The stupid people

Day after day I hear stupid people uttering words which are not stupid. They say something good; let us discover how deeply they understand it and where they got hold of it. They do not own that fine saying or that fine reasoning, but we help them to use it. They are only looking after it. Perhaps they only produced it fortuitously, hesitantly: it is we who give it credit and value. You are lending them a hand. But why? They feel no gratitude towards you for it and become all the more silly. Do not support them; let them go their own way: they will handle that material like a man who fears getting scalded: they dare not show it in a different light or context nor to deepen it. Give it the tiniest shaking and it slips away from them: then, strong and beautiful though it be, they surrender it to you. They have beautiful weapons, but the handles are loose! How often have I learnt that from experience! Now, if you come and clarify and reinforce it for them, they immediately take advantage of your interpretation and rob you of it: ‘That is what I was about to say,’ or, ‘That is how I understand it, exactly,’ or, ‘If I did not put it that way it was because I could not find the right words.’ – Bluster on! We should use even cunning to punish such arrogant stupidity. Hegesias’ principle that we should neither hate nor blame but instruct is right elsewhere but not here. There is neither justice nor kindness in helping a man to get up who does not know how to use your help and who is all the worse for it. I like to let them sink deeper in the mire and to get even more entangled – so deeply that, if possible, even they finally realize it!

Michel de Montaigne [Essays III, 8. On the art of conversation]