Of Brotherly Love (17)

There are yet other disturbances that brothers near the same age ought to be warned of; they are but small indeed at present, but they are frequent and leave a lasting grudge, such as makes them ready upon all occasions to fret and exasperate one another, and conclude at last in implacable hatred and malice. For, having once begun to fall out in their sports, and to differ about little things, like the feeding and fighting of cocks and other fowl, the exercises of children, the hunting of dogs, the racing of horses, it comes to pass that they have no government of themselves in greater matters, nor the power to restrain a proud and contentious humor. So the great men among the

Grecians in our time, disagreeing first about players and musicians, afterward about the bath in Aedepsus, and again about rooms of entertainment, from contending and opposing one another about places, and from cutting and turning water-courses, they were grown so fierce and mad against one another, that they were dispossessed of all their goods by a tyrant, reduced to extreme poverty, and put to very hard shifts. In a word, so miserably were they altered from themselves, that there was nothing of the same but their inveterate hatred remaining in them. Wherefore there is no small care to be taken by brothers in subduing their passions and preventing quarrels about small matters, yielding rather for peace’s sake, and taking greater pleasure in indulging than crossing and conquering one another’s humors. For the ancients accounted the Cadmean victory to be no other than that between the brothers at Thebes, esteeming that the worst and basest of victories. But you will say, Are there not some things wherein men of mild and quiet dis positions may have occasion to dissent from others? There are, doubtless; but then they must take care that the main difference be betwixt the things themselves, and that their passions be not too much concerned. But they must rather have a regard to justice, and as soon as they have referred the controversy to arbitrament, immediately discharge their thoughts of it, for fear too much ruminating leave a deep impression of it in the mind, and render it hard to be forgotten. The Pythagoreans were imitable for this, that, though no nearer related than by mere common discipline and education, if at any time in a passion they broke out into opprobrious language, before the sun set they gave one another their hands, and with them a discharge from all injuries, and so with a mutual salutation concluded friends. For as a fever attending an inflamed sore threatens no great danger to the body, but, if the sore being healed the fever stays, it appears then to be a distemper and to have some deeper cause; so, when among brothers upon the ending of a difference all discord ceases betwixt them, it is an argument that the cause lay in the matter of difference only, but, if the discord survive the decision of the controversy, it is plain that the pretended matter served only for a false scar, drawn over on purpose to hide the cause of an incurable wound.