with the desires. When, on the other [Sidenote: C] hand, vice is adopted by power, the passions acquire sinew and strength. Dionysius spoke truly when he said that the highest advantage of power was to give speedy effect to a wish. A most parlous thing, if you can give effect to a wish, and yet wish what is wrong!
_No sooner the word had been utter’d, than straightway the deed was accomplish’d._ Vice, when enabled by power to run rapid course, forces every passion into action, converting anger into murder, love into adultery, greed into confiscation.
_No sooner the word hath been utter’d_, than your opponent has met his doom. No sooner a suspicion, than the victim of slander is a dead man.
[Sidenote: D] Scientists tell us that, whereas lightning really follows and issues from thunder like blood from a wound, it is perceived first because, while the hearing waits for the sound, the vision goes out to meet the light. So with rulers. The punishment outstrips the charge; the condemnation does not wait for the proof.
_For forthwith anger slips and loses hold, Like anchor’s tooth in sand when seas swell high_, unless reason with all its weight puts a heavy drag on power; unless, that is, the ruler acts like the sun, whose motion is least [Sidenote: E] when its height is greatest, namely, at the time of its northern altitude, its course being steadied by the diminished speed.
Vice in high places cannot be hid. When an epileptic is placed upon a height and made to turn round, he is seized with giddiness and begins to totter, his malady being betrayed thereby. So with an unschooled and ignorant person. After a brief uplifting by wealth or fame or place, the same fortune which raised him up immediately reveals how ready he is to fall. To put it another way; when a vessel is empty, you cannot detect the crack or flaw, but when you begin to fill it, the leak appears.
[Sidenote: F] So with a mind which is too unsound to hold power and authority; its leaks are to be seen in its exhibitions of lust, anger, pretentiousness, and ignorance. Yet why speak of this, when holes are picked in eminent and distinguished men for the merest peccadilloes?
Cimon was reproached for his addiction to wine, Scipio for his addiction to sleep, and Lucullus for his extravagance at table[47]...Footnote 47: The rest of the essay is missing.
FAWNER AND FRIEND (WITH AN EXCURSUS ON CANDOUR) MY DEAR ANTIOCHUS PHILOPAPPUS, [Sidenote: 48 E] ‘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, ‘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 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 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._