ey are
feverish send for one and implore his assistance at their own home,
others who are melancholy or crazy or delirious will not sometimes even
see the doctor if he comes to their house, but drive him away, or avoid
him, ignorant through their grievous disease that they are diseased at
all. Similarly of those who have done what is wrong some are
incorrigible, being hostile and indignant and furious at those who
reprove and admonish them, while others are meeker and bear and allow
reproof. Now, when one has done what is wrong, to offer oneself for
reproof, to expose the case and reveal one's wrongdoing, and not to
rejoice if it lies hid, or be satisfied if it is not known, but to make
confession of it and ask for interference and admonishment, is no small
indication of progress in virtue. And so Diogenes said that one who
wished to do what was right ought to seek either a good friend or
red-hot enemy, that either by rebuke or mild entreaty he might flee from
vice. But as long as anyone, making a display of dirt or stains on his
clothes, or a torn shoe, prides himself to outsiders on his freedom from
arrogance, and, by Zeus, thinks himself doing something very smart if he
jeers at himself as a dwarf or hunchback, but wraps up and conceals as
if they were ulcers the inner vileness of his soul and the deformities
of his life, as his envy, his malignity, his littleness, his love of
pleasure, and will not let anyone touch or look at them from fear of
disgrace, such a one has made little progress in virtue, yea rather
none. But he that joins issue with his vices, and shows that he himself
is even more pained and grieved about them than anyone else, or, what is
next best, is able and willing to listen patiently to the reproof of
another and to correct his life accordingly, he seems truly to be
disgusted at his depravity and resolute to divest himself of it. We
ought certainly to be ashamed of and shun every appearance of vice, but
he who is more put about by his vice itself than by the bad reputation
that ensues upon it, will not mind either hearing it spoken against or
even speaking against it himself if it make him a better man. That was a
witty remark of Diogenes to a young man, who when seen in a tavern
retired into the kitchen: "The more," said he, "you retire, the more are
you in the tavern."[281] Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice,
the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people
really poo