Discourses - Book IV   

wherever you have deviated from any of these rules, there is damage
immediately, not from anything external, but from the action itself.
What then? is it possible to be free from faults? It is not
possible; but tills is possible, to direct your efforts incessantly to
being faultless. For we must be content if by never remitting this
attention we shall escape at least a few errors. But now when you have
said, "To-morrow I will begin to attend," you must be told that you
are saying this, "To-day I will be shameless, disregardful of time and
place, mean; it will be in the power of others to give me pain; to-day
I will be passionate and envious." See how many evil things you are
permitting yourself to do. If it is good to use attention to-morrow,
how much better is it to do so to-day? if to-morrow it is in your
interest to attend, much more is it to-day, that you may be able to do
so to-morrow also, and may not defer it again to the third day.

CHAPTER 13

Against or to those who readily tell their own affairs

When a man has seemed to us to have talked with simplicity about his
own affairs, how is it that at last we are ourselves also induced to
discover to him our own secrets and we think this to be candid
behavior? In the first place, because it seems unfair for a man to
have listened to the affairs of his neighbour, and not to
communicate to him also in turn our own affairs: next, because we
think that we shall not present to them the appearance of candid men
when we are silent about our own affairs. Indeed men are often
accustomed to say, "I have told you all my affairs, will you tell me
nothing of your own? where is this done?" Besides, we have also this
opinion that we can safely trust him who has already told us his own
affairs; for the notion rises in our mind that this man could never
divulge our affairs because he would be cautious that we also should
not divulge his. In this way also the incautious are caught by the
soldiers at Rome. A soldier sits by you in a common dress and begins
to speak ill of Caesar; then you, as if you had received a pledge of
his fidelity by his having begun the abuse, utter yourself also what
you think, and then you are carried off in chains.
Something of this kind happens to us generally. Now as this man
has confidently intrusted his affairs to me, shall I also do so to any
man whom I meet? For when I have heard, I keep silence, if I am of
such a disposition; but he goes forth and tells all men what he has
heard. Then if I hear what has been done, if I be a man like him, I
resolve to be revenged, I divulge what he has told me; I both
disturb others and am disturbed myself. But if I remember that one man
does not injure another, and that every man's acts injure and profit
him, I secure this, that I do not anything like him, but still I
suffer what I do suffer through my own silly talk.
"True: but it is unfair when you have heard the secrets of your
neighbour for you in turn to communicate nothing to him." Did I ask
you for your secrets, my man? did you communicate your affairs on