And yet there is no part of us which Nature has fenced with so excellent a barricade as the tongue. In front of that organ it has planted a guard in the shape of the teeth, so that, if it will not obey orders and pull itself together inside when reason tightens the ‘_silence-working reins_‘,[43] we may check its rashness by biting it till it bleeds. The phrase of Euripides is that ‘_disaster is the end_’ not of an ‘unchained’ treasury or storeroom, but of an ‘_unchained mouth_‘. To recognize that a storeroom without a door, or a purse without a fastening, is of no use to the owner, and yet to possess a mouth without lock or door, but with as perpetual an outflow as the mouth of the [Sidenote: D] Black Sea, is to set the lowest possible value on speech.
The result is that such a person meets with no belief, though all speech has that object, its final cause being to create precisely such credence in the hearer. A chatterer is disbelieved even when he tells the truth. For as wheat, when shut in a bin, is found to increase in bulk but to deteriorate in quality, so, when a story finds its way into a chatterer, it generates a large addition of falsehood and its credibility is thereby corrupted.
Again, any self-respecting and well-behaved person will beware of drunkenness. For while—as some put it—anger lives next door to madness, drunkenness lives in the same house. [Sidenote: E] Or rather it _is_ madness, of shorter duration, it is true, but more culpable, as being in a measure voluntary. But the charge most seriously urged against drunkenness is its intemperate and irresponsible language:
_For though right shrewd be a man, wine eggs him on till he singeth; It loosens him that he laughs with a feeble laughter, and danceth._
Yet if this were the worst—singing, laughing, and dancing—there would be, so far, nothing very terrible.
_And he letteth slip some speech, the which were better unspoken_:—
[Sidenote: F] that is where the mischief and danger begin.
We may, indeed, believe that these lines of the poet give the solution of the question discussed in the philosophic schools as to the distinction between mellowness and intoxication: mellowness produces unbending, but drunkenness foolish twaddling. As the proverb-makers put it, ‘_What is in the sober man’s heart is on the drunken man’s tongue._’ Hence when Bias once kept silent at a carousal, and a chatterer taunted him with stupidity, he retorted: ‘And, pray, who could keep silent over his wine, if he were a fool?’ A certain person at Athens was [Sidenote: 504] once entertaining envoys from a king, and, as they were eager for him to get together the philosophic teachers, he made every effort to gratify them. While the rest took part in general discussion, to which each contributed his quota, Zeno said nothing. At this the visitors, pledging him in friendly and courteous terms, asked him, ‘And what are we to say to the king about you, Zeno?’ ‘Merely,’ replied he, ‘that there is one old man at Athens who is capable of holding his tongue [Sidenote: *] when drinking.’