nt to him to speak
softly: "Tell him, then, he must send me," replied the other, "the tone
he would have me speak in." To which the other replied, "That he should
take the tone from the ears of him to whom he spake." It was well said,
if it is to be understood: "Speak according to the affair you are
speaking about to your auditor," for if it mean, "'tis sufficient that he
hear you, or govern yourself by him," I do not find it to be reason. The
tone and motion of my voice carries with it a great deal of the
expression and signification of my meaning, and 'tis I who am to govern
it, to make myself understood: there is a voice to instruct, a voice to
flatter, and a voice to reprehend. I will not only that my voice reach
him, but, peradventure, that it strike and pierce him. When I rate my
valet with sharp and bitter language, it would be very pretty for him to
say; "Pray, master, speak lower; I hear you very well":

"Est quaedam vox ad auditum accommodata,
non magnitudine, sed proprietate."

["There is a certain voice accommodated to the hearing, not by its
loudness, but by its propriety."--Quintilian, xi. 3.]

Speaking is half his who speaks, and half his who hears; the latter
ought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its bias; as with
tennis-players, he who receives the ball, shifts and prepares, according
as he sees him move who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke
itself.

Experience has, moreover, taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by
impatience. Evils have their life and limits, their diseases and their
recovery.

The constitution of maladies is formed by the pattern of the constitution
of animals; they have their fortune and their days limited from their
birth; he who attempts imperiously to cut them short by force in the
middle of their course, lengthens and multiplies them, and incenses
instead of appeasing them. I am of Crantor's opinion, that we are
neither obstinately and deafly to oppose evils, nor succumb to them from
want of courage; but that we are naturally to give way to them, according
to their condition and our own. We ought to grant free passage to
diseases; I find they stay less with me, who let them alone; and I have
lost some, reputed the most tenacious and obstinate, by their own decay,
without help and without art, and contrary to its rules. Let us a little
permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her