How a Man May Inoffensively Praise Himself Without Being Liable to Envy (17-18)

We have before declared the opposing of himself to the reputation and credit of another to be altogether unbefitting a worthy man; but where a vicious praise becomes hurtful and corruptive, creating an earnestness after evil things or an evil purpose in great matters, it is not unprofitable to refuse it; but it becomes us to direct the minds of the company towards better sentiments of things, showing them the difference. For certainly any one will be pleased when he sees many voluntarily abstaining from the vices they heard cried down and reproved; but if baseness be well accounted of, and honor be made to attend on him who pursues pleasure or avarice, where is the nature so happily strong that can resist, much less conquer, the temptation? Therefore a generous and discreet person must set himself against the praises, not of evil men, but of evil actions; for this kind of commendation perverts the judgments of men, and miserably leads them to imitate

and emulate unworthy practices as laudable. But they may be easily bewrayed by confronting them with opposite truths. Theodorus the tragedian is reported to have said to Satyrus the comedian, It is not so wonderful an art to move the theatre’s laughter as to force its tears. But if some philosopher should have retorted, Aye; but, friend, it is not so fit and seemly to make men weep, as to remove and free them from their sorrows, it is likely by this odd way of commending himself he would have delighted his hearer, and endeavored to alter or secure his judgment. So Zeno knew how to speak for himself, when the great number of Theophrastus’s scholars was opposed to the fewness of his, saying, His chorus is indeed greater than mine, but mine is sweeter. And Phocion, while Leosthenes yet prospered, being asked by the orators what good he had done the city, replies: Nothing but this, that in my government of you there have been no funeral orations, but all the deceased were buried in the sepulchres of their ancestors. So Crates, by way of antithesis to this epitaph of the glutton,

What I have eat is mine; in words my will

I’ve had, and of my lust have took my fill,

well opposes these,

What I have learnt is mine; I’ve had my thought,

And me the Muses noble truths have taught.

This kind of praise is amiable and advantageous, teaching to admire and love convenient and profitable things instead of the superfluous and vain. Thus much for the stating of the question, in what cases and how far self-praise may be inoffensive.