How to Use Your Enemies Read online

  Don’t expose your sore finger, or everything will knock against it. Don’t complain about your sore points, for malice always attacks where our weaknesses hurt most. Getting annoyed will only serve to spur on someone else’s enjoyment. The ill-intentioned are searching for a pretext to get your back up. Their dart-like insinuations aim to discover where you hurt, and they’ll try a thousand different ways until they hit upon your most sensitive point. The circumspect pretend not to notice and never reveal their troubles, whether their own or their family’s, for even fortune occasionally likes to hit where it hurts most, and it always cuts to the quick. You should therefore never reveal what causes you pain or pleasure, so that the former may quickly end and the latter long continue.

  Don’t be inaccessible. Nobody is so perfect that they don’t sometimes need advice. Someone who refuses to listen is an incurable fool. The most independent person must still accept the need for friendly advice; even a monarch must be willing to be taught. There are individuals beyond all help because they are inaccessible and who come unstuck because nobody dares to stop them. The most self-sufficient person must leave a door open to friendship, from where all help will come. You need a friend of sufficient influence over you to be able to advise and admonish you freely. Your trust and high opinion of their loyalty and prudence should place them in this position of authority. Though such authority and respect shouldn’t be handed to all and sundry, have in caution’s innermost room a confidant, a faithful mirror, whose correction you value when disillusionment is necessary.

  Know how to deflect trouble on to someone else. Having a shield against ill will is a great trick of rulers. To have someone else who can be criticized for mistakes and chastised by gossipmongers is a sign of superior skill, not lack of competence as malice thinks. Not everything can turn out well, nor can everyone be pleased. Have a fall guy, therefore, someone who, at the expense of their own ambition, can be a target for your misfortunes.

  Think ahead: today for tomorrow, and even for many days after that. The greatest foresight is to have abundant time for it. For the far-sighted, nothing is unexpected; there are no tight spots for those who are prepared. Don’t save your reason for when difficulties arise, use it well before that. Anticipate critical times with mature reflection. The pillow is a silent Sibyl and sleeping on things is better than lying awake under their weight. Some act first and think later, which is to search for excuses rather than consequences. Others think neither before nor after. The whole of life should be a process of deliberation to choose the right course. Reflection and foresight provide the means of living in anticipation.

  Never be associated with someone who can cast you in a poor light, whether because they’re better or worse than you. The more perfect they are, the higher their esteem. They will always play the lead role, and you a secondary one, and if you win any esteem, it will simply be their leftovers. The moon on its own stands out among the stars, but when the sun comes out, it either doesn’t appear or it disappears. Never consort with someone who eclipses you, only with someone who enhances you. In this way Martial’s discreet Fabulla was able to appear beautiful and to shine amidst the ugliness and slovenliness of her maids. Similarly, don’t take the risk of keeping bad company, and don’t honour others at the cost of your own reputation. To improve yourself, associate with the eminent; once perfected, with the mediocre.

  Avoid stepping into great men’s shoes. And if you do, be sure of your own superiority. To equal your predecessor you will need to be worth twice as much. Just as it’s a good strategy to make sure your successor is such that people will miss you, so also to make sure your predecessor doesn’t eclipse you. It’s difficult to fill the void left by someone great because the past always seems better; even being their equal isn’t enough, because they’ll always have the advantage of having come first. To topple someone’s greater reputation, then, you need qualities above and beyond theirs.

  Choose your friends: they should become so after being examined by discretion, tested by fortune, and certified not simply by your will but your understanding. Although the most important thing in life, it’s usually the one over which least care is taken: some are forced upon us, most are the result of pure chance. A person is defined by the friends they have, and the wise never make friends with fools. But liking someone’s company need not suggest true intimacy – it can simply mean enjoying their humour rather than having any confidence in their actual abilities. Some friendships are like a marriage, others like an affair; the latter are for pleasure, the former for the abundant success they engender. Few are friends because of you yourself, many because of your good fortune. A friend’s true understanding is worth more than the many good wishes of others. Make friends by choice, then, not by chance. A wise friend can prevent troubles, a foolish one can cause them. And don’t wish friends too much good fortune, if you don’t want to lose them.

  Know how to use your friends. This requires its own art of discretion. Some are useful at a distance, others close to hand, and someone who is perhaps no good for conversation will be as a correspondent. Distance removes defects that are intolerable close up. You shouldn’t simply seek enjoyment from friendship, but profit, for it should have the three qualities of goodness, though others argue it should have those of being – which is one, good and true – since a friend is all things. Few are capable of being good friends, and not knowing how to choose them makes their actual number even fewer. Knowing how to keep friends is harder than acquiring them. Look for friends who will last, and although they will be new at first, take satisfaction in knowing they will be old friends in time. The best are undoubtedly those most seasoned – although you may need to share a bushel of salt with them to reach this point. There’s no desert like a life without friends: friendship multiplies blessings and divides troubles. It’s the only remedy for bad fortune and is an oasis of comfort for the soul.

  Talk circumspectly. With rivals, through caution; with everyone else, through decorum. There’s always time to utter a word, but not to take it back. You should speak as wills are written, for the fewer the words, the fewer the disputes. Use occasions that don’t matter to practise for those that do. Mystery has a hint of the divine about it. The loquacious are more easily conquered and convinced.

  Know how to triumph over envy and malevolence. Showing contempt, even if prudent, achieves little; being polite is much better. Nothing is more worthy of applause than speaking well of someone who speaks ill of you, and no revenge more heroic than merit and talent conquering and tormenting envy. Each blessing is a further torture to ill will, and the glory of those envied is a personal hell to the envious. The greatest punishment is making your good fortune their poison. An envious person doesn’t die straight off, but bit by bit every time the person envied receives applause, the enduring fame of one rivalling the punishment of the other, the former in everlasting glory, the latter everlasting torment. Fame’s trumpet heralds one person’s immortality and announces another’s death – a sentence to hang by envy’s anxious rope.

  Never let compassion for the unfortunate earn you the disfavour of the fortunate. One person’s misfortune is normally another’s good fortune, for there can never be a lucky person without many unlucky ones. The unfortunate tend to attract the goodwill of people who want to compensate them for fortune’s lack of favour with their own worthless favour. And it has sometimes been known for a person who was hated by everyone whilst they prospered to gain everyone’s compassion in adversity; desire for revenge against the exalted turns to compassion for the fallen. But a shrewd person must pay close attention to fortune’s shuffling of the cards. Some always side with the unfortunate, sidling up to them in their misfortune having previously shunned them when they enjoyed good fortune. This perhaps suggests innate nobility, but not an ounce of shrewdness.

  Take more care not to fail once than to succeed a hundred times. Nobody looks at the sun when it’s shining, everyone when it’s eclipsed. The masses, ever critical
, will not recount your successes, only your failures. The bad are better known through gossip than the good are through acclaim. Many people were never heard of until they went astray, and all our successes will never be enough to negate a single, tiny blemish. Let nobody be under any illusion: malevolence will point out every bad thing you do, but not a single good one.

  Don’t be brittle as glass in dealing with people. And especially with friends. Some people crack easily, revealing their fragility. They fill up with offence and fill others with annoyance. They reveal a nature so petty and sensitive that it tolerates nothing, in jest or in earnest. The slightest thing offends them, so insults are never necessary. Those who have dealings with them have to tread carefully, always attending to their sensibilities and adjusting to their temperaments, since the slightest snub annoys them. They are completely self-centred, slaves to their own pleasure, in pursuit of which they’ll trample over everything, and idolaters of punctiliousness. Be instead like a lover, whose condition is akin to the diamond in its endurance and resistance.

  Don’t live in a hurry. To know how to parcel things out is to know how to enjoy them. With many people their happiness is all over with life still to spare. They waste happy moments, which they don’t enjoy, and then want to go back later when they find themselves so far down the road. They are life’s postilions, adding their own headlong rush to time’s inexorable march. They want to devour in a day what could barely be digested in a lifetime. They anticipate every happiness, bolt down the years still to come, and since they’re always in such a rush, quickly finish everything. Moderation is necessary even in our desire for knowledge so as not to know things badly. There are more days than joys to fill them. Take enjoyment slowly and tasks quickly. It’s good when tasks are completed, but bad when happiness is over.

  Never be ruled by what you think your enemy should do. Fools never do what a sensible person thinks they will, because they can’t discern what’s best. Neither will those with discretion, because they will want to hide their intentions which may have been discerned and even anticipated. The pro and the contra of every matter should be thought through and both sides analysed, anticipating the different courses things may take. Opinions vary: let impartiality be attentive not so much to what will happen as to what may.

  Without lying, don’t reveal every truth. Nothing requires more care than the truth, which is an opening up of the heart. It’s as necessary to know how to reveal it as to conceal it. With a single lie, a reputation for integrity is lost: deceit is viewed as a fault, and a deceiver as false, which is worse. Not all truths can be spoken: some because they are important to me, others to someone else.

  Don’t hold opinions doggedly. Every fool is utterly convinced, and everyone utterly convinced is a fool, and the more mistaken their opinion, the greater their tenacity. Even when the evidence is clear, it’s sensible to yield, for the correctness of your position will not go unnoticed, and your politeness will be recognized. More is lost with stubborn insistence than can be gained by winning; this is not to defend truth, but vulgarity. There are those who are completely stubborn, difficult to convince, incurably vehement; when caprice and conviction are found together, they are always indissolubly wed to folly. Your will must be tenacious, not your judgement. There are, however, exceptions when you mustn’t lose and be doubly defeated, once in the argument, and again in its consequences.

  Anything popular, do yourself; anything unpopular, use others to do it. With the one you garner affection, with the other you deflect hatred. The great are fortunate in their generosity, since for them, doing good is more pleasurable than receiving it. Rarely do you upset someone without upsetting yourself, either through compassion or remorse. Those at the top necessarily have to reward or punish. Let good things come directly, bad ones indirectly. Have something to deflect hatred and slander, the blows of the disgruntled. Common anger is normally like an angry dog which, not knowing the reason for its pain, attacks the instrument that inflicts it simply because this, though not the ultimate cause, is close at hand.

  A truly peaceable person is a person with a long life. To live, let live. The peaceable not only live, but reign. You should see and hear, but remain silent. A day without an argument leads to a sleep-filled night. To live a lot and to enjoy life is to live twice: this is the fruit of peace. A person has everything who cares nothing about what matters little. There’s no greater absurdity than taking everything seriously. Similarly, it’s stupid to take things to heart that don’t concern you, and not to take to heart those that are important.

  Know your lucky star. There’s nobody so hopeless that they don’t have one, and if you are unfortunate, it’s because you don’t know which it is. Some are close to princes and the powerful without knowing how or why, except that their luck brought them this favour; all that remains is for their own hard work to help it along. Others find themselves smiled on by the wise. One person is more acceptable in one country than another, and better regarded in this city than that. People will have better luck in one job or position than in others for which they have equal or even identical qualities. Luck shuffles the cards as and when it wants. Let everyone know their lucky star as well as their abilities, for this is a matter of winning or losing. Know how to follow it and help it; never swap it or you will wander off course.

  Know how to transplant yourself. There are people only valued when they move to other countries, especially in top positions. Countries are stepmothers to their eminent children; envy reigns there as over its own land, and the imperfections with which someone started are remembered more than the greatness they ended up achieving. A pin became valuable travelling from the old world to the new, and a piece of glass led to diamonds being scorned when it was transported. Anything foreign is valued, either because it comes from a distance or because it’s only encountered perfect and complete. We have all seen individuals who were utterly scorned in their own backyards and who are now the toast of the world, held in high esteem by their countrymen because their deeds are followed from a distance, and by foreigners because they come from afar. A statue on an altar will never be venerated by someone who knew it as a tree trunk in a garden.

  Undertake what’s easy as if it were hard, and what’s hard as if it were easy. In the first case, so that confidence doesn’t make you careless; in the second, so that lack of confidence doesn’t make you discouraged. It takes nothing more for something not to be done than thinking that it is. Conversely, diligence removes impossibilities. Don’t think over great undertakings, just seize them when they arise, so that consideration of their difficulty doesn’t hold you back.

  In heaven, everything is good; in hell, everything bad. In the world, since it lies between the two, you find both. We are placed between two extremes, and so participate in both. Good and bad luck alternate; not all is happy, nor all hostile. This world is a zero: on its own, it’s worth nothing; joined to heaven, a great deal. Indifference to its variety constitutes good sense – the wise are never surprised. Our life is arranged like a play, everything will be sorted out in the end. Take care, then, to end it well.

  Know how to contradict. This is provocation’s great strategy, getting others to open up without opening up yourself. It’s a unique form of coercion which makes hidden feelings fly out. Lukewarm belief is an emetic for secrets, a key to the most securely locked heart. It subtly probes both will and judgement. Scorn shrewdly expressed towards someone’s veiled language is the way to hunt the deepest secrets, drawing these out until they trip off the tongue and are caught in the nets of artful deceit. When someone circumspect shows reserve, this makes someone cautious throw theirs away, revealing what they think in their otherwise inscrutable hearts. A feigned doubt is curiosity’s subtlest picklock, enabling it to learn whatever it wants. Even where learning is concerned, contradiction is the pupil’s strategy to make the teacher put all their effort into explaining and justifying the truth: a mild challenge leads to consummate instruction.

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nbsp; Neither love nor hate forever. Trust in today’s friends as if tomorrow’s worst enemies. Since this actually happens, anticipate it happening. You should never give arms to friendship’s turncoats, since they’ll wage a devastating war with them. With enemies, in contrast, always leave the door open for reconciliation, gallantry’s door being the most effective. Sometimes an earlier act of revenge has subsequently caused torment, and pleasure in the harm done to our enemy, sorrow.

  Don’t be known for artifice, although you can’t live without it now. Be prudent rather than astute. Everyone likes plain dealing, but not everyone practises it themselves. Don’t let sincerity end up as extreme simplicity, nor shrewdness as astuteness. Be revered as wise rather than feared as calculating. Sincere people are loved, but deceived. The greatest artifice may be to conceal such artifice, for it’s always viewed as deceit. Openness flourished in the age of gold; malice does in this age of iron. The reputation of someone who knows what they should do is an honourable one and inspires trust; that of someone full of artifice is false and provokes suspicion.

  Know how to divide up your life wisely, not as things arise, but with foresight and discrimination. Life is arduous without any breaks, like a long journey without any inns. Learned variety makes it pleasant. Spend the first part of a fine life in communication with the dead. We are born to know and to know ourselves, and books reliably turn us into people. Spend the second part with the living: see and examine all that’s good in the world. Not everything can be found in one country; the universal Father has shared out his gifts and sometimes endows the ugliest with the most. Let the third stage be spent entirely with yourself: the ultimate happiness, to philosophize.