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And further, just as there exist inequalities in the natures and the fortunes of brothers, so it is impossible that the one brother should excel at all points and in all ways. They say that the elements come into being from one substance, yet possess the most opposite faculties; but of two brothers sprung from one mother and father, no one ever saw the one, like the wise man of the Stoics, Cf. 472 a, supra, and the note; this Stoic paradox is parodied at length by Horace in Satires, i. 3. at once handsome, gracious, liberal, eminent, rich, eloquent, learned, philanthropic, and the other ugly, graceless, illiberal, dishonoured, needy, a poor speaker, unlearned, misanthropic. Yet somehow or other there inheres, in even the more disreputable and humble creatures, some portion of grace or faculty or natural aptitude for some good thing: As among urchin’s foot and rough rest-harrowA field shrub with tough roots, also called cammock. There grow the blossoms of soft snow-drops.Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec., iii. p. 689; Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus, ii. p. 282; quoted also in Moralia, 44 e, 621 e. Therefore he who appears to have the better in other respects, if he does not try to curtail or conceal these points of vantage in his brother or thrust him, as though in athletic competitions, from the first places always, but yields in his turn and reveals that his brother is better and more useful in many respects, by thus continually removing all ground for envy, fuel for fire, as it were, will quench the envy, or rather will not allow it to spring up or begin at all. And he who continually makes his brother a helper and adviser in matters in which he himself is supposed to be superior, as in law-suits, being himself a barrister; in the conduct of office, himself a politician; in practical affairs, himself being fond of such-in brief, he that permits his brother to be left out of no task that is worthy of notice and would bring honour, but makes him a sharer in all honourable enterprises and employs him when present, waits for him when absent, and, in general, by showing that his brother is no less a man of affairs than himself, but merely more inclined to shrink from fame and power-he deprives himself of nothing, but adds a great deal to his brother.
