Chapter 18

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|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 andinebriation are to the fore, is obvious. It is to bring a cloud|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|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|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 theirinflated 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|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|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|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 someplain-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,|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.

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|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|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’ssplendour was at its height and he was drawing all men’s eyes upon him by the brilliance and greatness of his exploits, was|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|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|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, beingunacquainted 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|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|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.|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 tomein 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 neveragain reproved anyone in another’s presence. A fault should be treated like a humiliating complaint. The uncovering and|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,

Love, when reproved,

Is but more tyrannous,

|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.

|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 behumbling 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|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|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,|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 owncharacter 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?

|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|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|C|be submitted to a brilliant light, one most useful resourceamong 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:

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?

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 nowIs Oedipus and all his far-famed rede?

Where now

Is Oedipus and all his far-famed rede?

or:

Is ‘t Heracles,He who hath borne so many a brunt, speaks thus?

Is ‘t Heracles,

He who hath borne so many a brunt, speaks thus?

Not only does it temper the harshness of the punishment|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 harassingme?’ 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;

|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!

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,|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.

|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|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 faultwith 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|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|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|E|rather than blame as his means of moral correction. For a candidfriend 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,

|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|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|*|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|B|

Now that thou hast the Trojan burghs in sight,Thou art afraid.

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.

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|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|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|E|and calm the patient with courteous language, much as sculptorsput 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.

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