Talk reason to them

From Malebranche via Brandon at Siris comes this ever-timely dictum:

THÉODORE: … The great secret of delivering oneself from a great many importunate people is to talk reason. This language, which they do not understand, sends them off for good, without their having grounds for complaint.

Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion
VI.viii (Pléiade 2:775; orig. publ. 1688)

A bit earlier the seeming pride here exhibited by Théodore proves to be nothing of the sort.

THÉODORE: … The majority of men, without reflecting, propose difficulties; and rather than attend seriously to the responses one gives them, they think only of some riposte that will make people admire the fineness of their imagination. Far fom instructing one another, they aim only at mutual flattery. They are corrupted together by the secret inspiration of the most criminal of passions: and rather than smother all those sentiments that the concupiscence of pride brings forth, rather than communicate the true goods that Reason imparts to them, they cloak themselves in a cloud of incense that hardens their hearts and troubles their minds.

ARISTE: How vividly, Theodore, I feel what you are telling me! But can you read my heart?

THÉODORE: No, Ariste. It is in my own that I read what I say to you. It is in my own that I find this well of concupiscence and vanity that makes me speak ill of humankind. I know nothing of what goes on in your heart except by relation to what I feel in my own.

ib. 2:774

The first passage raises the interesting question of whether one could reasonably complain at being addressed reasonably? I suppose that in certain intimate circumstances even the sweetest of reasons may be unwelcome, but otherwise—in public?

As for the second, it exhibits in Théodore (the author’s representative) a humility often lacking in would-be cultural critics. They might well conceive the first passage. But only in the presence of the second (which in the dialogue precedes the other) does the first become something more than mere harping on foibles we know all too well. Nietzsche and Orwell would have been capable of both, but others, more intemperate, less given to reflection, would not.