Part 12

No uttered word has ever done such service as many which have been unuttered. You may some day utter what you have kept silent, but you cannot unsay what has been said; it has been poured out, and has run abroad. Hence, I take it, we have mankind to teach us how to speak, but gods to teach us how to keep silent, our lesson in that art being received at initiatory [Sidenote: 506] rites and mysteries. Odysseus, who possessed most eloquence, the poet has made most reticent; he has done the same with his son, his wife, and his nurse. You hear how she says:

_Like stubborn oak or like iron will I hold your secret and keep it._

In the case of Odysseus himself, as he sat beside Penelope,

_Though in his heart he pitied his wife, and was sore at her weeping, Steady within their lids stood his eyes as horn or as iron._

[Sidenote: B] So full of self-command was his body in every part, under such perfect discipline and control did reason hold it, that it forbade the eyes to shed a tear, the tongue to utter a sound, the heart to tremble or cry out with rage;

_And his heart once more did obey, and endure with a patient enduring_,

inasmuch as reason had extended even to his irrational movements and made his very breath and blood amenable to its authority. Most of his comrades also were of the same character. Self-command and loyalty could no further go than in their case. Though harried and dashed upon the ground by the Cyclops, they would not denounce Odysseus to him. They would not betray the plot against his eye and the implement which had [Sidenote: C] been sharpened in the fire for that purpose; but they chose to be eaten raw rather than tell a word of the secret.

Pittacus, therefore, was not far out, when, upon the King of Egypt sending him a sacrificial victim and bidding him pick out the ‘fairest and foulest’ part of the meat, he took out and sent him the tongue, as being the instrument of both the greatest good and the greatest evil.

Euripides’ Ino, making bold to speak for herself, says that she knows how to be

_Silent in season, speak where speech is safe._

Those, indeed, who are blessed with a noble and a truly royal education, know first how to be silent and then how to talk. The famous king Antigonus, when his son asked him at what [Sidenote: D] hour they were to break camp, replied, ‘What are you afraid of? That you may be the only one to miss hearing the trumpet?’ Was it that he did not trust with a secret the man to whom he intended to bequeath his throne? Rather he meant to teach him self-mastery and caution in dealing with such matters. The aged Metellus, on being asked a similar question during a campaign, answered, ‘If I thought my shirt knew that secret, I would take it off and put it on the fire.’ When Eumenes heard that Craterus was advancing, he told the fact to none of his friends, but pretended that it was Neoptolemus, whom his [Sidenote: E] soldiers despised, whereas they entertained a great respect for the reputation of Craterus and a high esteem of his ability. As, however, no one else found out the truth, they joined battle, won the victory, killed Craterus without knowing him, and only discovered who he was from his corpse. So good a general was the silence of Eumenes in the battle, and so formidable the opponent whose presence it disguised, that his friends admired instead of blaming him for not forewarning them. Even if some one does find fault, it is better to be accused when mistrust has saved you than to be the accuser when trust proves your undoing.

What excuse can one possibly find for himself when blaming another for not holding his tongue? If the matter ought not to [Sidenote: F] have been known, it was wrong to tell it to any one else. If you let the secret slip from yourself, and yet ask another person to keep it, you take refuge in the loyalty of some one else while abandoning loyalty to yourself. And if he turns out as bad as you, you are deservedly undone; if better, you are saved by a miracle, through finding another person more faithful to you than yourself. ‘But So-and-So is my friend.’ So is a second person _his_ friend, whom _he_ again will trust as _I_ trust _him_. So with that person and a third, and thus the talk will go on [Sidenote: 507] increasing and extending in link after link of weak betrayal. The Unit never goes beyond its own limit, but is, once and for all, ‘oneness’—whence its name. But the number ‘two’ is the indefinite beginning of difference, for by the duplication it at once shifts in the direction of multitude. In the same way, so long as a piece of information is confined to the first possessor, it is really and truly a ‘secret’. But if it passes by him to a second, it must be classed as a ‘report’. ‘_Winged words_,’ says the poet. If you let go from your hand a thing with wings, it is not easy to get it back into your grasp; and if you let an observation slip from your lips, it is impossible to seize and secure it, but away it flies

_on nimbly-whirling wing_,

and circulates in all directions from one set of people to another.

When a ship is caught by a wind, they put a check upon it [Sidenote: B] and deaden its speed with cables and anchors; but let a speech run—so to speak—out of port, and it finds no place to cast and ride at anchor. It is carried away with a roar, till he who has uttered it is dashed and sunk upon some great and terrible danger.

_From but a little torch-light Ida’s heights May all be set ablaze; so, tell but one, And all the town will know it._

The Roman Senate had been engaged for a number of days [Sidenote: C] in debating a secret matter of policy. As it gave rise to much mystification and conjecture, a woman—otherwise irreproachable, but still a woman—kept pestering her husband and imploring him to tell her the secret. On her oath, she would be silent: if not, might a curse fall upon her. She wept and wailed because she was ‘not trusted’. From a desire to bring home her folly by a proof, the Roman said, ‘Have your way, wife. But the news is terribly ominous. We have been informed by the priests that a lark has been seen flying about with a gold helmet and a spear. We are therefore discussing the portent, and are inquiring, with the help of the augurs, whether it is good or bad. But mind you tell nobody.’ With these words he went off to the Forum. The wife at once seized hold of [Sidenote: D] the first maid-servant to enter the room, and, beating her own breast and tearing her hair, exclaimed, ‘O my poor husband and country! What will become of us?‘, her wish being to give the maid the opportunity of asking ‘Why, what has happened?’ At any rate she took the question as put, and told the tale, adding the invariable refrain of every babbler, ‘Tell no one about it, but hold your tongue.’ The girl no sooner left her than she looked for the fellow-servant who had least to do, and [Sidenote: E] imparted it to her. She in turn told it to her lover, who was paying her a visit. The story went rolling on so rapidly that it reached the Forum before the man who had invented it, and he was met by an acquaintance, who said, ‘Have you just come down from home?’ ‘This minute,’ he replied. ‘Then you haven’t heard anything?’ ‘No. Why? Is there any news?’ ‘A lark has been seen flying about with a gold helmet and a spear, and the magistrates are about to hold a Senate meeting on the matter.’ At this the man exclaimed with a laugh, ‘O wife, wife! What a speed! To think the story has got to the Forum ahead of me!’ First he interviewed the magistrates and relieved their anxiety; then, on going home, [Sidenote: F] he proceeded to punish his wife by saying, ‘Wife, you have been the ruin of me. The secret is public property, and the fault has been traced to my house. And so I am to be exiled, all because of your loose tongue.’ Upon her attempting to deny it by arguing ‘But there were three hundred who heard it as well as you’, he retorted ‘Pooh for your three hundred! I invented it to try you, all because of your persistence’.

In this case the man took safe precautions in putting his wife [Sidenote: 508] to the test, by pouring into the leaky vessel not wine or oil, but water. It was otherwise with Fulvius, the close friend of Augustus. The emperor in his old age was lamenting to him over his desolate home and grieving because, two of his daughter’s children being dead, and Postumius, the only one left, being in exile on some calumnious charge, he was being driven to adopt his wife’s son as his successor, although he felt compassion [Sidenote: B] for his grandson and was considering the question of recalling him from abroad. Fulvius divulged what he had heard to his wife, and she to Livia; whereupon Livia took Caesar bitterly to task, asking why, if he had been so long of this mind, he did not send for his grandson, instead of putting her in a position of enmity and strife with the successor to the throne. Accordingly, when Fulvius came to him—as he regularly did—in the morning and said ‘Good morning, Caesar’, he replied ‘Good-bye, Fulvius’. Fulvius took the hint, went away home at once, sent for his wife, and said, ‘Caesar knows that I have betrayed his secret, and I propose therefore to put myself to death.’ ‘Rightly too,’ answered his wife, ‘seeing that, after living with [Sidenote: C] me so long, you failed to discover the looseness of my tongue and to guard against it. But after me, if you please’—and seizing the sword she despatched herself first.

The comic poet Philippides therefore acted rightly when, in answer to the friendly civilities of King Lysimachus and his question ‘What is there of mine that I can share with you?‘, he replied ‘What you choose, Sire, except your secrets.’

On the other hand garrulity goes with the equally objectionable vice of inquisitiveness. The babbler must find much to hear, so that he may have much to tell. Especially must he go round tracking and hunting out hidden secrets, so as to provide himself with a miscellaneous stock-in-trade for his foolish [Sidenote: D] talk. Then, like a child with a piece of ice, he neither likes to keep hold nor wants to let go. Or rather, the secrets are reptiles, which he grasps and puts in his bosom, but which he cannot hold tight, and so is devoured by them. Garfish and vipers—so we are told—burst in giving birth to their young. So the escape of a secret is ruin and destruction to him who lets it out.

Seleucus the Victorious, having lost all his army and resources in his fight with the Gauls, tore off his royal circlet with his own hands, and fled away on horseback with three or four attendants. After a long and circuitous ride away from the highroads, he was at last so overcome by want that he approached a homestead, and being fortunate enough to find the owner in [Sidenote: E] person, asked him for bread and water. The man not only gave him these, but supplied him liberally and in the most friendly way with whatever else he had upon his farm. In doing so he recognized the king’s face. So overjoyed was he at his fortunate opportunity of rendering him service, that, instead of restraining himself and playing up to the king’s desire to be unknown, he accompanied him as far as the road, and, on taking his leave, said, ‘Good-bye, King Seleucus.’ At this the king, holding out his right hand and drawing the man towards him as if to kiss him, gave a sign to one of the attendants to cut off his head with a sword;

_And so, with the word on his lips, his head in the dust lay mingled_,—

whereas, if he had then had the patience to hold his tongue [Sidenote: F] for a little while, he would in all probability, when the king subsequently won success and power, have earned a larger return for his silence than for his hospitality.

In this case, it is true, the man’s hopes and kindly feeling formed some excuse for his lack of self-command. Most babblers, however, have no excuse at all for their own undoing. For example, people were once talking in a barber’s shop about the despotism of Dionysius, and saying how firmly established it was against all assault. At this the barber remarked laughingly, ‘How can you say that, when every few days I have my [Sidenote: 509] razor at his throat?’ No sooner did Dionysius hear of this speech than he impaled the barber.

Barbers, by the way, are generally a garrulous crew. Their chairs being the resort of the greatest chatterers, they catch the bad habit themselves. It was a neat quip that Archelaus once gave to a loquacious barber. After putting the towel round him, the man asked, ‘How shall I cut your hair, Sire?’ ‘In silence,’ he replied. It was a barber also who reported the great disaster of the Athenians in Sicily, he having been the first to hear it at the Peiraeus from a slave, who had run away [Sidenote: B] from the spot. Abandoning his shop, he hurried at full speed to town,

_Lest another the glory might win_

by imparting the news to the capital,

_while he might come but the second_.

A panic naturally ensued, and the people were gathered to an assembly, where they set to work to trace the rumour to its source. When, however, the barber was brought forward and questioned, he did not even know the name of his informant, but could only give as his authority a person unnamed and unknown. Thereupon the audience shouted in anger: ‘To the rack and the wheel with the wretch! The thing is a pure concoction! Who else has heard it? Who believes it?’ The wheel [Sidenote: C] had been brought, and the man had been stretched upon it, when there appeared upon the scene the bearers of the disastrous news, who had escaped from the very midst of the action. At this they all dispersed, to occupy themselves with their private griefs, leaving the poor wretch bound upon the wheel. When at a late hour towards evening he was set free, he proceeded to ask the executioner ‘whether they had also heard in what manner Nicias, the commander, had met his death’. Such a hopeless and incorrigible failing does garrulity become through force of habit.

After drinking a bitter and evil-smelling medicine, we are disgusted with the cup as well. In the same way, if you are the bearer of bad news, you are regarded with disgust and hatred by those who hear it. Hence a pretty discussion in Sophocles: [Sidenote: D]

A. _Is it in ear or heart that thou art stung?_

B. _Why seek thus to define where lies my pain?_

A. _’Tis the doer grieves thine heart, I but thine ears._

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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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.

We find Plato commending such persons, and saying that, in [Sidenote: F] their deliverance of crisp, terse, and compact utterances, they resemble a skilful javelineer. Lycurgus, again, forced his fellow-citizens to acquire this gift of compression and solidity by applying the pressure of silence from their earliest childhood.

The Celtiberians produce steel from iron by first burying it in the ground and then clearing away the earthy surplusage. So is it with Lacedaemonian speech. It has no surplusage, but is steadily hardened down to absolute effectiveness by the removal of everything unessential. And this knack of theirs of saying a pithy thing, or making a keen and nimble retort, is the result of a great habit of silence.

[Sidenote: 511] We must not omit to give our chatterer examples of such brevities, in order to show how pretty and effective they are. For instance:

_The Lacedaemonians to Philip_: _Dionysius at Corinth_;

and, again, when Philip wrote to them ‘_If I enter Laconia, I will turn you out_‘, they wrote back, ‘_If._’ When King Demetrius shouted in his indignation, ‘Have the Lacedaemonians sent only one envoy to _me_?‘, the envoy replied undismayed, ‘One to one.’ Among our ancient worthies also we admire [Sidenote: B] the men of few words. It was not the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ or the paeans of Pindar that the Amphictyons inscribed upon the temple of the Pythian Apollo, but the maxims _Know Thyself_: _Nothing in Excess_: _Give pledge, and Mischief is nigh_, which they admired for their simple and compact expression, with its closely-hammered thought in small compass. And does not the god himself show a love of conciseness and brevity in his oracles, deriving his name of ‘Loxias’ from the fact that he would rather be obscure than garrulous?

Do we not also particularly praise and admire those who can say, by means of a symbol and without speaking a word, all that [Sidenote: C] is necessary? For instance, when his fellow-citizens insisted upon Heracleitus proposing some measure for the promotion of concord, he mounted the platform, took a cup of cold water, sprinkled it with barley-meal, stirred it with a slip of pennyroyal, drank it off, and went home. This was his way of intimating that to be satisfied with the commonest things, and to have no expensive wants, is the way to maintain a community in peace and concord. Another case is that of Scilurus, the Scythian king, who left behind him eighty sons. When he was dying, he called for a bundle of small spears, and bade them take and break it in pieces, tied together as it was, and in the mass. When they gave up the task, he himself drew the spears out one by one and snapped them all with ease, thereby demonstrating [Sidenote: D] how invincible was their strength if harmoniously united, how weak and short-lived if they did not hold together.

Any one, I believe, who constantly recalls these and the like examples, will cease to take a pleasure in chattering. But—speaking for myself—there is a story of a certain slave which greatly discourages me, when I reflect how hard it is to be so careful of our words as to make sure of our purpose. The orator Pupius Piso, not wishing to be troubled, ordered his slaves to talk only in answer to questions, and not a word more. Subsequently, being anxious to welcome Clodius in his official position, he gave orders for him to be invited to dinner, and prepared what was, of course, a splendid banquet. When the hour arrived, the other guests were all present and waiting for [Sidenote: E] Clodius. The slave who regularly carried the invitations was repeatedly sent out to see whether he was on his way. When evening came and he was given up in despair, Piso said to the slave, ‘Of course you took him the invitation?’ ‘I did,’ he answered. ‘Then why has he not appeared?’ ‘Because he refused.’ ‘Then why did you not tell me so at once?’ ‘Because you did not ask me that question.’

So much for the slave at Rome, whereas at Athens he will tell his master while digging

_What terms are named i’ the treaty_,

so great in all things is the force of habituation. To habituation let us now turn.

[Sidenote: F] We cannot check the babbler by taking, as it were, a grip on the reins. The malady can only be overcome by habit.

In the first place, therefore, when questions are asked of your neighbours, train yourself to keep silent until they have all failed to answer.

_Counsel hath other ends than running hath_,