fulness, to have the same views as their
friends and acquaintances. Since this is the case, let us accustom
ourselves betimes in small and everyday matters to employ no barber or
fuller merely from bashfulness, nor to put up at a sorry inn, when a
better is at hand, merely because the innkeeper has on several occasions
been extra civil to us, but for the benefit of the habit to select the
best even in a small matter; as the Pythagoreans were careful never to
put their left leg across the right, nor to take an even number instead
of an odd, all other matters being indifferent. We must accustom
ourselves also, at a sacrifice or marriage or any entertainment of that
kind, not to invite the person who greets us and runs up to meet us, but
the friend who is serviceable to us. For he that has thus practised and
trained himself will be difficult to catch tripping, nay even
unassailable, in greater matters.

Sec. IX. Let so much suffice for practice. And of useful considerations the
first is that which teaches and reminds us, that all passions and
maladies of the soul are accompanied by the very things which we think
we avoid through them. Thus infamy comes through too great love of fame,
and pain comes from love of pleasure, and plenty of work to the idle,
and to the contentious defeats and losses of lawsuits. And so too it is
the fate of bashfulness, in fleeing from the smoke of ill-repute, to
throw itself into the fire of it.[657] For the bashful, not venturing to
say No to those that press them hard, afterwards feel shame at just
rebuke, and, through standing in awe of slight blame, frequently in the
end incur open disgrace. For if a friend asks some money of them, and
through bashfulness they cannot refuse, a little time after they are
disgraced by the facts becoming known;[658] or if they have promised to
help friends in a lawsuit, they turn round and hide their diminished
heads, and run away from fear of the other side. Many also, who have
accepted on behalf of a daughter or sister an unprofitable offer of
marriage at the bidding of bashfulness, have afterwards been compelled
to break their word, and break off the match.

Sec. X. He that said all the dwellers in Asia were slaves to one man
because they could not say the one syllable No, spoke in jest and not in
earnest; but bashful persons, even if they say nothing, can by raising
or dropping their eyebrows decline many disagreeable and unpleasant acts
of compliance. Fo