ing others, when we are
rebuking a man, unless indeed it be their parents, as Agamemnon says in
Homer,

"Little like Tydeus is his father's son!"[484]

or as Odysseus in the play called "The Scyrians,"[485]

"Dost thou card wool, and thus the lustre smirch
Of thy illustrious sire, thy noble race?"

Sec. XXXIV. But it is by no means fitting when rebuked to rebuke back, and
when spoken to plainly to answer back, for that soon kindles a flame and
causes dissension; and generally speaking such altercation will not look
so much like a retort as an inability to bear freedom of speech. It is
better therefore to listen patiently to a friend's rebuke, for if he
should afterwards do wrong himself and so need rebuke, he has set you
the example of freedom of speech. For being reminded without any malice,
that he himself has not been accustomed to spare his friends when they
have done wrong, but to convince them and show them their fault, he will
be the more inclined to yield and give himself up to correction, as it
will seem a return of goodwill and kindness rather than scolding or
rage.

Sec. XXXV. Moreover, as Thucydides says "he is well advised who [only]
incurs envy in the most important matters,"[486] so the friend ought
only to take upon himself the unpleasant duty of reproof in grave and
momentous cases. For if he is always in a fret and a fume, and rates his
acquaintances more like a tutor than a friend, his rebuke will be blunt
and ineffective in cases of the highest importance, and he will resemble
a doctor who dispenses some sharp and bitter, but important and costly,
drug in trifling cases of common occurrence, where it was not at all
needed, and so will lose all the advantages that might come from a
judicious use of freedom of speech. He will therefore be very much on
his guard against continual fault-finding, and if his friend is always
pettifogging about minute matters, and is needlessly querulous, it will
give him a handle against him in more important shortcomings. Philotimus
the doctor, when a patient who had abscesses on his liver showed him his
sore finger, said to him, "My friend, it is not the whitlow that
matters."[487] So an opportunity sometimes offers itself to a friend to
say to a man, who is always finding fault on small and trivial points,
"Why are we always discussing mere child's play, tippling,[488] and
trifles? Let such a one, my dear sir, send away his mistress, or give up
playing at d