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Sec. XXXV. Moreover, as Thucydides says “he is well advised who [only] incurs envy in the most important matters,”[486] so the friend ought only to take upon himself the unpleasant duty of reproof in grave and momentous cases. For if he is always in a fret and a fume, and rates his acquaintances more like a tutor than a friend, his rebuke will be blunt and ineffective in cases of the highest importance, and he will resemble a doctor who dispenses some sharp and bitter, but important and costly, drug in trifling cases of common occurrence, where it was not at all needed, and so will lose all the advantages that might come from a judicious use of freedom of speech. He will therefore be very much on his guard against continual fault-finding, and if his friend is always pettifogging about minute matters, and is needlessly querulous, it will give him a handle against him in more important shortcomings. Philotimus the doctor, when a patient who had abscesses on his liver showed him his sore finger, said to him, “My friend, it is not the whitlow that matters.”[487] So an opportunity sometimes offers itself to a friend to say to a man, who is always finding fault on small and trivial points, “Why are we always discussing mere child’s play, tippling,[488] and trifles? Let such a one, my dear sir, send away his mistress, or give up playing at dice, he will then be in my opinion in all respects an excellent fellow.” For he who receives pardon on small matters is content that his friend should rebuke him on matters of more moment: but the man who is ever on the scold, everywhere sour and glum, knowing and prying into everything, is scarcely tolerable to his children or brothers, and insufferable to his slaves.

Sec. XXXVI. But since “neither,” to use the words of Euripides, “do all troubles proceed only from old age,”[489] nor from the stupidity of our friends, we ought to observe not only the shortcomings but also the good points of our friends, aye, by Zeus, and to be ready to praise them first, and only censure them afterwards. For as iron receives its consistency and temper by first being submitted to fire and so made soft and then dipped into cold water, so when friends have been first warmed and melted with praises we can afterwards use gentle remonstrance, which has a similar effect to that of dipping in the case of the metal. For an opportunity will offer itself to say, “Are those actions worthy to be compared with these? Do you see what fruits virtue yields? These are the things we your friends ask of you, these become you, for these you are designed by nature; but all that other kind of conduct we must reject with abhorrence, ‘cast it away on a mountain, or throw it into the roaring sea.'”[490] For as a clever doctor would prefer to cure the illness of his patient by sleep and diet rather than by castor or scammony, so a kind friend and good father or teacher delight to use praise rather than blame to correct the character. For nothing makes rebuke less painful or more beneficial than to refrain from anger, and to inveigh against wrong-doing mildly and kindly. And so we ought not sharply to drive home the guilt of those who deny it, or prevent their making their defence, but even contrive to furnish them with specious excuses, and if they seem reluctant to give a bad motive for their action we ought ourselves to find for them a better, as Hector did for his brother Paris,

“Unhappy man, thy anger was not good,”[491]

suggesting that his absconding from the battle was not running away or cowardice, but only anger. And Nestor says to Agamemnon,

“You only yielded to your lofty passion.”[492]

For it has, I think, a better moral tendency to say “You forgot,” or “You did it inadvertently,” than to say “You acted unfairly,” or “You behaved shamefully:” as also “Don’t contend with your brother,” than “Don’t envy your brother;” and “Avoid the woman who is your ruin,” than “Stop ruining the woman.” Such is the language employed in rebuke that desires to reform and not to wound; that rebuke which looks merely at the effect to be produced acts on another principle. For when it is necessary to stop people on the verge of wrong-doing, or to check some violent and irregular impulse, or if we wish to rouse and infuse vigour in those who prosecute virtue only feebly and languidly, we may then assign strange and unbecoming motives for their behaviour. As Odysseus in Sophocles’ play,[493] striving to rouse Achilles, says he is not angry about his supper,[494] but “that he is afraid now that he looks upon the walls of Troy,” and when Achilles was vexed at this, and talked of sailing home again, he said,