160 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. iv 



betters. However much you are on your guard, you 

 will be no match for them. If you allow yourself 

 to be caught, you will be delivering yourself up to 



4 betrayal, take my word for it. Flattery has in it 

 the inherent charm, that even when spurned, it is 

 not unpleasing : often shut out, it is at the last taken 

 to the bosom. Flattery accepts its rejection as a 

 mark of attention ; even insults cannot subdue it. 



What I am going to tell you may sound incredible, 



5 yet it is the simple truth. Every man is most open 

 to danger on the side on which he is attacked. 

 Perhaps, indeed, that is the very reason why he 

 is attacked on that side. You must, therefore, lay 

 your account to recognise that, do what you will, 

 you cannot manage to be impervious to adulation. 

 When you have closed every loophole, it will still 

 wound you through your harness. One assailant 

 will employ his flattery secretly and sparingly ; 

 another, above board, openly, with an affectation of 

 honest sincerity, as if it were straightforward blunt- 

 ness, not device. Plancus, the greatest adept in the 

 art before Vitellius' time, used to say that secret, 

 dissembled flattery was not to be employed. Ad- 



6 vances, quoth he, are lost if they are not recog- 

 nised. The flatterer makes most headway when he 

 is detected ; still more, in fact, if an open rebuke 

 brings the blush to his cheek. You must assume 

 that a public character like you will encounter many 

 Plancuses. It is no remedy against the inveterate 

 plague to refuse to be praised. I never knew a man 

 more shrewd in every practical matter than Crispus 

 Passienus, and especially in diagnosing and treating 

 faults of character. He often used to say that we 

 only put-to the door against flattery, and do not shut 

 it, much in the same way as in the face of a mis- 



