Plutarch's Morals
passage, "Holy Living," chap. ii. Sec. v. I cannot pretend
to his felicity of language. Thus Plutarch makes
adultery mere curiosity, and curiosity a sort of
adultery in regard to secrets. A profoundly ethical and
moral view. Compare Sec. ix.
[621] Compare Lucian's [Greek: echeglottia], after
[Greek: echecheiria] (_armistice_), _Lexiph_. 9.
[622] See the story in Homer, "Iliad," vi. 155 sq.
[623] Or self-control.
[624] Literally, some woman _shut up_, or _enclosed_.
[625] See also our author's "On those who are punished
by the Deity late," Sec. xi.
[626] See Euripides, Fragm., 389. Also Plutarch's
"Theseus," cap. xv.
[627] Plutarch rather reminds one, in his evident
contempt for _Epitaphs_, of the cynic who asked, "Where
are all the bad people buried?" Where indeed?
[628] Sophocles, "Electra," 724, 725.
[629] _euphrone_, a stock phrase for night, is here
defined.
[630] "Historia exstat initio libri quinti
Cyropaediae."--_Reiske._
[631] Literally, "slippery and prone to." For the
metaphor of "slippery" compare Horace, "Odes," i. 19-8,
"Et vultus nimium lubricus adspici."
[632] This and the line above are in Sophocles, "Oedipus
Tyrannus," 1169, 1170.
[633] Euripides, "Orestes," 213.
[634] Literally, _ears_.
[635] The paronomasia is as follows. The word for
impious people is supposed to mean _listeners to mills
grinding_.
ON SHYNESS.[636]
Sec. I. Some of the things that grow on the earth are in their nature wild
and barren and injurious to the growth of seeds and plants, yet those
who till the ground consider them indications not of a bad soil but of a
rich and fat one;[637] so also there are passions of the soul that are
not good, yet are as it were offshoots of a good disposition, and one
likely to improve with good advice. Among these I class shyness, no bad
sign in itself, though it affords occasion to vice. For the modest
oftentimes plunge into the same excesses as the shameless, but then they
are pained and grieved at them, and not pleased like the others. For the
shameless person is quite apathetic at what is disgraceful, while the
modest person is easily affected even at the very appearance of it.
Shyness is in fact an excess of modesty. And thus it is called
shamefacedness, because the face exhibits the changes of the mind. For
as dejection is defined to be the grief that makes people look on the
ground, so shamefacedness is that shyness that cannot look people in the
face. And so the orator said the shameless person had not pupils[638] in
his eyes but harlots. The bashful person on the other hand shows his
delicacy and effeminacy of soul in his countenance, and palliates his
weakness, which exposes him to defeat at the hands of the impudent, by
the name of modesty. Cato used to say he was better pleased with those
lads that blushed than with those that turned pale, rightly teaching us
to fear censure more than labour,[639] and suspicion than danger.
However we must avoid too much timidity and fear of censure, since many
have played the coward, and abandoned noble ventures, more from fear of
a bad name than of the dangers to be undergone, not being able to bear a
bad reputation.
Sec. II. As we must not disregard their weakness, so neither again must we
praise that rigid and stubborn insensibility, "that recklessness and
frantic energy to rush anywhere, that seemed like a dog's courage in
Anaxarchus."[640] But we must contrive a harmonious blending of the two,
that shall remove the shamelessness of pertinacity, and the weakness of
excessive modesty; seeing its cure is difficult, and the correction of
such excesses not without danger. For as the husbandman, in rooting up
some wild and useless weed, at once plunges his spade vigorously into
the ground, and digs it up by the root, or burns it with fire, but if he
has to do with a vine that needs pruning, or some apple-tree, or olive,
he puts his hand to it very carefully, being afraid of injuring any
sound part; so the philosopher, eradicating from the soul of the young
man that ignoble and untractable weed, envy, or unseasonable avarice, or
amputating the excessive love of pleasure, may bandage and draw blood,
make deep incision, and leave scars: but if he has to apply reason as a
corrective to a tender and delicate part of the soul, such as shyness
and bashfulness, he is careful that he may not inadvertently root up
modesty as well. For nurses who are often rubbing the dirt off their
infants sometimes tear their flesh and put them to torture. We ought not
therefore, by rubbing off the shyness of youths too much, to make them
too careless and contemptuous; but as those that pull down houses close
to temples prop up the adjacent parts, so in trying to get rid of
shyness we must not eradicate with it the virtues akin to it, as modesty
and meekness and mildness, by which it insinuates itself and becomes
part of a man's character, flattering the bashful man that he has a
nature courteous and civil and affable, and not hard as flint or
self-willed. And so the Stoics from the outset verbally distinguished
shame and shyness from modesty, that they might not by identity of name
give the vice opportunity to inflict harm. But let it be granted to us
to use the words indiscriminately, following indeed the example of
Homer. For he said,
"Modesty does both harm and good to men;"[641]
and he did well to mention the harm it does first. For it becomes
advantageous only through reason's curtailing its excess, and reducing
it to moderate proportions.
Sec. III. In the first place, then, the person who is afflicted with
shyness ought to be persuaded that he suffers from an injurious disease,
and that nothing injurious can be good: nor must he be wheedled and
tickled with the praise of being called a nice and jolly fellow rather
than being styled lofty and dignified and just; nor, like Pegasus in
Euripides, "who stooped and crouched lower than he wished"[642] to take
up his rider Bellerophon, must he humble himself and grant whatever
favours are asked him, fearing to be called hard and ungentle. They say
that the Egyptian Bocchoris, who was by nature very severe, had an asp
sent him by Isis, which coiled round his head, and shaded him from
above, that he might judge righteously. Bashfulness on the contrary,
like a dead weight on languid and effeminate persons, not daring to
refuse or contradict anybody, makes jurors deliver unjust verdicts, and
shuts the mouth of counsellors, and makes people say and do many things
against their wish; and so the most headstrong person is always master
and lord of such, through his own impudence prevailing against their
modesty. So bashfulness, like soft and sloping ground, being unable to
repel or avert any attack, lies open to the most shameful acts and
passions. It is a bad guardian of youth, as Brutus said he didn't think
that person had spent his youth well who had not learnt how to say No.
It is a bad duenna of the bridal bed and of women's apartments, as the
penitent adultress in Sophocles said to her seducer,
"You did persuade, and coax me into sin."[643]
Thus shyness, being first seduced by vice,[644] leaves its citadel
unbarred, unfortified, and open to attack. By gifts people ensnare the
worse natures, but by persuasion and playing upon their bashfulness
people often seduce even good women. I pass over the injury done to
worldly affairs by bashfulness causing people to lend to those whose
credit is doubtful, and to go security against their wish, for though
they commend that saying, "Be a surety, trouble is at hand,"[645] they
cannot apply it when business is on hand.
Sec. IV. It would not be easy to enumerate how many this vice has ruined.
When Creon said to Medea,
"Lady, 'tis better now to earn your hate,
Than through my softness afterwards to groan,"[646]
he uttered a pregnant maxim for others; for he himself was overcome by
his bashfulness, and granted her one day more, and so was the undoing of
his family. And some, when they suspected murder or poison, have failed
through it to take precautions for their safety. Thus perished Dion, not
ignorant that Callippus was plotting against him, but ashamed to be on
his guard against a friend and host. So Antipater, the son of Cassander,
having invited Demetrius to supper, and being invited back by him for
the next day, was ashamed to doubt another as he had been trusted
himself, and went, and got his throat cut after supper. And Polysperchon
promised Cassander for a hundred talents to murder Hercules, the son of
Alexander by Barsine, and invited him to supper, and, as the stripling
suspected and feared the invitation, and pleaded as an excuse that he
was not very well, Polysperchon called on him, and addressed him as
follows, "Imitate, my lad, your father's good-nature and kindness to his
friends, unless indeed you fear us as plotting against you." The young
man was ashamed to refuse any longer, so he went with him, and some of
those at the supper-party strangled him. And so that line of
Hesiod,[647]
"Invite your friend to supper, not your enemy,"
is not ridiculous, as some say, or stupid advice, but wise. Show no
bashfulness in regard to an enemy, and do not suppose him trustworthy,
though he may seem so.[648] For if you invite you will be invited back,
and if you entertain others you will be entertained back to your hurt,
if you let the temper as it were of your caution be weakened by shame.
Sec. V. As then this disease is the cause of much mischief, we must try and
exterminate it by assiduous effort, beginning first, as people are wont
to do in other matters, with small and easy things. For example, if
anyone pledge you to drink with him at a dinner when you have had
enough, do not be bashful, or do violence to nature, but put the cup
down without drinking. Again, if somebody else challenge you to play at
dice with him in your cups, be not bashful or afraid of ridicule, but
imitate Xenophanes, who, when Lasus of Hermione called him coward
because he would not play at dice with him, admitted that he was a great
coward and had no courage for what was ignoble. Again, if you meet with
some prating fellow who attacks you and sticks to you, do not be
bashful, but get rid of him, and hasten on and pursue your undertaking.
For such flights and repulses, keeping you in practice in trying to
overcome your bashfulness in small matters, will prepare you for greater
occasions. And here it is well to record a remark of Demosthenes. When
the Athenians were going to help Harpalus, and to war against Alexander,
all of a sudden Philoxenus, who was Alexander's admiral, was sighted in
the offing. And the populace being greatly alarmed, and speechless for
fear, Demosthenes said, "What will they do when they see the sun, if
they cannot lift their eyes to face a lamp?" And what will you do in
important matters, if the king desires anything, or the people importune
you, if you cannot decline to drink when your friend asks you, or evade
the onset of some prating fellow, but allow the trifler to waste all
your time, from not having nerve to say, "I will see you some other
time, I have no leisure now."[649]
Sec. VI. Moreover, the use and practice of restraining one's bashfulness in
small and unimportant matters is advantageous also in regard to praise.
For example, if a friend's harper sings badly at a drinking party, or an
actor hired at great cost murders[650] Menander, and most of the party
clap and applaud, I find it by no means hard, or bad manners, to listen
silently, and not to be so illiberal as to praise contrary to one's