certain terms, that you should in return hear mine also? If you are
a babbler and think that all who meet you are friends, do you wish
me also to be like you? But why, if you did well in entrusting your
affairs to me, and it is not well for me to intrust mine to you, do
you wish me to be so rash? It is just the same as if I had a cask
which is water-tight, and you one with a hole in it, and you should
come and deposit with me your wine that I might put it into my cask,
and then should complain that I also did not intrust my wine to you,
for you have a cask with a hole in it. How then is there any
equality here? You intrusted your affairs to a man who is faithful and
modest, to a man who thinks that his own actions alone are injurious
and useful, and that nothing external is. Would you have me intrust
mine to you, a man who has dishonoured his own faculty of will, and
who wishes to gain some small bit of money or some office or promotion
in the court, even if you should be going to murder your own children,
like Medea? Where is this equality? But show yourself to me to be
faithful, modest, and steady: show me that you have friendly opinions;
show that your cask has no hole in it; and you will see how I shall
not wait for you to trust me with your affairs, but I myself shall
come to you and ask you to hear mine. For who does not choose to
make use of a good vessel? Who does not value a benevolent and
faithful adviser? who will not willingly receive a man who is ready to
bear a share, as we may say, of the difficulty of his circumstances,
and by this very act to ease the burden, by taking a part of it.
"True: but I trust you; you do not trust me." In the first place,
not even do you trust me, but you are a babbler, and for this reason
you cannot hold anything; for indeed, if it is true that you trust me,
trust your affairs to me only; but now, whenever you see a man at
leisure, you seat yourself by him and say: "Brother, I have no
friend more benevolent than you nor dearer; I request you to listen to
my affairs." And you do this even to those who are not known to you at
all. But if you really trust me, it is plain that you trust me because
I am faithful and modest, not because I have told my affairs to you.
Allow me, then, to have the same opinion about you. Show me that, if
one man tells his affairs to another, he who tells them is faithful
and modest. For if this were so, I would go about and tell my
affairs to every man, if that would make me faithful and modest. But
the thing is not so, and it requires no common opinions. If, then, you
see a man who is busy about things not dependent on his will and
subjecting his will to them, you must know that this man has ten
thousand persons to compel and hinder him. He has no need of pitch
or the wheel to compel him to declare what he knows: but a little
girl's nod, if it should so happen, will move him, the blandishment of
one who belongs to Caesar's court, desire of a magistracy or of an
inheritance, and things without end of that sort. You must remember,
then, among general principles that secret discourses require fidelity
and corresponding opinions. But where can we now find these easily? Or
if you cannot answer that question, let some one point out to me a man
who can say: "I care only about the things which are my own, the
things which are not subject to hindrance, the things which are by