Chapter 17

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|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|D|greatest readiness to the opposite view, if their opponent isa 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|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|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|59|eulogizing a field we could make it bear a prolific crop, wouldit 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.

|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|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.|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 usesbeing 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|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|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|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. Itwas 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|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, ‘Whatis that you say?’ ‘I confess,’ was the reply, ‘to being annoyed and|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|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 matterbecomes 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|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|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|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 himthat 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|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,|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|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|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|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|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|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|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|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 someindications that a friendship is not sincere and single-minded,|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 faceSofter than sponge: if not, then flog me soundly.

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|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:|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.

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 pleasureMake himself knave, lock thou thy door against him.

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.

|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.’

|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|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|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|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,|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|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|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|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 penaltyhe 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|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|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|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,|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 leadTo match the pure refinèd gold.

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,|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|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 Philotasto 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|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|F|amenable to flattery from outside: we come prepared. But if, in obedience to the God, we recognize how all-important the maximKnow Thyselfis 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|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 thancomplaisance; 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.|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.

|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|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|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|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|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 gottenBy beetling crags; so comes it thy heart is void of all mercy.

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.

|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,|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|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 theintention 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|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|F|should be incidentally apparent in his work, but there should be no supple juggleries of the hand in the way of fantastic and riskyfioriture. 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!’|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: ‘Whatsort 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|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

Back to Index Next