Rhetoric   

or family, and generally those who are on our own level. Once we are
on a level with others, it is a disgrace to be, say, less well
educated than they are; and so with other advantages: all the more so,
in each case, if it is seen to be our own fault: wherever we are
ourselves to blame for our present, past, or future circumstances, it
follows at once that this is to a greater extent due to our moral
badness. We are moreover ashamed of having done to us, having had
done, or being about to have done to us acts that involve us in
dishonour and reproach; as when we surrender our persons, or lend
ourselves to vile deeds, e.g. when we submit to outrage. And acts of
yielding to the lust of others are shameful whether willing or
unwilling (yielding to force being an instance of unwillingness),
since unresisting submission to them is due to unmanliness or
cowardice.
These things, and others like them, are what cause the feeling of
shame. Now since shame is a mental picture of disgrace, in which we
shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its consequences, and we
only care what opinion is held of us because of the people who form
that opinion, it follows that the people before whom we feel shame are
those whose opinion of us matters to us. Such persons are: those who
admire us, those whom we admire, those by whom we wish to be admired,
those with whom we are competing, and those whose opinion of us we
respect. We admire those, and wish those to admire us, who possess any
good thing that is highly esteemed; or from whom we are very anxious
to get something that they are able to give us-as a lover feels. We
compete with our equals. We respect, as true, the views of sensible
people, such as our elders and those who have been well educated. And
we feel more shame about a thing if it is done openly, before all
men's eyes. Hence the proverb, 'shame dwells in the eyes'. For this
reason we feel most shame before those who will always be with us and
those who notice what we do, since in both cases eyes are upon us. We
also feel it before those not open to the same imputation as
ourselves: for it is plain that their opinions about it are the
opposite of ours. Also before those who are hard on any one whose
conduct they think wrong; for what a man does himself, he is said not
to resent when his neighbours do it: so that of course he does resent
their doing what he does not do himself. And before those who are
likely to tell everybody about you; not telling others is as good as
not be lieving you wrong. People are likely to tell others about you
if you have wronged them, since they are on the look out to harm you;
or if they speak evil of everybody, for those who attack the innocent
will be still more ready to attack the guilty. And before those whose
main occupation is with their neighbours' failings-people like
satirists and writers of comedy; these are really a kind of
evil-speakers and tell-tales. And before those who have never yet
known us come to grief, since their attitude to us has amounted to
admiration so far: that is why we feel ashamed to refuse those a
favour who ask one for the first time-we have not as yet lost credit
with them. Such are those who are just beginning to wish to be our
friends; for they have seen our best side only (hence the
appropriateness of Euripides' reply to the Syracusans): and such also
are those among our old acquaintances who know nothing to our
discredit. And we are ashamed not merely of the actual shameful
conduct mentioned, but also of the evidences of it: not merely, for
example, of actual sexual intercourse, but also of its evidences; and
not merely of disgraceful acts but also of disgraceful talk. Similarly
we feel shame not merely in presence of the persons mentioned but also
of those who will tell them what we have done, such as their servants
or friends. And, generally, we feel no shame before those upon whose
opinions we quite look down as untrustworthy (no one feels shame
before small children or animals); nor are we ashamed of the same
things before intimates as before strangers, but before the former of
what seem genuine faults, before the latter of what seem conventional
ones.