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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 6
4. Prayers, too, after reading, find the soul fresher, and more vigorously stirred by love towards God. And that prayer is good which imprints a clear idea of God in the soul; and the having God established in self by means of memory is God's indwelling. Thus we become God's temple, when the continuity of our recollection is not severed by earthly cares; when the mind is harassed by no sudden sensations; when the worshipper flees from all things and retreats to God, drawing away all the feelings that invite him to self-indulgence, and passes his time in the pursuits that lead to virtue.]
5. This, too, is a very important point to attend to,--knowledge how to converse; to interrogate without over-earnestness; to answer without desire of display; not to interrupt a profitable speaker, or to desire ambitiously to put in a word of one's own; to be measured in speaking and hearing; not to be ashamed of receiving, or to be grudging in giving information, nor to pass another's knowledge for one's own, as depraved women their supposititious children, but to refer it candidly to the true parent. The middle tone of voice is best, neither so low as to be inaudible, nor to be ill-bred from its high pitch. One should reflect first what one is going to say, and then give it utterance: be courteous when addressed; amiable in social intercourse; not aiming to be pleasant by facetiousness, but cultivating gentleness in kind admonitions. Harshness is ever to be put aside, even in censuring. [1753] [The more you shew modesty and humility yourself, the more likely are you to be acceptable to the patient who needs your treatment. There are however many occasions when we shall do well to employ the kind of rebuke used by the prophet who did not in his own person utter the sentence of condemnation on David after his sin, but by suggesting an imaginary character made the sinner judge of his own sin, so that, after passing his own sentence, he could not find fault with the seer who had convicted him. [1754]
[1753] Here Newman notes that Basil seems sometimes to have fallen short of his own ideal. His translation ends at this point.
[1754] Basil's admirable little summary of the main principles of conversation may have been suggested by the recollection of many well known writers. On such a subject no wide reader could be original. cf. inter alios, the akoue polla lalei d' olina of Bias; the glotta me protrecheto tou nou of Pittacus. Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. i. 15), referring to the Glosses toi thesauros en anthropoisin aristos Pheidoles pleiste de charis kata metron iouses of Hesiod, says: "Hesiodus poetarum prudentissimus linguam non vulgandam sed recondendam esse dicit, perinde ut thesaurum. Ejusque esse in promendo gratiam plurimam, si modesta et parca et modulata sit." On the desirability of gentleness in blame, cf. Ambrose, In Lucam.: "Plus proficit amica correctio quam accusatio turbulenta: illa pudorem incutit, haec indignationem movet."
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters.asp?pg=6
