Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/234

212 For to say a truth, most of our friendships be but shadows, semblances and images of that first amity which nature hath imprinted and engraffed in children toward their parents, in brethren toward their brethren: and he who doth not reverence nor honour it, how can he persuade and make strangers believe that he beareth sound and faithful goodwill unto strangers? Or what man is he who in his familiar greetings and salutations, or in his letters, will call his friend and companion brother, and cannot find in his heart so much as to go with his brother in the same way? For as it were a point of great folly and madness to adorn the statue of a brother, and in the meantime to beat and maim his body; even so, to reverence and honour the name of a brother in others, and withal to shun, hate, and disdain a brother indeed, were the case of one that were out of his wits, and who never conceived in his heart and mind that nature is the most sacred and holy thing in the world.

And here, in this place, I cannot choose but call to mind how at Rome upon a time I took upon me to be umpire between two brethren, of whom the one seemed to make profession of philosophy; but he was (as after it appeared) not only untruly entituled by the name of a brother, but also as falsely called a philosopher: for when I requested of him that he should carry himself as a philosopher toward his brother, and such a brother as altogether was unlettered and ignorant: In that you say (ignorant quoth he) I hold well with you, and I avow it a truth; but as for brother, I take it for no such great and venerable matter to have sprung from the same loins, or to have come forth of one womb. Well (said I again), it appears that you make no great account to issue out of the same natural members; but all men else besides you, if they do not think and imagine so in their hearts, yet I am sure they do both sing and say that nature first, and then law (which doth preserve and maintain nature), have given the chief place of reverence and honour next after the gods unto father and mother; neither can men perform any service more acceptable unto the gods than to pay willingly, readily, and affectionately unto parents who begat and brought them forth, unto nurses and fosters that reared them up, the interest and usury for the old thanks, besides the new which are due unto them.

And on the other side again, there is not a more certain sign and mark of a very atheist, than either to neglect parents, or to be any ways ungracious or defective in duty unto them: and therefore, whereas we are forbidden in express terms by the law