FAWNER AND FRIEND (WITH AN EXCURSUS ON CANDOUR) (continued 2)

Ugly is this that ye do, to cease from your valour and prowess,

All ye best of the host! I would not move me to quarrel,

If ’twere some other who thus might hold his hand from the fighting,

Some craven man; but with you is my heart exceedingly anger’d:

or:

Pandarus, where is thy bow, and where thy feathery arrows?

Where thy glory, the which no man among us doth challenge?

If a man is giving way, there is also a vigorous rallying power in such language as

Where now

Is Oedipus and all his far-famed rede?

or:

Is ‘t Heracles,

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

Not only does it temper the harshness of the punishment |D| inflicted by the reproach; it sets a man at rivalry with himself. When reminded of the things which stand to his credit, he is ashamed of those which degrade him, and he finds an elevating example in his own person. But when we make comparisons with others—with mates, fellow citizens, or kinsmen—the contentiousness which belongs to his failings is piqued and exacerbated. It has a habit of retorting angrily, ‘Then why don’t you go to my betters, instead of harassing me?’ We must therefore beware of belauding one person while we are speaking our minds to another—always, of course, with the exception of his parents. Thus Agamemnon can say:

Truly, a son little like to himself hath Tydeus begotten;

|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!

236By 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 fault 237with 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 candid 238friend 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.

239And when, in answer to this, Achilles is so enraged that he declares he is off home:

I know what ’tis thou flyest—not reproach:

Hector is nigh, and ’tis not well to stay.

In inciting to high courses and dissuading from low ones, we may frighten a man with the reputation he will win: a man of courage and spirit with that of coward; a man of temperance and self-control with that of profligate; a man of magnificent generosity with that of miser and cheeseparer. Where a thing is past cure, we must show ourselves reasonable; our candour |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 sculptors 240put 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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