Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/141

Rh give ourselves, all the whiles that there is none to control, none to stay, none to forbid and hinder us: and therefore, being in so ticklish a place, and none to sustain and hold us up, soon we catch a fall, and come down at once. And a hard matter it is (I may say to you) when we are not bound to render an account to any one, in such a passion as this, to keep ourselves upright, and not to offend; unless we take order beforehand to restrain and empale (as it were) round about so great a liberty with meekness and clemency, unless (I say) we be well inured and acquainted to bear and endure many shrewd and unhappy words of our wives, much unkind language of friends and familiars, who many times do challenge us for being too remiss, over-gentle, yea, and altogether careless and negligent in this behalf. And this in truth hath been the principal cause that I have been quick and sharp unto my servants, for fear lest they might prove the worse for not being chastised. But at the last, though late it were, I perceived; First, that better it was by long sufferance and indulgence, to make them somewhat worse, than in seeking to reform and amend others, to disorder and spoil myself with bitterness and choler: Secondly, when I saw many of them oftentimes, even because they were not so punished, fear and shame to do evil, and how pardon and forgiveness was the beginning of their repentance and conversion, rather than rigour and punishment; and that I assure you, they would serve some more willingly with a nod or wink of the eye, and without a word spoken, than others with all their beating and whipping: I was at last persuaded in my mind and resolved, that reason was more worthy to command and rule as a master, than ire and wrath. For true it is not that the poet saith:

Wherever is fear, Shame also is there:

but clean contrary: Look who are bashful and ashamed; in them there is imprinted a certain fear that holdeth them in good order: whereas continual beating and laying on without mercy, breedeth not repentance in servants for evil doing, but rather a kind of forecast and providence how they should not be spied nor taken in their evil doing. Thirdly, calling to remembrance, and considering evermore with myself, that he who taught us to shoot forbade us not to draw a bow or to shoot an arrow, but to miss the mark: no more will this be any let or hindrance, but that we may chastise and punish our servants, if we be taught to do it in time and place, with moderation and measure,