and incorporeal, have in themselves no such thing as
bending, stretching, or motion, but that they are bent, stretched, and
changed in position along with the bodies of which they are the
boundaries. So you will discover that, with the time-server, his assent,
his opinion, even his pleasure and anger, are always dependent. Here,
therefore, it is perfectly easy to detect the difference. It is still
more apparent in the manner in which a service is rendered. With the
good feeling of a friend, as with a living creature, its most vital
functions lie [Sidenote: D] deep. It is marked by no ostentatious
display; but very often, like a physician who conceals the fact that he
is doctoring you, a friend does you a good turn by a word of
intercession or by bringing about an understanding, and so consults your
interests without your knowing it. Arcesilaus was a man of this type.
Not to mention other instances, when Apelles the Chian was ill and
Arcesilaus had discovered how poor he was, he came back later with
twenty drachmae. Taking a seat close to him, he exclaimed, ‘There is
nothing here beyond Empedocles’ four elements:
_Fire and water and earth and the gentle air of the heavens._
Why, even your bed is made all askew.’ With that he moved his pillow and
meanwhile slipped the coins under it. When the [Sidenote: E] old woman
in attendance found them and told Apelles in amazement, he laughed and
said, ‘It is that thief Arcesilaus.’[52]
And here we may note how philosophy produces ‘_children like unto their
sires_‘. Cephisocrates, who had been impeached, was on his trial, and
beside him, with the rest of his friends, stood Lacudes, one of the
coterie of Arcesilaus. The accuser having asked for his ring,
Cephisocrates quietly dropped it at his side, and Lacudes, who noticed
the action, put his foot upon it and hid it. On that ring depended the
proof of the charge. When Cephisocrates, after his acquittal, went
shaking hands with members of the jury, one of them, who had apparently
[Sidenote: F] seen what occurred, bade him thank Lacudes, and gave an
account of the affair, which Lacudes had mentioned to no one. We may
believe that it is the same with the Gods, and that for the most part
they confer their benefits unperceived, it being their nature to find
pleasure in the mere act of bestowing favours and doing good. But in a
deed done by a flatterer there is nothing honest, sincere,
single-minded, or generous. It is a case of sweating, bawling, bustling,
and of a tense look upon the face, intended to convey the impression of
arduous and urgent business. The thing resembles, in fact, an overdone
painting, [Sidenote: 64] which strives to secure realistic effect by the
use of blatant colours and affected folds, wrinkles, and angles.
He is also offensive enough to relate how the business has meant running
about and anxiety, and he goes on to describe how he has got into
trouble with other people and had no end of worry and some terrible
experiences, until you declare that the thing was not worth it all. Any
obligation thrown in your teeth will cause an unbearable and distressing
sense of annoyance, but with an obligation from a time-server your sense
of reproach and shame is felt at once, from the very moment that the
service [Sidenote: B] is being rendered. A friend, on the other hand, if
he has occasion to speak of the matter, qualifies his account of it, and
about himself he says nothing. For example, the Lacedaemonians once sent
the people of Smyrna some corn at a time of need, and, to their
expressions of admiration of the kindness, they replied, ‘Not at all! To
scrape this together we had only to vote the forgoing of one day’s
dinner for ourselves and our beasts.’ A favour so rendered is not only a
generous one; it is made the more welcome to the recipients by the
thought that no great harm is done to the benefactor.
It is not, however, by the flatterer’s offensive way of rendering his
services nor by the recklessness of his promises that one [Sidenote: C]
can best recognize the breed; an easier criterion consists in the
creditable or discreditable nature of the service, and in the different
character of the pleasure or benefit. A friend will not, as Gorgias
asserted, expect his friend to render him honest services and yet
himself oblige that friend in many ways which are not honest:
_’Tis his to share the wisdom, not the folly._
Rather, therefore, he will dissuade him also from improper courses. And,
if he fails, there is virtue in Phocion’s answer to Antipater, ‘You
cannot use me both as friend and toady’—that is to say, both as friend
and not friend. We must help a friend in his need, not in his knavery;
in his planning, not in his plotting; with testimony, not conspiracy.
Yes, and we must share in his misfortunes, though not in his misdeeds.
We [Sidenote: D] should not choose even to be privy to the baseness of
our friends; how then to be a party to their misbehaviour? When the
Lacedaemonians, after their defeat by Antipater, were making terms, they
stipulated that, though he might impose any penalty he liked, he should
impose no disgrace. It is the same with a friend. Should occasion call
for expense or danger or hard work, he is foremost in his claim to be
summoned and take a prompt and zealous part; but when disgrace attaches
to it, he will as promptly beg to be spared and left alone. But with the
fawner it is the reverse. In services of difficulty and danger he cries
off, and, if you give him a tap to sound him, his excuse—whatever
[Sidenote: E] it may be—rings false and mean. But in vile and degrading
little jobs, do as you like with him; trample on him; nothing shocks or
insults him.
Look at the ape. He cannot watch the house like a dog, nor carry like a
horse, nor plough the ground like an ox. He is therefore the bearer of
scurrilous insult and buffoonery and the butt of sport, his function
being to serve as a tool for laughter. Precisely so with the toady. He
is unequal to any form of labour and serious effort, and incapable of
helping you by a speech, with a contribution, or in a fight; but in
business which shuns the light he is promptitude itself—a most competent
[Sidenote: F] agent in an amour, an adept at ransoming a strumpet, alert
at checking the bill for a drinking-bout, no sloven in the ordering of
your dinner, deft at attentions to your mistress, and, if you bid him
show insolence to your wife’s relations or bundle her out of doors, he
is beyond all pity or shame.
This, therefore, is another easy means of finding him out. Order him to
do any disreputable and discreditable thing you [Sidenote: 65] choose,
and he is ready to spare no pains in gratifying you accordingly.
A very good indication of the wide difference between our fawner and a
friend may be found in his attitude towards your other friends. The one
is delighted to have many others giving and receiving affection with
him, and his constant aim is to make his friend widely loved and
honoured. He holds that ‘_friends have all things in common_‘, and their
friends, he thinks, [Sidenote: B] should be more ‘in common’ than
anything else. But the other—the false, bastard, and spurious
article—realizes, better than any one, how he is himself sinning against
friendship by—so to speak—debasing its coinage. While, therefore, he is
jealous by nature, it is only against his like that he gives his
jealousy play, by striving to surpass them in grovelling and lickspittle
tricks. Of his betters he stands in fear and dread, we cannot say
because he is
_Plodding on foot against a Lydian car_,
but because, as Simonides has it, he
_Hath not e’en lead
To match the pure refinèd gold._
If, therefore, light in weight, surface-gilt and counterfeit, he finds
himself put in close comparison with genuine friendship, [Sidenote: C]
full-carat and mint-made, he cannot bear the test, and must be detected.
Consequently he acts like the painter whose cocks in a picture were
wretchedly done, and who therefore ordered his slave to drive any real
cocks as far from his canvas as possible. In the same way the flatterer
drives away real friends and prevents them coming near. If he fails,
while openly he will fawn upon them and pay them court and deference as
being his betters, in secret he will throw out calumnious hints and
suggestions. And if the word in secret has given a scratch without at
once absolutely producing a wound, he never forgets Medius’s maxim. This
Medius was what may be called the [Sidenote: D] fugleman or expert
conductor of the chorus of toadies who surrounded Alexander, and was at
daggers drawn with the highest characters. His maxim was, ‘Be bold in
laying on and biting with your slanders, for even if the man who is
bitten salves the wound, the slander will leave its scar.’ It was
through these scars, or rather because he was eaten up with gangrenes
and ulcers, that Alexander put Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas to
death. Meanwhile he surrendered himself unreservedly to a Hagnon, a
Bagoas, an Agesias, or a Demetrius, and allowed them to give him a fall
by salaaming to him and dressing him up after the fashion of an oriental
idol. So powerful an effect [Sidenote: E] has complaisance, and
apparently most of all with those who think most of themselves. Their
wish for the finest qualities goes with the belief that they possess
them, and so the flatterer acquires both credit and confidence. For
while lofty places are difficult of approach or assault for all who have
designs upon them, the lofty conceit produced in a foolish mind by the
gifts of fortune or talent offers the readiest footing to those who are
small and petty.
As therefore we urged at the beginning of this treatise, so we urge
again here; ‘Let us make a clearance of self-love and self-conceit.’
These, by flattering us in advance, render us more [Sidenote: F]
amenable to flattery from outside: we come prepared. But if, in
obedience to the God, we recognize how all-important the maxim _Know
Thyself_ is to each of us; if we therefore examine our own nature,
training, and education, and observe how all alike fall short of
excellence in countless ways, and how they all contain a large admixture
of weakness in the things we do or say or feel, we shall be very slow in
allowing the flatterer to abuse us at his pleasure. Alexander remarked
that what made him give least credence to those who called him a God was
his sleep and his sexualities, his excesses in those things falling
below his own standard. On our own part we shall [Sidenote: 66] always
discover that at many a point and in many a way our qualities are ugly
or a source of pain, defective or misdirected. We shall see ourselves in
our true light, and find that what we need is not a friend who will pay
us compliments and eulogies, but one who will bring us to book when we
are really doing wrong. But only then. There are in any case very few
with the courage to treat a friend with candour rather than
complaisance; yet among these few it will be hard to find such as
understand their business. It will be easier to find persons who imagine
that they are using candour because they abuse and scold. Yet it is with
plain-speaking as with any other medicine. [Sidenote: B] When it is
given at the wrong time the effect is to upset and pain you to no
purpose. In a certain sense it does painfully what flattery does
pleasantly, inasmuch as unseasonable blame works as much harm as
unseasonable praise. More than anything else it is a thing which drives
a man headlong into the arms of the flatterer. Like water, he turns from
the steep unyielding surface and glides away into the receptive
shallows. Candour, therefore, must be tempered by rational courtesy,
which will divest it of excess and over-severity. The light must not be
so strong that in our pain and distress at the invariable reproving and
fault-finding we turn away to escape discomfort and fly to find shade
with the flatterer.
[Sidenote: C] In shunning a vice, Philopappus, our object should always
be virtue, not the contrary vice. Some people think they escape being
shamefaced by being shameless; that they escape being rustic by being
ribald; that their behaviour becomes furthest from timidity and
cowardice when they appear nearest to impudence and insolence. Some
plead to themselves that they would rather be irreligious than
superstitious, rather [Sidenote: D] knaves than simpletons. Their
character may be likened to a piece of wood, which, through lack of the
skill to straighten it, they crook to the opposite side. The ugliest way
of refusing to flatter is to give useless pain. Our social intercourse
must be boorishly ignorant of all the rules of good feeling when it is
by being harsh and disagreeable that we avoid any creeping humbleness in
our friendship, just as if we were the freedman in the comedy, who
thinks that, to be properly enjoyed, ‘speech on equal terms’ means
abusive speech.
Since, therefore, it as an ugly thing when our striving to be agreeable
lands us in flattery, and an ugly thing when, in the avoidance of
flattery, all the spirit of friendly sympathy is ruined by immoderate
plain-speaking; and since we ought to commit neither mistake, but—in
candour as in other things—draw ‘success from moderation’, mere logical
sequence seems to [Sidenote: E] dictate the conclusion to our treatise.
Plain-speaking, we find, is liable to be, as it were, tainted in various
ways. The first thing is to divest it of its selfish aspect, by taking
the greatest care not to let it appear as if your reproaches were due to
a kind of injury or grievance of your own. When the speaker is concerned
about himself, we regard his words as the outcome of anger, not of
goodwill; as grumbling, not as reproof. For whereas candour is a mark of
friendliness which compels respect, grumbling is petty and selfish. We
therefore respect and admire the person who is frank, while a
fault-finder provokes recrimination and contempt. Though Achilles
[Sidenote: F] imagined he was speaking with but reasonable frankness,
Agamemnon lost his temper; but when Odysseus attacked him bitterly in
the words
_Madman, thou shouldst have commanded some other, some pitiful
army_,
he patiently gave way, the friendly purpose and good sense of the speech
causing him to draw in his horns. The reason was that, while the
plain-speaking of Odysseus, who had no private [Sidenote: 67] grounds
for anger, was only for the sake of Greece, the vexation of Achilles was
thought to be chiefly on his own account. Nay, Achilles himself, though
possessed of no sweet or gentle temper, but
_A terrible man, who must blame, e’en though it be blaming the
blameless_,
silently permitted Patroclus to give him many such hard blows:
_Man of no pity, no father of thine was Peleus the horseman,
Thetis no mother of thine; from the green-grey sea wert thou gotten
By beetling crags; so comes it thy heart is void of all mercy._
[Sidenote: B] The orator Hypereides used to urge the Athenians to
consider not merely whether he was angry, but whether his anger was
gratuitous. So with the admonition of a friend. When pure from any
private feeling, it is a thing of awe, which we cannot face unabashed.
And if, when a man is speaking his mind, it is manifest that he is
casting aside any wrongs his friend may have done to himself; that it is
other misdemeanours on his part which he is bringing home—other reasons
for which he does not shrink from giving him pain—such candour produces
an irresistible effect, the sharpness and severity of the admonition
being intensified by the kindliness of the admonisher. Doubtless,
[Sidenote: C] as has been well said, ‘it is most of all when we are
angry or at variance with our friends that we should do or devise
something to their advantage or credit’; but we show no less true a
friendliness if, when we think ourselves slighted or neglected, it is on
behalf of other victims of neglect that we give them a plain-spoken
reminder. Plato, at a time when his relations with Dionysius were
strained and dubious, asked for an interview. Dionysius granted it, in
the belief that Plato was coming with a tale of grievance of his own.
The conversation, however, took the following shape. ‘Suppose,
Dionysius, you discovered [Sidenote: D] that some ill-disposed person
had made a voyage to Sicily with the intention of doing you an injury,
but that he could find no opportunity. Would you allow him to leave the
country and get away scot-free?’ ‘Certainly not, Plato,’ said Dionysius:
‘enemies must be hated and punished not only for what they do, but for
what they propose to do.’ ‘Then suppose,’ said Plato, ‘some one comes
here in a friendly spirit, with the intention of rendering you a
service, but that you afford him no chance. Is it a proper thing to cast
him aside with ingratitude and contempt?’ Upon Dionysius asking who it
was, he answered, ‘Aeschines, a man who, in rightness of character, will
compare with any of Socrates’ associates, and whose teaching cannot fail
to set any hearer firmly on his feet. Though he has [Sidenote: E] made a
long voyage for the sake of philosophic intercourse with you, he has
been left in neglect.’ These words stirred Dionysius so deeply that, in
admiration of his kindliness and magnanimity, he promptly embraced Plato
with effusion and proceeded to pay to Aeschines the most distinguished
attentions.
In the second place, our candour must be cleared of all excrescences, so
to speak. We must allow it no coarse flavourings in the shape of
insulting ridicule or buffoonish mockery. When a surgeon is performing
an operation, a certain ease and neatness [Sidenote: F] should be
incidentally apparent in his work, but there should be no supple
juggleries of the hand in the way of fantastic and risky _fioriture_. In
the same way candour admits of a dexterous touch of wit, so long as it
is so prettily put as to maintain our respect; but impertinent and
insolent buffoonery utterly destroys that feeling. Hence the harpist
chose a polite as well as a forcible way of stopping Philip’s mouth,
when that monarch attempted to argue with him on a question of musical
note. ‘Sire,’ said he, ‘Heaven forbid you should ever become so badly
off as to know more about these things than I do!’ [Sidenote: 68]
Epicharmus, on the other hand, chose the wrong way, when Hiero, a few
days after putting some of his familiars to death, invited him to
dinner. ‘Nay, but,’ said he, ‘the other day there was no invitation to
your sacrifice of your friends.’[53] It was also a mistake for Antiphon,
when the question: ‘What sort of bronze is the best?’ was under
discussion in the presence of Dionysius, to say, ‘That kind out of which
they made the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton at Athens.’ No good
is done by the stinging bitterness of such speeches, nor is any pleasure
given by their scurrilous pleasantry. Language of the [Sidenote: B] kind
comes only from a want of self-command—which is partly insolent
ill-nature—combined with enmity. Those who use it are courting their own
destruction as well; they are veritably dancing a ‘dance at the well’s
edge’. Antiphon was put to death by Dionysius; Timagenes was banished
from Caesar’s friendship, not because of any free word he ever uttered,
but because, at dinner-parties or when walking, he would perpetually and
with no serious purpose whatever, but
_For whatsoever him thought might move the Argives to laughter_,
advance some charge against his conduct as a friend, merely by way of
pretext for upbraiding him.
It is the same with the comic poets. Their work contained many serious
and statesmanlike appeals to the audience; but [Sidenote: C] these were
so much mixed up with farce and ribaldry—like good food in a hotch-potch
of greenstuff—that their plain-speaking lost all nutritive power and
use, with the result that the speaker was looked upon as an ill-natured
buffoon, and the hearer derived no benefit from the speech.
In other cases by all means have your fun and laugh with your friends,
but when you give them a piece of your mind, let it be done with
earnestness and with courtesy. And if the matter is one of importance,
impart a cogent and moving effect to your words by your emotions,
gestures, and tone of voice.
There is also the question of the right moment. To disregard it is in
all cases a serious mistake, but is particularly ruinous to good results
when you are ‘speaking your mind’. That we should beware of doing
anything of the kind when wine and inebriation are to the fore, is
obvious. It is to bring a cloud [Sidenote: D] over the bright sky, if,
in the midst of fun and gaiety, you moot a topic which puckers the brow
and stiffens the face, as if to defeat the ‘Relaxing God’, who—to quote
Pindar—
_Unbends the harassed brow of care._
Nay, there is actually great danger in such unseasonableness. Wine
renders the mind perilously testy, and tipsiness often takes command of
candour and converts it into enmity. Moreover, instead of showing spirit
and courage, it shows a want of manliness for a person who dare not
speak his mind when sober to become bold at table, like a cowardly dog.
There is, however, no need to dwell further upon this theme. Let us
proceed.
There are many who, when affairs are going well with their [Sidenote: E]
friends, neither make any claim nor possess the courage to put restraint
upon them. Prosperity, they think, lies quite beyond the reach of
admonition. But should one stumble and come to grief, they set upon him.
He is tame and humbled, and they trample upon him. The stream of their
candour has been unnaturally dammed up, and now they let the whole flood
loose upon him. He was once so disdainful, and they so feeble, that they
thoroughly enjoy his change of fortune and make the most of it. It is as
well, therefore, to discuss this class also.
If Euripides asks:
_When fortune blesses, what the need of friends?_
the answer must be that it is the prosperous man who has most [Sidenote:
F] need of friends to speak their minds and take down any excess of
pride. There are few who can be both prosperous and wise at the same
time. Most men require to import wisdom from abroad; they require that
reasoning from outside should put compression upon them when fortune
puffs them up and sets them swaying in the wind. But when fortune
reduces their inflated bulk, the situation itself carries its own lesson
and brings repentance home. There is consequently no occasion for
friendly candour or for language which bites and distresses. When such
reverses happen, verily [Sidenote: 69]
_’Tis sweet to look into a friend’s fond eyes_,
while he gives us solace and encouragement. Xenophon says of Clearchus
that in battle and danger there appeared upon his face a look of
geniality which put greater heart into those who were in peril. But to
employ your mordant candour upon a man who is in trouble, is like
administering ‘sharp-sight drops’ to an eye suffering with inflammation.
It does nothing to cure or relieve the pain, but only adds anger to it
by exasperating [Sidenote: B] the sufferer. For instance, when a man is
in health he is not in the least angry or furious with a friend for
blaming his looseness with the other sex, his drinking, his shirking of
work and exercise, his continual bathings and ill-timed gorgings. But
when he is sick, the thing is intolerable. It is more sickening than the
disease to be told, ‘This is the result of your reckless
self-indulgence, your laziness, your rich dishes, and your women.’ ‘What
an unseasonable man you are! I am writing my will; the doctors are
getting castor and scammony ready for me; and you come preaching and
philosophizing!’ So, when a man is in trouble, the situation is not one
for speaking your mind and moralizing. What it requires is sweet
reasonableness [Sidenote: C] and help. When a little child has a fall,
the nurse does not rush up in order to scold it. She picks it up, washes
off the dirt, and straightens its dress. It is afterwards that she
proceeds to reprimand and punish.
An apposite story is told of Demetrius Phalereus, when he was in
banishment and was living at Thebes in mean and obscure circumstances.
It was with no pleasure that he saw Crates coming towards him, inasmuch
as he expected to hear some plain-spoken cynic abuse. Crates, however,
accosted him gently, and then spoke upon the subject of exile—how there
was no calamity in it, and how little need there was to be distressed,
[Sidenote: D] since it meant getting rid of cares, with their dangers
and uncertainties. At the same time he urged him to have confidence in
himself and his inner man. Cheered and heartened by such language,
Demetrius exclaimed to his friends: ‘Alas, for all that engrossing
business which prevented me from getting to know a man like this!’
_To one in grief a friend should speak kind words,
But to great folly words of admonition._
Such is the way of a noble friend. But the mean and ignoble flatterer of
the prosperous man is like those ‘ruptures and [Sidenote: E] sprains’ of
which Demosthenes tells us that ‘when the body meets with an injury,
then you begin to feel them’. He seizes upon your change of fortune with
every appearance of delight and enjoyment. If you do require any
reminder when your own ill-advised conduct has brought you to the
ground, it should suffice to say:
_’Twas not with approval of mine: full oft did I seek to dissuade
thee._
In what cases, then, ought a friend to be uncompromising? When should he
exert his candour to the full? It is when the proper moment calls for
him to stem the vehement course of pleasure, anger, or insolence; to put
the curb on avarice; to [Sidenote: F] restrain a reckless folly. It was
in this way that, when the precarious favours of fortune had corrupted
Croesus with the pride of luxury, Solon spoke his mind to him, bidding
him wait and see the end. It was in this way that Socrates was wont to
put control on Alcibiades, to wrench his heart and draw genuine tears
from him by bringing his errors home. Such was the method of Cyrus with
Cyaxares. Such too, when Dion’s splendour was at its height and he was
drawing all men’s eyes upon him by the brilliance and greatness of his
exploits, was [Sidenote: 70] the method of Plato, who bade him keep
anxious watch against
_Self-will, house-mate of Solitude._
Speusippus also urged Dion in his letters not to be proud because he had
a great name among children and women-folk, but to take care and ‘make
glorious’ the Academy by adorning Sicily with piety and justice and the
best of laws. But not so Euctus and Eulaeus, the associates of Perseus.
In his prosperity they followed him like the rest, always assenting,
always complaisant. But when he met the Romans at Pydna, was defeated,
and fled, they attacked him with bitter censure, reminding him of his
errors and oversights and throwing them one after the other in his
teeth, until the man became so utterly sore and [Sidenote: B] angry that
he made an end of both by stabbing them with his dagger.
This, then, may serve for the general rule as to place and time.
But opportunities are often offered by a man himself, and no one who
cares for his friend should let these occasions slip or omit to use
them. Sometimes a question asked, a story told, blame or praise of a
similar action in the case of other people, gives you the cue for a
piece of plain-speaking. For instance, the story goes that Demaratus
visited Macedonia at a time when [Sidenote: C] Philip was at variance
with his wife and son. Upon Philip welcoming him and inquiring how far
the Greeks were in harmony with each other, Demaratus—who was his
well-wisher and intimate friend—remarked, ‘It becomes you excellently,
Philip, to be asking about the harmonious relations of Athens and the
Peloponnese, while you allow your own house to be so full of feud and
discord.’ A good hit was also made by Diogenes. Philip was on his way to
fight the Greeks, and Diogenes, who had entered the camp, was brought
before him. Philip, being unacquainted with him, asked him if he was a
spy. ‘Certainly I am,’ he replied. ‘I am a spy upon the short-sighted
foolishness which induces you to come, without any compulsion, and risk
[Sidenote: D] your throne and person upon the cast of a single hour.’
This, however, was perhaps somewhat too forcible.
Another good opportunity for admonition occurs when a man has been
abused for his mistakes by some one else and is feeling small and
humbled. A person of discretion will make a happy use of the occasion by
sending the abusive parties to the right about and himself taking his
friend in hand, reminding him that, if there is no other reason for
being careful, he should at least give his enemies no encouragement.
‘How can they open their mouths or say another word, if you cast aside
once for [Sidenote: E] all these faults for which they abuse you?’ By
this means the abuser gets the credit of the pain, and the admonisher
that of the benefit.
Some are more subtle. They convert their familiar friends by blaming
some one else, accusing others of the things they know that those
friends do. Once at a lecture in the afternoon our professor, Ammonius,
aware that some of his class had not lunched as simply as they might,
ordered his freedman to give his own boy a whipping, on the charge that
‘he must have vinegar with his lunch’. Meanwhile the glance he threw at
us brought the reproach home to the guilty parties.
In the next place, we should be cautious of speaking plainly to a friend
before company. Remember the case of Plato. [Sidenote: F] Socrates
having handled one of his associates somewhat vigorously in conversation
at table, Plato remarked, ‘Would it not have been better if this had
been said in private?’ ‘And,’ retorted Socrates, ‘would you not have
done better if you had said that to _me_ in private?’ The story goes
that, when Pythagoras once dealt rather roughly with a pupil before a
number of persons, the youth hanged himself, and from that time
Pythagoras never again reproved anyone in another’s presence. A fault
should be treated like a humiliating complaint. The uncovering and
[Sidenote: 71] prescribing should be secret, not an ostentatious display
to a gathering of witnesses or spectators. It is not the act of a
friend, but of a sophist, to use another’s slips to glorify oneself,
showing off before the company like those medical men who perform
surgical operations in the theatre in order to advertise themselves. And
apart from the insult—which has no right to accompany any curative
treatment—we have to consider the contentiousness and obstinacy of a man
in the wrong. Not merely is it the case that—as Euripides has it—
_Love, when reproved,
Is but more tyrannous_,
[Sidenote: B] but if you make no scruple about offering reproof in
public, you drive any moral disease or passion into becoming shameless.
Plato insists that, if old men are to inculcate reverence in the young,
they must themselves first show reverence towards the young. In the same
way the friendly candour which most abashes is that which itself feels
abashed. Let it be gently and considerately that you approach and handle
the offender; then you undermine and destroy his vice, since regard is
contagiously felt where regard is shown. Excellent, therefore, is the
notion:
_Putting his head close down, to the end that the rest should not
hear it._
[Sidenote: C] Least propriety of all is there in exposing a husband in
the hearing of the wife, a father before the eyes of his children, a
lover in the presence of the beloved, or a teacher in that of his
pupils. He becomes frantic; so sore and angry is he at being set right
before persons in whose eyes he is all anxiety to shine. When Cleitus
enraged Alexander, it was, I imagine, not so much the fault of the wine
as that he appeared to be humbling him before a large company. Another
case is that of Aristomenes, the tutor[54] of Ptolemy. Once, when an
embassy was in the room, Ptolemy fell asleep and Aristomenes gave him a
hit to wake him up. The flatterers seized the opportunity, and affected
to be indignant on the king’s behalf. ‘If,’ said [Sidenote: D] they,
‘you did drop off, thanks to hard work and want of sleep, we ought to
set you right privately, not lay hands on you before so many people.’ As
the result, he sent Aristomenes a cup of poison and ordered him to drink
it off. Aristophanes also tells us how Cleon tried to exasperate the
Athenians against him by making it a charge that he
_Abused the country before foreigners._
This, then, is another of the mistakes to be avoided, if your desire is
not so much to make a self-advertising display as to make your candour
produce helpful and healing results.
In the next place, your plain-speaker ought to bear in mind [Sidenote:
E] the principle which Thucydides makes the Corinthians so properly
express, in saying that they ‘had a right to find fault’ with others. It
was Lysander, I believe, who said to the man from Megara, when he was
delivering himself at the Federal Council concerning the interests of
Greece, ‘You need a country to back your talk.’ In any case, doubtless,
you need character for plain-speaking, but in no case is this so true as
when you are admonishing and lecturing other people. Plato used to say
that it was by his life he admonished Speusippus, and the mere sight of
Xenocrates at lecture, and a glance from him, [Sidenote: F] sufficed to
convert Polemon to better ways. When we lack weight and strength of
character the result of any attempt at plain-speaking on our part is to
draw upon ourselves the words:
_Why physic us, thyself one mass of sores?_
Nevertheless it often happens that, though a man’s own character is as
weak as that of his neighbour, circumstances drive him to administer
reproof. In that case the civillest behaviour is to contrive somehow to
imply that the speaker is included in the reproach. In this tone are the
words:
_Tydeus’ son, what ails us, forgetting our prowess and valour?_
[Sidenote: 72] and:
_But no match are we now for Hector alone...._
Socrates’ way of quietly setting young men right was of the same kind.
He would not be taken as being himself free from ignorance, but as
feeling it a duty to share with them in the cultivation of virtue and
the quest of truth. We inspire affection and confidence when it is
thought that, being equally to blame, we are applying to our friends the
same correction as to ourselves. But if, when rebuking your neighbour,
you put on the superior air of a flawless and passionless being, unless
you are much the senior or possess an acknowledged eminence of character
and reputation, you do no good and only make yourself [Sidenote: B]
offensive and a nuisance. For this reason, when Phoenix introduced the
story of his own misfortunes—how in anger he set to work to kill his
father, but speedily repented:
_Lest the Achaeans should name me ‘the man who murdered his
father’_—
it was of set purpose, that it might not seem as if, in reproving
Achilles, he claimed to be an impeccable person whom anger had no power
to corrupt. In such cases the moral effect sinks in, since we yield more
readily to a show of fellow-feeling than to one of contempt.
Another point. Since a mind diseased can no more bear unqualified
candour and reproof than an inflamed eye can [Sidenote: C] be submitted
to a brilliant light, one most useful resource among our remedies is to
add a slight tincture of praise. For example:
_Ugly is this that ye do, to cease from your valour and prowess,
All ye best of the host! I would not move me to quarrel,
If ’twere some other who thus might hold his hand from the fighting,
Some craven man; but with you is my heart exceedingly anger’d_:
or:
_Pandarus, where is thy bow, and where thy feathery arrows?
Where thy glory, the which no man among us doth challenge?_
If a man is giving way, there is also a vigorous rallying power in such
language as
_Where now
Is Oedipus and all his far-famed rede?_
or:
_Is ‘t Heracles,
He who hath borne so many a brunt, speaks thus?_
Not only does it temper the harshness of the punishment [Sidenote: D]
inflicted by the reproach; it sets a man at rivalry with himself. When
reminded of the things which stand to his credit, he is ashamed of those
which degrade him, and he finds an elevating example in his own person.
But when we make comparisons with others—with mates, fellow citizens, or
kinsmen—the contentiousness which belongs to his failings is piqued and
exacerbated. It has a habit of retorting angrily, ‘Then why don’t you go
to my betters, instead of harassing _me_?’ We must therefore beware of
belauding one person while we are speaking our minds to another—always,
of course, with the exception of his parents. Thus Agamemnon can say:
_Truly, a son little like to himself hath Tydeus begotten_;
[Sidenote: E] or Odysseus, when in Scyrus:
_But thou o’ersham’st the brilliance of thy race,
Wool-spinner! thou, whose sire was Greece’s hero!_
By no means should we use reproof to answer reproof, or plain-speaking
in counter-attack to plain-speaking. Otherwise we quickly produce heat
and create a quarrel. Moreover, such disputatiousness is naturally
regarded, not as a return of candour, [Sidenote: F] but as intolerance
of it. It is better, therefore, to listen with a good grace when a
friend believes he is reproving you. For this, if at a later time some
offence of his own calls for reprobation, is the very thing which gives
your plain-speaking its right—as it were—to speak. When, without bearing
any grudge, you remind him that it has not been his own habit to let his
friends go wrong, but to teach them better and set them right, he will
be the more ready to give in and accept the proffered correction; for he
will believe that it is good feeling and good intention, not anger and
fault-finding, which prompt this payment in return.
[Sidenote: 73] In the next place, remember the saying of Thucydides:
‘Well advised is he who accepts unpopularity in a great cause.’ It is
the duty of a friend to accept the odium of reproof when questions of
great moment are at stake. But if he is everywhere and always being
displeased; if he behaves to his intimates as if he were their tutor and
not their friend, his reproofs will possess no edge and produce no
effect when it comes to matters of importance. He will have frittered
away his candour, after the manner of a physician who takes a pungent or
bitter drug [Sidenote: B] of a sovereign and costly character, and
parcels it out in a large number of petty doses for which there is no
necessity. No! while a friend will, for his own part, carefully avoid
such unremitting censoriousness, the incessant niggling and pettifogging
of some other person will afford him an opening to attack those faults
which are more serious. Once when a man with an ulcerated liver showed
the physician Philotimus a sore on his finger, the doctor observed, ‘My
good sir, your case is not a matter of a whitlow!’ So when some one is
finding fault with a number of insignificant peccadilloes, the real
friend will be offered the opportunity of saying to him, ‘What have his
tippling and foolery to do with us? My good sir, let our friend here
dismiss his mistress or stop dicing, and he is otherwise an admirable
fellow.’ If a man finds that allowance is made [Sidenote: C] for his
trifling errors, he will take it in good part when a friend speaks his
mind against those which are of more moment. But to be everlastingly
girding, to be bitter and harsh on all occasions, to be continually
meddling and taking cognisance of every action, is intolerable even to a
child or a brother, nay, unendurable even to a slave.
Again, it is no more true of the folly of our friends than it is—despite
Euripides—of old age, that
_All things are wrong with it._
Our friends have their right actions, and we should keep an eye upon
these no less than upon their errors. We should, in fact, begin by
zealously praising them. In dealing with iron we have first to soften it
with heat before the chilling process [Sidenote: D] can impart to it the
consistency and hardness of steel. So with our friends. First we warm
and fuse them with praise; then a quiet application of candour serves as
a tempering douche. We have, for instance, the opportunity of saying,
‘Is there any comparison between the other conduct and this? Do you see
what good fruit comes of doing the right thing? This is what your
friends expect of you; it is like you, and what nature meant you for.
The other conduct is abominable; away with it
_To the mountain or to the wave of the surging tumultuous ocean!_‘
A sensible physician will always rather cure a sick man with sleep and
feeding than with castor and scammony; and a right-minded friend, or a
kind father or teacher, prefers to use praise [Sidenote: E] rather than
blame as his means of moral correction. For a candid friend to cause
least pain and work most benefit, there is nothing like showing the
least possible anger and treating the offender with polite good feeling.
We must not, therefore, sharply confute him if he denies a thing, nor
try to stop him if he defends himself. On the contrary, we must help him
to contrive some kind of plausible excuse; and, when he refuses to own
to the more discreditable motive, we must ourselves concede him a less
heinous one. Thus Hector says to his brother:
_Not well is this wrath, foolish man, that thus thou hast stored in
thy bosom_,
[Sidenote: F] as if his retirement from the battle, instead of being a
dastardly running away, was an exhibition of temper. So Nestor to
Agamemnon:
_Thou didst yield to the pride of thy spirit._
It is manifestly more courteous to say, ‘You did not stop to think,’ or,
‘You failed to perceive,’ than ‘You behaved badly’, or ‘You behaved
unfairly’; to say, ‘Do not be hard upon [Sidenote: 74] your brother,’
than ‘Do not be jealous of your brother’; to say, ‘Flee from the woman’s
seductions,’ than ‘Stop trying to seduce the woman’. This is the manner
cultivated by curative [Sidenote: *] candour; the other belongs to
vexatious candour.
Suppose a person is about to do wrong and that we are called upon to
check him—to stem the current of some vehement impulse. Or suppose that
he is inclined to be unready in the performance of duty, and we wish to
brace him up and stimulate him. We should do so by making charges which
put the matter in an outrageously unbecoming light. For instance, in
Sophocles, when Odysseus is working upon Achilles, he makes out, not
that Achilles is angry at the affair of the banquet, but [Sidenote: B]
_Now that thou hast the Trojan burghs in sight,
Thou art afraid._
And when, in answer to this, Achilles is so enraged that he declares he
is off home:
_I know what ’tis thou flyest—not reproach:
Hector is nigh, and ’tis not well to stay._
In inciting to high courses and dissuading from low ones, we may
frighten a man with the reputation he will win: a man of courage and
spirit with that of coward; a man of temperance and self-control with
that of profligate; a man of magnificent generosity with that of miser
and cheeseparer. Where a thing is past cure, we must show ourselves
reasonable; our candour [Sidenote: C] must display more sorrow and
sympathy than blame. But when we are preventing a misdeed or fighting
against a passion, we must be vigorous, inflexible, and insistent. Then
is the right moment for incorruptible affection and genuine frankness.
To blame an action when it is done is no more than we find enemies doing
to each other. Diogenes used to say that, if you are to be kept right,
you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will
warn you, the other will expose you. But it is better to avoid errors by
taking advice than to repent of an error because of abuse. For this
reason [Sidenote: D] we must study tact even in the matter of candour.
As it is the most effective drug that can be employed in friendship, so
it stands in most need of unfailing discretion as to time and moderation
as to strength.
And, finally, since, as I have said, it is in the nature of
plain-speaking that it should often cause pain to the person under
treatment, we must take a pattern by the medical man. He does not use
his lancet and then leave the part to suffer; he eases it with gentle
lotions and fomentations. Similarly, if our admonitions are to be
tactful, we do not administer a sharp sting and then run away. We adopt
a different strain, and soothe [Sidenote: E] and calm the patient with
courteous language, much as sculptors put smoothness and gloss upon a
statue where they have chipped it with hammer and chisel. If we strike
and gash a man with plain-speaking and then leave him in the rough—lumpy
and uneven with anger—it is a hard matter afterwards to call him back
and smooth him over. This, therefore, is a result against which the
admonisher must be especially on his guard. He must not leave the
patient too soon, nor allow the last words of his conversation to be
such as pain and exasperate his intimate friend.
Footnote 48:
i.e. a rough and mountainous island.
Footnote 49:
A ‘satyric’ drama was a half-comic interlude or sequel to tragedies.
Footnote 50:
In the Stoic sense of _adiaphoria_.
Footnote 51:
Since diagrams were often drawn with sticks in the dust.
Footnote 52:
The Greek jest does not admit of translation. The same word may mean
both ‘theft’ and a ‘stealthy act’.
Footnote 53:
The point lies in an ambiguity which is possible only in the Greek.
The words may equally mean: ‘You issued no invitation when sacrificing
your friends,’ and ‘when sacrificing, you did not invite your
friends’.
Footnote 54:
Or what French would call the _gouverneur_.