er, and not dissipate his credit."

"By heaven, a most admirable suggestion!" cried Cyrus, "and one much
more to my mind! [20] As for enforcing obedience, I hope I have had some
training in that already; you began my education yourself when I was a
child by teaching me to obey you, and then you handed me over to masters
who did as you had done, and afterwards, when we were lads, my fellows
and myself, there was nothing on which the governors laid more stress.
Our laws themselves, I think, enforce this double lesson:--'Rule thou
and be thou ruled.' And when I come to study the secret of it all, I
seem to see that the real incentive to obedience lies in the praise and
honour that it wins against the discredit and the chastisement which
fall on the disobedient." [21] "That, my son," said the father, "is the
road to the obedience of compulsion. But there is a shorter way to a
nobler goal, the obedience of the will. When the interests of mankind
are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be
wiser than themselves. You may prove this on all sides: you may see how
the sick man will beg the doctor to tell him what he ought to do, how a
whole ship's company will listen to the pilot, how travellers will
cling to the one who knows the way better, as they believe, than they do
themselves. But if men think that obedience will lead them to disaster,
then nothing, neither penalties, nor persuasion, nor gifts, will avail
to rouse them. For no man accepts a bribe to his own destruction." [22]
"You would have me understand," said Cyrus, "that the best way to
secure obedience is to be thought wiser than those we rule?" "Yes," said
Cambyses, "that is my belief."

"And what is the quickest way," asked Cyrus, "to win that reputation?"

"None quicker, my lad, than this: wherever you wish to seem wise, be
wise. Examine as many cases as you like, and you will find that what I
say is true. If you wished to be thought a good farmer, a good horseman,
a good physician, a good flute-player, or anything else whatever,
without really being so, just imagine what a world of devices you would
need to invent, merely to keep up the outward show! And suppose you did
get a following to praise you and cry you up, suppose you did burden
yourself with all kinds of paraphernalia for your profession, what
would come of it all? You succeed at first in a very pretty piece of
deception, and then by and by the test comes, and the impostor stan