It is a troublesome and difficult task that philosophy has in hand when it undertakes to cure garrulousness. For the remedy, words of reason, requires listeners ; but the garrulous listen to nobody,
for they are always talking. And this is the first
symptom of their ailment: looseness of the tongue
becomes impotence of the ears.
1 For it is a deliberate
deafness, that of men who, I take it, blame Nature
because they have only one tongue, but two ears.b
If, then, Euripides
2 was right when he said with
reference to the unintelligent hearer,
I could not fill a man who will not hold
My wise words flooding into unwise ears,
it would be more just to say to the garrulous man,
or rather about the garrulous man,
I could not fill a man who will not take
My wise words flooding into unwise ears,
or rather submerging, a man who talks to those
[p. 399]
who will not listen, and will not listen when others
talk. For even if he does listen for a moment, when
his loquacity is, as it were, at ebb, the rising tide
immediately makes up for it many times over.
They give the name of Seven-voiced
3 to the
portico at Olympia which reverberates many times
from a single utterance ; and if but the least word
sets garrulousness in motion, straightway it echoes
round about on all sides,
Touching the heart-strings never touched before.4
Indeed one might think that babbler's ears have no
passage bored through
5 to the soul, but only to the
tongue.
6 Consequently, while others retain what is
said, in talkative persons it goes right through in a
flux ; then they go about like empty vessels,
7 void
of sense, but full of noise.
