Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/238

216 it cannot be that they should fall out and grow to such terms of enmity and hostility, unless they were privy one to another of some wicked plots and most mischievous practices. For great causes they must be that are able to undo great friendship and amity, by means whereof hardly or unneth afterwards they can be reconciled and surely knit again. For like as sundry pieces which have been once artificially joined together by the means of glue or solder, if the joint be loose or open, may be rejoined or soldered again; but if an entire body that naturally is united and grown in one, chance to be broken or cut and slit asunder, it will be an hard piece of work to find any glue or solder so strong as to reunite the same and make it whole and sound, even so those mutual amities which either for profit or upon some need were first knit between men, happen to cleave and part in twain, it is an easy matter to reduce them close together; but brethren if they be once alienated and estranged, so as that the natural bond of love cannot hold them together, hardly will they piece again or agree ever after: and say they be made friends and brought to atonement, certainly such reconciliation maketh in the former rent or breach an ill-favoured and filthy scar, as being always full of jealousy, distrust, and suspicion.

True it is that all jars and enmities between man and man, entering into the heart, together with those passions which be most troublesome and dangerous of all others, to wit, a peevish humour of contention, choler, envy, and remembrance of injuries done and past, do breed grief, pain, and vexation; but surely that which is fallen between brother and brother, who of necessity are to communicate together in all sacrifices and religious ceremonies belonging to their father's house, who are to be interred another day in one and the same sepulchre, and live in the meantime otherwhiles under one roof, and dwell in the same house, and enjoy possessions, lands, and tenements confining one upon another, doth continually present unto the eye that which tormenteth the heart, it putteth them in mind daily and hourly of their folly and madness; for by means thereof that face and countenance which should be most sweet, best known, and of all other likest, is become most strange, hideous and unpleasant to the eye; that voice which was wont to be even from the cradle friendly and familiar, is now become most fearful and terrible to the ear; and whereas they see many other brethren cohabit together in one house, sit at one table to take their repast, occupy the same lands, and use the