Nevertheless it often happens that, though a man’s own character is as weak as that of his neighbour, circumstances drive him to administer reproof. In that case the civillest behaviour is to contrive somehow to imply that the speaker is included in the reproach. In this tone are the words: _Tydeus’ son, what ails us, forgetting our prowess and valour?_ [Sidenote: 72] and: _But no match are we now for Hector alone...._ Socrates’ way of quietly setting young men right was of the same kind. He would not be taken as being himself free from ignorance, but as feeling it a duty to share with them in the cultivation of virtue and the quest of truth. We inspire affection and confidence when it is thought that, being equally to blame, we are applying to our friends the same correction as to ourselves. But if, when rebuking your neighbour, you put on the superior air of a flawless and passionless being, unless you are much the senior or possess an acknowledged eminence of character and reputation, you do no good and only make yourself [Sidenote: B] offensive and a nuisance. For this reason, when Phoenix introduced the story of his own misfortunes—how in anger he set to work to kill his father, but speedily repented: _Lest the Achaeans should name me ‘the man who murdered his father’_— it was of set purpose, that it might not seem as if, in reproving Achilles, he claimed to be an impeccable person whom anger had no power to corrupt. In such cases the moral effect sinks in, since we yield more readily to a show of fellow-feeling than to one of contempt. Another point. Since a mind diseased can no more bear unqualified candour and reproof than an inflamed eye can [Sidenote: C] be submitted to a brilliant light, one most useful resource among our remedies is to add a slight tincture of praise. For example: _Ugly is this that ye do, to cease from your valour and prowess, All ye best of the host! I would not move me to quarrel, If ’twere some other who thus might hold his hand from the fighting, Some craven man; but with you is my heart exceedingly anger’d_: or: _Pandarus, where is thy bow, and where thy feathery arrows? Where thy glory, the which no man among us doth challenge?_ If a man is giving way, there is also a vigorous rallying power in such language as _Where now Is Oedipus and all his far-famed rede?_ or: _Is ‘t Heracles, He who hath borne so many a brunt, speaks thus?_