Be that as it may, a speaker causes pain as well as a doer. Nevertheless there is no stopping or chastening a loose, glib tongue.
On one occasion it was discovered that the temple of Athena ‘Of the Bronze House’ at Sparta had been pillaged, and an empty flask was found lying inside. The crowd which had run together could make nothing of it, when one of their number said, ‘If you like, I will tell you my notion as to the flask. I fancy the robbers, realizing all the danger they were to run, first drank hemlock, and then brought wine with them. If they managed to escape detection, they were to neutralize |E| the effects of the poison by drinking the unmixed wine, and so get away in safety. If they were caught, they were to die an easy and painless death from the poison, before they could be put to torture.’ The theory was so ingenious and acute that it appeared to come of knowledge rather than conjecture. He was therefore surrounded and questioned on every side—‘Who are |F| you? Who knows you? How do you get to know all that?‘—till finally, under this searching examination, he confessed that he was one of the thieves.
Were not the murderers of Ibycus found out in the same way? As they were sitting in the theatre, a number of cranes happened to come in sight, and they whispered laughingly to one another, ‘Here are the avengers of Ibycus!’ They were overheard by persons sitting near them, and as a search was being made for Ibycus, who had been missing for a considerable time, the words were seized upon and reported to the magistrates. By this means the matter was brought home, and the assassins carried off to prison, where their punishment was due, not to the cranes, but to their own garrulity, which played the part |510| of an Erinys or Spirit of Vengeance in compelling them to divulge the murder. For as in the body, when a part is diseased or in pain, the neighbouring matter gathers towards it by attraction; so is it with the babbler’s tongue. Perpetually throbbing and inflamed, it must keep drawing towards itself some secret or other which ought to be concealed.
We must therefore make ourselves secure. Let Reason lie like a barrier in the way of the tongue, to restrain its flow or prevent its slipping. And let us show that we possess no less |B| sense than certain geese of which we are told. It is said that, when they cross from Cilicia over the Taurus Range—which is full of eagles—they clap a bolt or bit upon their utterance. That is to say, they take in their mouths a good-sized stone, and so fly over at night without being discovered.
Now if it were asked
Who it is that is the vilest, who most unredeemed of men,
it is the traitor who would always be named before any one else. Well, Euthycrates (as Demosthenes puts it) ‘roofed his house with the timber got from Macedon‘. Philocrates received a large sum of gold and proceeded to buy ‘strumpets and fish‘. Euphorbus and Philagrus, who betrayed Eretria, received lands |C| from the Persian king. But the babbler is a traitor who volunteers his services without pay, not in the way of betraying horses or fortresses, but of divulging secrets connected with lawsuits, party feuds, or political manœuvres. Instead of any one thanking him, he actually has to thank people for listening to him. The line addressed to a man who was recklessly squandering his money by giving indiscriminate presents—
Not generous, you: ’tis your disease; you love to be a-giving—
fits the prater also. ‘You do not give this information out of friendliness and goodwill. ’Tis your disease; you love to be a-talking and a-babbling.’
These remarks are not to be regarded as simply an indictment of garrulity. They are an attempt to cure it. An ailment is |D| overcome by diagnosis and treatment, but diagnosis comes first. No one can be trained to avoid or to rid his mental constitution of a thing which causes him no distress. That distress we learn to feel at our disorders, when reason leads us to perceive the injury and shame which result from them. Thus in the present instance we perceive that the babbler is hated where he desires to be liked, annoys where he wishes to ingratiate himself, is derided where he thinks he is admired, and spends without gaining anything by it. He wrongs his friends, assists his |E| enemies, and ruins himself. The first step, therefore, in physicing this disorder, is to reflect upon the disgrace and pain which it causes. The second is to consider the advantages of the contrary behaviour, constantly hearing, remembering, and keeping at our call the praises of reticence, the solemn and sacramental associations of silence, and the fact that it is not by your unbridled talker at large that admiration, regard, and reputation for wisdom are won, but by the man of short and pithy speech, who can pack much sense into few words.