Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/212

190 be aware he cut away therewith that ingenuous and honest shamefastness that is so good and commendable. For we see that even nurses themselves, when they think to wipe away the filth of their little infants, and to make them clean; if they rub anything hard, otherwhiles fetch off the skin withal, make the flesh raw and put them to pain.

And therefore we must take heed, that in seeking by all means to do out this excessive bashfulness utterly in young people we make them not brazen-faced, such as care not what is said unto them, and blush thereat no more than a blackdog, and in one word, standing stiff in anything that they do; but rather we ought to do as they who demolish and pull down the dwelling-houses that be near unto the temples of the gods; who for fear of touching anything that is holy or sacred, suffer those ends of the edifices and buildings to stand still which are next and joined close thereto; yea, and those they underprop and stay up, that they should not fall down of themselves; even so (I say) beware and fear we must, whiles we be tempering about this immoderate shamefacedness for to remove it, that we do not draw away with it grace and modesty, gentleness and debonairity, which be adjacents and lie close unto it; under which qualities lieth lurking and sticketh close to, the foresaid naughty bashfulness, flattering him that is possessed therewith, as if he were full of humanity, courtesy, civility and common sense; not opinionative, severe, inflexible and untractable: which is the reason that the Stoic philosophers, when they dispute of this matter, have distinguished by several names this aptness to blush or overmuch bashfulness from modesty and shamefacedness indeed: for fear lest the equivocation and ambiguity of one common word might give some occasion and vantage to the vicious passion itself to do some hurt. As for us, they must give us leave to use the terms without calumniation, or rather permit us to distinguish according to Homer, when he saith: neither without good cause is it, that in the former place he putteth down the harm and discommodity thereof: for surely it is not profitable but by the means of reason, which cutteth off that which is superfluous, and leaveth a mean behind. To come then unto the remedies thereof; it behoveth him first and foremost, who is given to blushing at every small matter, to believe and be persuaded that he is possessed with such an hurtful passion (now there is nothing hurtful which