How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (20-22)

One mode of protection, as it would seem, is to realize and remember always that our soul has its two sides: on the one side are truthfulness, love for what is honourable, and power to reason, and on the other side irrationality, love of falsehood, and the emotional element; the friend is always found on the better side as counsel and advocate, trying, after

the manner of a physician, to foster the growth of what is sound and to preserve it; but the flatterer takes his place on the side of the emotional and irrational, and this he excites and tickles and wheedles, and tries to divorce from the reasoning powers by contriving for it divers low forms of pleasurable enjoyment. There are some sorts of food, for example, that are without affinity for either the blood or the breath, which add no vigour to nerves or marrow, but only excite the lower passions, arouse the appetite, and make unsound flesh that is morbid within. So the flatterer’s talk adds nothing to the thinking and reasoning powers, but only promotes familiarity with some amorous pleasure, intensifies a foolish fit of temper, provokes envy, engenders an offensive and inane bulk of conceit, commiserates in distress, or, by a succession of slanders and forebodings, causes malice, illiberality and distrust to grow bitter, timorous, and suspicious; and these are all matters that will not escape the observant. For the flatterer is always covertly on the watch for some emotion, and pampering it, and his presence is like that of a tumour in that he ever comes immediately following some morbid or inflamed condition of the soul. Are you angry? Punish then. Do you crave a thing? Then buy it. Are you afraid? Let’s run away. Have you a suspicion? Then give it credence. But if it is hard to detect the flatterer when he is engaged with these major emotions, inasmuch as our power to reason is deranged by their vehemence and magnitude, yet with the lesser ones he will better give a vantage, since his behaviour here will be the same. For example, if a man is afraid that he may have a headache or a digestive upset from drinking or eating to excess, and hesitates about bathing and taking food, a friend will try to hold him back, and advise him to be careful and cautious, but the flatterer drags him off to the baths, and bids him order some novel dish, and not to maltreat his body by forced abstinence. And if he sees his man to be feebly inclined towards some journey or voyage or undertaking, he will say that the occasion is not pressing but that they will accomplish the same result by postponement or by sending somebody else. If the man, after promising money as a loan or a gift to some personal friend, wants to change his mind, but is ashamed to do so, the flatterer throws his weight upon the worse inclination, strengthens his opinion touching his purse, and banishes his feeling of mortification, bidding him be economical, since he has many expenses and many mouths to feed. It follows, therefore, that if we are not unaware of our own feelings of covetousness, shamelessness, and cowardice, we shall not be unaware of the flatterer. For he always acts as an advocate of such emotions, and is frank in discussing the results to which they lead. This, then, is enough on this subject.

Let us come without more ado to the topic of services and ministrations; for it is in these that the flatterer brings about a great confusion and uncertainty in regard to the difference between himself and the friend, because he appears to be brisk and eager in everything and never to make an excuse. For the character of a friend, like the language of truth, is, as Euripides [*] puts it, simple, plain, and unaffected, whereas that of the flatterer, in very truth

Self-sick, hath need of dextrous remedies, and of a good many too, I venture to affirm, and of an uncommon sort. Take the case of one person meeting another: a friend sometimes, without the exchange of a word, but merely by a glance and a smile, gives and receives through the medium of the eyes an intimation of the goodwill and intimacy that is in the heart, and passes on. But the flatterer runs, pursues, extends his greeting at a distance, and if he be seen and spoken to first, he pleads his defence with witnesses and oaths over and over again. It is the same with actions: friends omit many of the trifling formalities, not being at all exacting or officious in this respect, not putting themselves forward for every kind of ministration; whereas the flatterer is in these matters persistent, assiduous, and untiring, giving to no one else place or space for a good office, but he is eager for orders, and if he receives none he is nettled, or rather he is utterly dispirited and gives way to lamentations.

Now to people of sense these are manifestations, not of a pure nor a chaste friendship, but of a friendship that is more ready than it should be to solicit and embrace. We need first, however, to consider the difference shown by the two men in offering their services. It has been well said by writers before our time that a friend’s offer takes this form:

Yes, if I have the power, and if it can be accomplished,[*]

while a flatterer’s is like this:

Speak what you have in mind.[*]

In fact the comic poets introduce on the stage characters of this sort:

Match me, Nicomachus, against that brute; If I don’t pulp his carcase with my whip And make his visage softer than a sponge.[*]

In the second place, no friend enters into cooperation unless he has first been taken into consultation, and then only after he has examined the undertaking and agreed in setting it down as fitting or expedient; but if anyone concedes to the flatterer an opportunity to take part in examining and pronouncing upon some matter in hand, inasmuch as he not only desires to yield and give gratification, but also fears to afford suspicion that he may draw back and avoid the task, he gives way and adds his urgency to the other’s desires. For it is not easy to find a wealthy man or a king who will say:

Give me a beggar—and if he so will, Worse than a beggar—who, through love for me Leaves fear behind, and speaks his heart’s belief; [*]

but such people, like the tragedians, want to have a chorus of friends singing the same tune or a sympathetic audience to applaud them. This is the reason why Merope in the tragedy gives this advice:

Have friends who are not yielding in their speech, But let your house be barred against the knaves Who try by pleasing you to win regard.[*]

But such people generally do just the opposite; they abominate those who are not yielding in speech, who take a stand against them for their own good, while the knaves who try to win regard, the servile impostors, they receive not only within their houses barred, but even within their secret emotions and concerns. The more simple-minded of such flatterers does not think it necessary or proper that he be taken into consultation regarding matters of this sort, but only that he be a ministrant and servant; whereas the more unscrupulous will do no more than to join in the deliberation, contracting his brows, and looking his assent, but says not a word. However, if the other man states his view, then he says, Gad, but you got a bit ahead of me; I was just going to say that very thing. Now the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and lines do not bend or extend or move of themselves, being imaginary conceptions without material substance, but that they bend and extend and change their position along with the bodies of which they are the boundaries: so, too, you shall detect the flatterer by his being always in agreement with his victim in words and expressions, —yes, in pleasures and in angry passions too—so that in these matters, at least, the difference is quite easy to detect. Still more is this evident in the manner of his ministrations. For a gracious act on the part of a friend is like a living thing: it has its most potent qualities deep within it, and there is nothing on the surface to suggest show or display; but, as a physician cures without his patient’s knowledge, so oftentimes a friend does a good turn by interceding or by settling, while the object of his solicitude knows nothing of it. Such a friend was Arcesilaus in all his dealings, and this was especially seen of him when he discovered the poverty of Apelles of Chios, who was ill; for on his next visit he came with twenty shillings, and taking a seat by the bed, remarked, There is nothing here but Empedocles’ elements,

Fire and water and earth and the gentle heights of ether.[*]

But you are not even lying at ease. And with that he re-arranged his pillow, and, unobserved, slipped the money underneath. When the aged servingwoman discovered it, and in amazement announced her discovery to Apelles, he said with a laugh, Arcesilaus contrived that fraud! Moreover, the saying that children are born like their parents [*] holds true in the field of philosophy. At any rate, Lacydes, the associate of Arcesilaus, stood by Cephisocrates, as did his other friends, when he was impeached; [*] and when the prosecutor demanded his ring, Cephisocrates quietly let it fall beside him, and Lacydes, perceiving this, put his foot on it and concealed it; for the tell-tale evidence was in the ring. After the verdict, Cephisocrates was shaking hands with the jurors, when one of them, who apparently had seen what happened, bade him thank Lacydes, and related the whole affair; but Lacydes had told it to nobody. So, too, I imagine the gods confer their benefits, for the most part, without our knowledge, since it is their nature to take pleasure in the mere act of being gracious and doing good. But the flatterer’s activity shows no sign of honesty, truth, straightforwardness, or generosity, but only sweating and clamour and running to and fro, and a strained look that gives the appearance and suggestion of onerous and urgent business. It is like an extravagantly wrought picture, which by means of gaudy pigments, irregular folds in the garments, wrinkles, and sharp angles, strives to produce an impression of vividness. He is offensive, too, as he relates how he has had to go hither and thither on the business, how he has worried over it, and then, as he tells of all the enmity he has incurred, and then of his countless troubles and great tribulations; and, as a result, he gets a declaration that it was not worth all that. For any favour that evokes a reproach from its recipient is offensive, disfavoured, intolerable; and in the flatterer’s favours there is this reproach and mortification, which is felt, not at some later time, but at the very time when they are performed. But if a friend has to tell what he has done, he reports it modestly and says nothing about himself. It was in this spirit that the Lacedaemonians sent corn to the people of Smyrna in their need, and when these expressed their admiration of the gracious action, the Lacedaemonians said, It was nothing of any importance; we merely voted that we and our cattle go without dinner for one day, and collected the amount. Such graciousness is not only the mark of a generous spirit, but it is pleasanter for the recipients, since they feel that those who assist them suffer no great damage.