Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/229

Rh and practising that precept which Hercules Atistheneus taught his children, when he admonished and warned them that they should never con those thank who praised them: and this was nothing else but not to suffer a man's self to be overcome by foolish modesty, nor to flatter them again who praised him. For this may suffice in mine opinion which Pindarus answered upon a time to one who said unto him: That in every place and to all men he never ceased to commend him: Grand mercy (quoth he), and I will do this favour unto you again that you may be a true man of your word, and be thought to have spoken nothing but the truth.

To conclude, that which is good and expedient against all other affections and passions, they ought surely to remember who are easily overcome by this hurtful modesty, whensoever they, giving place soon to the violence of this passion, do commit a fault and tread awry against their mind: namely, to call to remembrance the marks and prints of remorse and repentance sticking fast in their mind, and to repeat eftsoons and keep the same a long time. For like as wayfaring men, after they have once stumbled upon a stone; or pilots at sea, when they have once split their ship upon a rock and suffered shipwreck, if they call those accidents to remembrance, for ever after do fear and take heed not only of the same, but of such-like; even so they that set before their eyes continually the dishonours and damages which they have received by this hurtful and excessive modesty, and represent the same to their mind once wounded and bitten with remorse and repentance, will in the like afterwards reclaim themselves, and not so easily another time be perverted and seduced out of the right way.