Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/60

38 writeth (O Antiochus Philopappus) that all men do willingly pardon him who professeth that he loveth himself best: Howbeit thereby (quoth he) is engendered in us this fault and inconvenience among many others the greatest: that by this means no man can be a just judge of himself, but partial and favourable. For the lover is ordinarily blinded in the thing that he loveth, unless he have been taught, yea, and accustomed long before, to affect and esteem things honest above those that be his own properly, or inbred and familiar to him. This is it that giveth unto a flatterer that large field, under pretence of friendship, where he hath a fort (as it were) commodiously seated, and with the vantage to assail and endamage us, and that is self-love: whereby every man being the first and greatest flatterer of himself, he can be very well content to admit a stranger to come near and flatter him, namely, when he thinketh and is well willing withal to witness with him and to confirm that good self-conceit and opinion of his own. For even he who is justly reproached to be a lover of flatterers, loveth himself notwithstanding exceeding well: and for that good affection that he hath, is both very willing, yea, and fully persuaded also, that all good things are in himself: and the desire whereof is not simply bad and unlawful: but the persuasion is that it is dangerous and slippery, having need to be restrained with great heed and carefulness.

Now if truth be an heavenly thing, and the very source yielding all good things (as Plato saith), as well to the gods as to men: we ought thus to judge that a flatterer is an enemy to the gods, and principally to Apollo: For opposite he is always and contrary to this precept of his, Know thyself: causing a man to be abused and deceived by his own self, yea and to be ignorant of the good and evil things that be in him; in making the good gifts which are in him to be defective and unperfect: but the evil parts incorrigible and such as cannot be reformed. Now if it were so, that flattery (as the most part of other vices) touched either only or especially base, mean, and abject persons, it were perhaps neither so hurtful nor so hard to be avoided as it is. But like as worms breed most of all and soonest in frim, tender and sweet wood: even so, for the most part, the generous and gentle natures, and those minds that are more ingenuous, honest, amiable, and mild than others, are readiest to receive and nourish the flatterer that hangeth upon him. Moreover, as Simonides was wont to say, that the keeping of an esquiry or stable of horses, followeth not the lamp or oil