– DRAWN FROM LIFE –

yourself before you took to the floor, before the matter could be seen. However there is this as well: not merely in this case but in all other of life’s duties, the way of those who aim at honour is different indeed from that followed by those whose objective is the ordinate and ­reasonable.

I find that some dash thoughtlessly and furiously into the lists only to slow down during the charge. Plutarch says that those who suffer from excessive diffidence readily and easily agree to anything but also readily break their word and go back on what they have said; so, similarly, anyone who enters lightly upon a quarrel is liable to be equally light in getting out of it. The same difficulty which stops me from broaching anything would spur me on once I was heated and excited. What a bad way to do it: once you are in, you must go on or burst! ‘Undertake relaxedly,’ said Bias, ‘but pursue hotly.’

But what is even less tolerable, for want of wisdom we decline into want of bravery.

Today most settlements of our disputes are shameful and lying: we merely seek to save appearances, while betraying and disowning our true thoughts. We plaster over facts; we know how we said it and what we meant by it; the bystanders know it; so do our friends to whom we wished to prove our superiority. We disavow our thoughts at the expense of our frankness and our reputation for courage, seeking bolt-holes in falsehoods so as to reach a conciliation. We give the lie to

176