If to the thing that is little you further add but a little,
And do the same oft and again, full soon it becometh a great thing.
This, then, is another fact for fathers to recognize—that the mnemonic element in education plays a most important part, not only in culture, but also in the business of life, inasmuch as the recollection of past experience serves as a guide to wise policy for the future.
Our sons must also be kept from the use of foul language. ‘The word,’ says Democritus, ‘is the shadow of the deed.’ More than that, we must render them polite and courteous, |10| for there is nothing so detestable as a boorish character. One way in which children may avoid becoming disagreeable to their company is by refraining from absolute stubbornness in discussion. Credit is to be gained not merely by victory, but also by knowing how to accept defeat where victory is harmful. There is unquestionably such a thing as a ‘Cadmean victory’. À propos I may quote the testimony of that wise poet Euripides: |B|
When two men speak, and one is full of anger,
Wiser the one who strives not to reply.
This is the time to remember certain other habits quite as necessary—and more so—for the young to cultivate as any yet mentioned. These are modesty of behaviour, restraint of the tongue, mastery of the temper, and control of the hands. Let us see how important each of them is. We may take an illustration to bring home the notion more clearly. And we will begin with the last. There have been those who, by lowering their hands to ill-gotten gains, have thrown away all the reputation won by their previous career. This was the case with the Lacedaemonian, Gylippus, who was driven into exile from Sparta |C| for secretly broaching the money-bags. Absence of anger, again, is a quality of wisdom. Socrates once received a kick from a very impudent and gross young buffoon, but on seeing that his own friends were in such a violent state of indignation that they wanted to prosecute him, he remarked: ‘If a donkey had kicked me, would you have condescended to kick him back?’ The fellow did not, however, get off scot-free, but finding himself universally reproached and nicknamed ‘Kicker’, he hanged himself. When Aristophanes brought out the Clouds, and poured all manner of abuse upon Socrates, one of those present asked: ‘Pray, are you not indignant at his ridiculing you in this manner?’ |D| ‘Not I, indeed,’ replied Socrates; ‘this banter in the theatre is only in a big convivial party.’ A close counterpart of this attitude will be found in the behaviour of Plato and of Archytas of Tarentum. When the latter, on his return from the war in which he had held command, found that his land had gone out of cultivation, he summoned his manager and remarked: ‘You would have suffered for this, if I had not been too angry.’ When Plato, again, was once worked into a passion with a greedy and impudent slave, he called his sister’s son Speusippus and said, ‘Go and give this fellow a thrashing: I am myself in a great passion.’
But, it may be argued, it is difficult to reach so high a standard |E| as this. I am well aware of it. We can therefore only do our best to take a pattern by such conduct, and minimize any tendency to ungovernable rage. As in other matters, we are no match for either the moral mastery or the finished character of those great models. Nevertheless we may act towards them as we might towards the Gods, serving as hierophants and torch-bearers of their wisdom and endeavouring to imitate in our nibbling way as much as lies in our power.
As for the control of the tongue—the remaining point to be considered according to our promise—any one who regards it as of trivial moment is very much in the wrong. In a timely |F| silence there is a wisdom superior to any speech. It is apparently for this reason that men in old times invented our mystic rites and ceremonies. The notion was that, through being trained to silence in connexion with these, we should secure the keeping of human secrets by carrying into them the same religious fear. Moreover, though multitudes have repented of talking, no man has repented of silence, and while it is easy to utter what has been kept back, it is impossible to recall what has been uttered.
My own reading affords countless instances of the greatest disasters resulting from an ungoverned tongue. I will content |11| myself with mentioning one or two typical examples. When, upon the marriage of Philadelphus with his sister, Sotades composed a scurrilous verse, he paid ample atonement for talking out of season by rotting for a long time in prison. He thus purchased a laugh in others by long weeping of his own. The |*| story is closely matched by that of the sophist Theocritus, who endured similar, but much more terrible, consequences for a similar remark. Alexander had ordered the Greeks to provide a stock of purple garments, with a view to the thanksgiving |B| sacrifice on his return from his Persian victories, and the various peoples were contributing at so much per head. Hereupon Theocritus observed: ‘I have now become clear upon a point which used to puzzle me. This is what is meant by Homer’s “purple death”‘—words which earned him the enmity of Alexander. Antigonus, the Macedonian king, had but one eye, and Theocritus made him excessively angry by a taunt at this disfigurement. Eutropion, the chief cook, who had become a person of importance, was sent to him by the king with a request that he would come to court and engage him in argument. On receiving repeated visits from Eutropion with this message, he |C| remarked, ‘I am well aware that you want to dish me up raw to the Cyclops,’ thus twitting the one with being disfigured, the other with being a cook. ‘Then,’ replied Eutropion, ‘it will be without your head, for you shall be punished for such mad and reckless language.’ Thereupon he reported the words to the king, who sent and put Theocritus to death.