1. Some plants there are, in their own nature wild and barren, and
hurtful to seed and garden-sets, which yet among able husbandmen pass
for infallible signs of a rich and promising soil. In like manner, some
passions of the mind not good in themselves yet serve as first shoots
and promises of a disposition which is naturally good, and also capable
of much improvement by cultivation. Among these I rank bashfulness, the
subject of our present discourse; no ill sign indeed, but the cause
and occasion of a great deal of harm. For the bashful oftentimes run
into the same enormities as the most hardened and impudent, with this
difference only, that the former feel a regret for such miscarriages,
but the latter take a pleasure and satisfaction therein. The shameless
person is without sense of grief for his baseness, and the bashful
is in distress at the very appearance of it. For bashfulness is only
modesty in the excess, and is aptly enough named δυσωπία (_the being
put out of countenance_), since the face is in some sense confused and
dejected with the mind. For as that grief which casts down the eyes is
termed dejection, so that kind of modesty which cannot look another in
the face is called bashfulness. The orator, speaking of a shameless
fellow, said he carried harlots, not virgins, in his eyes;[29] on the
other hand, the sheepishly bashful betrays no less the effeminacy
and softness of his mind in his looks, palliating his weakness, which
exposes him to the mercy of impudence, with the specious name of
modesty. Cato indeed was wont to say of young persons, he had a greater
opinion of such as were subject to color than of those that looked
pale; teaching us thereby to look with greater apprehension on the
heinousness of an action than on the reprimand which might follow, and
to be more afraid of the suspicion of doing an ill thing than of the
danger of it. However, too much anxiety and timidity lest we may do
wrong is also to be avoided; because many men have become cowards and
been deterred from generous undertakings, no less for fear of calumny
and detraction than by the danger or difficulty of such attempts.
2. While therefore we must not suffer the weakness in the one case
to pass unnoticed, neither must we abet or countenance invincible
impudence in the other, such as is reported of Anaxarchus,—
Whose dog-like carriage and effrontery,
Despising infamy, out-faced disgrace.
A convenient mien between both is rather to be endeavored after, by
repressing the over impudent, and animating the too meek temper. But as
this kind of cure is difficult, so is the restraining such excesses not
without danger; for as a gardener, in stubbing up some wild or useless
bushes, makes at them carelessly with his spade, or burns them off the
ground, but in dressing a vine, or grafting an apple, or pruning an
olive, carries his hand with the greatest wariness and deliberation,
that he may not unluckily injure the tree; so a philosopher, in
removing envy, that useless and untractable plant or covetousness
or immoderate love of pleasure from the mind of youth, may cut deep
safely, and make a large scar; but if he be to apply his discourse to
some more sensible or delicate part, such as the restraining excess
of bashfulness, it lies upon him to be very careful not to cut off
or eradicate modesty with the contrary vice. For nurses who too often
wipe away the dirt from their infants are apt to tear their flesh and
put them to pain. And in like manner we must not so far extirpate all
bashfulness in youth as to leave them careless or impudent; but as
those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the
Gods prop up such parts as are contiguous to them, so in undermining
bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good nature,
and humanity. And yet these are the very qualities by which bashfulness
insinuates itself and becomes fixed in a man, flattering him that
he is good-natured, courteous, and civil, and has common sense, and
that he is not obstinate and inexorable. The Stoics, therefore, in
their discourses of modesty, distinguish all along betwixt that and
bashfulness, leaving not so much as ambiguity of terms for a pretence
to the vice. However, asking their good leave, we shall make bold to
use such words indifferently in either sense; or rather we shall follow
the example of Homer, whose authority we have for it, that
Much harm oft-times from modesty befalls,
Much good oft-times.[30]
And it was not done amiss of him to make mention of the hurtfulness of
it first, because modesty becomes profitable only through reason, which
cuts off what is superfluous and leaves a just mean behind.
3. In the first place, therefore, the bashful man must be persuaded
and satisfied that that distemper of the mind is prejudicial to him,
and that nothing which is so can be eligible. And withal, he must be
cautious how he suffers himself to be cajoled and led by the nose with
the titles of courteous or sociable, in exchange for those of grave,
great, and just; nor like Pegasus in Euripides, who, when Bellerophon
mounted him,