Make himself knave, lock thou thy door against him.
|B| But such persons do the opposite. If, ‘when you speak’ you ‘yield not’, but oppose them for their good, they abominate you; but if ‘for their pleasure’ you are a ‘knave’ and a servile charlatan, they receive you not merely inside their locked doors but inside their most secret passions and concerns. The simple kind of flatterer, it is true, does not aim at so much. What he asks in such important matters is not to be your adviser, but your minister and servant. But the more crafty person will stand still—puzzling over the question with puckered brow and appropriate changes of countenance—but will say nothing. And if you give your own idea, he will exclaim, ‘How strange! You just managed to anticipate me. I was about to make exactly your suggestion.’
|C| Mathematicians tell us that lines and surfaces, being mental perceptions and incorporeal, have in themselves no such thing as bending, stretching, or motion, but that they are bent, stretched, and changed in position along with the bodies of which they are the boundaries. So you will discover that, with the time-server, his assent, his opinion, even his pleasure and anger, are always dependent. Here, therefore, it is perfectly easy to detect the difference. It is still more apparent in the manner in which a service is rendered. With the good feeling of a friend, as with a living creature, its most vital functions lie |D| deep. It is marked by no ostentatious display; but very often, like a physician who conceals the fact that he is doctoring you, a friend does you a good turn by a word of intercession or by bringing about an understanding, and so consults your interests without your knowing it. Arcesilaus was a man of this type. Not to mention other instances, when Apelles the Chian was ill and Arcesilaus had discovered how poor he was, he came back later with twenty drachmae. Taking a seat close to him, he exclaimed, ‘There is nothing here beyond Empedocles’ four elements:
Fire and water and earth and the gentle air of the heavens.
Why, even your bed is made all askew.’ With that he moved his pillow and meanwhile slipped the coins under it. When the |E| old woman in attendance found them and told Apelles in amazement, he laughed and said, ‘It is that thief Arcesilaus.’[[52]]
And here we may note how philosophy produces ‘children like unto their sires‘. Cephisocrates, who had been impeached, was on his trial, and beside him, with the rest of his friends, stood Lacudes, one of the coterie of Arcesilaus. The accuser having asked for his ring, Cephisocrates quietly dropped it at his side, and Lacudes, who noticed the action, put his foot upon it and hid it. On that ring depended the proof of the charge. When Cephisocrates, after his acquittal, went shaking hands with members of the jury, one of them, who had apparently |F| seen what occurred, bade him thank Lacudes, and gave an account of the affair, which Lacudes had mentioned to no one. We may believe that it is the same with the Gods, and that for the most part they confer their benefits unperceived, it being their nature to find pleasure in the mere act of bestowing favours and doing good. But in a deed done by a flatterer there is nothing honest, sincere, single-minded, or generous. It is a case of sweating, bawling, bustling, and of a tense look upon the face, intended to convey the impression of arduous and urgent business. The thing resembles, in fact, an overdone painting, |64| which strives to secure realistic effect by the use of blatant colours and affected folds, wrinkles, and angles.
He is also offensive enough to relate how the business has meant running about and anxiety, and he goes on to describe how he has got into trouble with other people and had no end of worry and some terrible experiences, until you declare that the thing was not worth it all. Any obligation thrown in your teeth will cause an unbearable and distressing sense of annoyance, but with an obligation from a time-server your sense of reproach and shame is felt at once, from the very moment that the service |B| is being rendered. A friend, on the other hand, if he has occasion to speak of the matter, qualifies his account of it, and about himself he says nothing. For example, the Lacedaemonians once sent the people of Smyrna some corn at a time of need, and, to their expressions of admiration of the kindness, they replied, ‘Not at all! To scrape this together we had only to vote the forgoing of one day’s dinner for ourselves and our beasts.’ A favour so rendered is not only a generous one; it is made the more welcome to the recipients by the thought that no great harm is done to the benefactor.
It is not, however, by the flatterer’s offensive way of rendering his services nor by the recklessness of his promises that one |C| can best recognize the breed; an easier criterion consists in the creditable or discreditable nature of the service, and in the different character of the pleasure or benefit. A friend will not, as Gorgias asserted, expect his friend to render him honest services and yet himself oblige that friend in many ways which are not honest:
’Tis his to share the wisdom, not the folly.
Rather, therefore, he will dissuade him also from improper courses. And, if he fails, there is virtue in Phocion’s answer to Antipater, ‘You cannot use me both as friend and toady’—that is to say, both as friend and not friend. We must help a friend in his need, not in his knavery; in his planning, not in his plotting; with testimony, not conspiracy. Yes, and we must share in his misfortunes, though not in his misdeeds. We |D| should not choose even to be privy to the baseness of our friends; how then to be a party to their misbehaviour? When the Lacedaemonians, after their defeat by Antipater, were making terms, they stipulated that, though he might impose any penalty he liked, he should impose no disgrace. It is the same with a friend. Should occasion call for expense or danger or hard work, he is foremost in his claim to be summoned and take a prompt and zealous part; but when disgrace attaches to it, he will as promptly beg to be spared and left alone. But with the fawner it is the reverse. In services of difficulty and danger he cries off, and, if you give him a tap to sound him, his excuse—whatever |E| it may be—rings false and mean. But in vile and degrading little jobs, do as you like with him; trample on him; nothing shocks or insults him.