The true value of back-biting and slander. A proof of the fast coming triumph of the victim chosen. The bite of the fly when the creature feels its end approaching.
A Few Illustrations to the Point from Schopenhauer.
Socrates was repeatedly vilified and thrashed by the opponents of his philosophy, and was as repeatedly urged by his friends to have his honour avenged in the tribunals of Athens. Kicked by a rude citizen, in the presence of his followers, one of these expressed surprise for his not resenting the insult, to which the Sage replied:
“Shall I then feel offended, and ask the magistrate to avenge me, if I also happen to be kicked by an ass?”
To another remark whether a certain man had abused and called him names, he quietly answered:
“No; for none of the epithets he used can possibly apply to me.” (From Plato’s “Georgics”)
The[The] famous cynic, Cratus, having received from the musician Nicodromus a blow which caused his face to swell, coolly fixed a tablet upon his brow, inscribed with the two words, “Nicodromus facit.” The flute player hardly escaped with his life from the hands of the populace, which viewed Cratus as a household god.
Seneca, in his work “De Constanta Sapientis,” treats most elaborately of insults in words and deeds, or contumelia, and then declares that no Sage ever pays the smallest attention to such things.—“Well, yes!” the reader will exclaim, “but these men were all of them Sages!”—“And you, are you then only fools? Agreed!”
[1]. “It was Gregory the Great who was the first to apply this passage of Isaiah, “How art thou fallen[fallen] from Heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning,” etc., to Satan, and ever since the bold metaphor of the prophet, which referred, after all, but to an Assyrian king inimical to the Israelites, has been applied to the Devil.”