Concerning Talkativeness (intro-4)

This charming essay, by far the best in the volume, suffers from only one defect, its length. Though Plutarch again and again, by his narrative skill and naïve or unconscious humour, will delight even those who have hardened their hearts against him (I mean his editors), he cannot at last resist the temptation to indulge in what he considered scientific analysis and enlightened exhortation. He is then merely dull. But, taken as a whole, the essay is surely a success, and as organic and skilful a performance as any in the Moralia.

The work was written after De Curiositate and before De Tranquillitate, De Capienda ex Inimicis Utilitate, and De Laude Ipsius.[*] It stands in the Lamprias catalogue as No. 92.[*]

It is a troublesome and difficult task that philosophy has in hand when it undertakes to cure garrulousness. For the remedy, words of reason, requires listeners; but the garrulous listen to nobody, for they are always talking. And this is the first symptom of their ailment: looseness of the tongue becomes impotence of the ears.[*] For it is a deliberate deafness, that of men who, I take it, blame Nature because they have only one tongue, but two ears.b If, then, Euripides[*] was right when he said with reference to the unintelligent hearer,

I could not fill a man who will not hold

My wise words flooding into unwise ears,

it would be more just to say to the garrulous man, or rather about the garrulous man,

I could not fill a man who will not take

My wise words flooding into unwise ears,

or rather submerging, a man who talks to those who will not listen, and will not listen when others talk. For even if he does listen for a moment, when his loquacity is, as it were, at ebb, the rising tide immediately makes up for it many times over.

They give the name of Seven-voiced[*] to the portico at Olympia which reverberates many times from a single utterance; and if but the least word sets garrulousness in motion, straightway it echoes round about on all sides,

Touching the heart-strings never touched before.[*]

Indeed one might think that babbler’s ears have no passage bored through[*] to the soul, but only to the tongue.[*] Consequently, while others retain what is said, in talkative persons it goes right through in a flux; then they go about like empty vessels,[*] void of sense, but full of noise.

But if, however, we are resolved to leave no means untried, let us say to the babbler,

Hush, child: in silence many virtues lie,[*]

and among them the two first and greatest, the merits of hearing and being heard; neither of these can happen to talkative persons, but even in that which they desire especially they fail miserably. For in other diseases of the soul,[*] such as love of money, love of glory, love of pleasure, there is at least the possibility of attaining their desires, but for babblers this is very difficult: they desire listeners and cannot get them, since every one runs away headlong. If men are sitting in a public lounge or strolling about in a portico, and see a talker coming up, they quickly give each other the counter-sign to break camp. And just as when silence occurs in an assemblage they say that Hermes has joined the company, so when a chatterbox comes into a dinner-party or social gathering, every one grows silent, not wishing to furnish him a hold; and if he begins of his own accord to open his mouth,

As when the North-wind blows along A sea-beaten headland before the storm,[*]

suspecting that they will be tossed about and sea-sick, they rise up and go out. And so it is a talker’s lot when travelling by land or sea, to find volunteer listeners neither as table-companions nor as tentmates, but only conscripts; for the talker is at you everywhere, catching your cloak, plucking your beard, digging you in the ribs.

Then are your feet of the greatest value,

as Archilochus[*] says, and on my word the wise Aristotle will agree. For when Aristotle himself was annoyed by a chatterer and bored with some silly stories, and the fellow kept repeating, Isn’t it wonderful, Aristotle? There’s nothing wonderful about that, said Aristotle, but that anyone with feet endures you. To another man of the same sort, who said after a long rigmarole, Poor philosopher, I’ve wearied you with my talk, Heavens, no! said Aristotle, I wasn’t listening. In fact, if chatterers force their talk upon us, the soul surrenders to them the ears to be flooded from outside, but herself within unrolls thoughts of another sort and follows them out by herself. Therefore talkers do not find it easy to secure listeners who either pay attention or believe what they say; for just as they affirm that the seed of persons too prone to lusts of the flesh is barren, so is the speech of babblers ineffectual and fruitless.[*]

And yet Nature has built about none of our parts so stout a stockade as about the tongue,[*] having placed before it as an outpost the teeth, so that when reason within tightens the reins of silence,[*] if the tongue does not obey or restrain itself, we may check its incontinence by biting it till it bleeds. For Euripides[*] says that disaster is the end, not of unbolted treasuries or storerooms, but of unbridled tongues. And those who believe that storerooms without doors and purses without fastenings are of no use to their owners, yet keep their mouths without lock or door, maintaining as perpetual an outflow as the mouth of the Black Sea, appear to regard speech as the least valuable of all things. They do not, therefore, meet with belief,[*] which is the object of all speech. For this is the proper end and aim of speech, to engender belief in the hearer; but chatterers are disbelieved even if they are telling the truth. For as wheat shut up in a jar[*] is found to have increased in quantity, but to have deteriorated

in quality, so when a story finds its way to a chatterer, it generates a large addition of falsehood and thereby destroys its credit.

Again, every self-respecting and orderly man would, I think, avoid drunkenness. For while, according to some, anger lives next door to madness,[*] drunkenness lives in the same house with it; or rather, drunkenness is madness, shorter in duration, but more culpable, because the will also is involved in it.[*] And there is no fault so generally ascribed to drunkenness as that of intemperate and unlimited speech. For wine, says the Poet,[*]

Urges a man to sing, though he be wise,

And stirs to merry laughter and the dance.

And what is here so very dreadful? Singing and laughing and dancing? Nothing so far-

But it lets slip some word better unsaid[*]:

this is where the dreadful and dangerous part now comes in. And perhaps the Poet has here resolved the question debated by the philosophers,[*] the difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk, when he speaks of the former as relaxation, but drunkenness as sheer folly. For what is in a man’s heart when he is sober is on his tongue when he is drunk, as those who are given to proverbs say.[*] Therefore when Bias[*] kept silent at a drinking-bout and was taunted with stupidity by a chatterer, What fool, said he, in his cups can hold his tongue? And when a certain man at Athens was entertaining envoys from the king,[*] at their earnest request he made every effort to gather the philosophers to meet them; and while the rest took part in the general conversation and made their contributions to it, but Zeno[*] kept silent, the strangers, pledging him courteously, said, And what are we to tell the king about you, Zeno? Nothing, said he, except that there is an old man at Athens who can hold his tongue at a drinking-party.

Thus silence is something profound and awesome and sober, but drunkenness is a babbler, for it is foolish and witless, and therefore loquacious also. And the philosophers[*] even in their very definition of drunkenness say that it is intoxicated and foolish talking; thus drinking is not blamed if silence attends the drinking, but it is foolish talk which converts the influence of wine into drunkenness. While it is true that the drunken man talks foolishness in his cups, the chatterer talks foolishness on all occasions, in the market-place, in the theatre, out walking, drunk or sober, by day, by night. As your physician, he is worse than the disease; as your ship-mate, more unpleasant than sea-sickness; his praises are more annoying than another’s blame: we certainly have greater pleasure in company with clever rascals than with honest chatterboxes. In Sophocles,[*] when Ajax

uses boisterous language, Nestor, in soothing him, says in words which show his knowledge of character,

I blame you not: ill your words, but good your deeds.

But these are not our feelings toward the chatterer; on the contrary, the untimeliness of his words destroys and annuls all gratitude for any deed.