On Garrulity, Plutarch: 511B-C
And are not those who indicate by signs, without a word, what must be done, praised and admired exceedingly? So Heraclitus, when his fellow-citizens asked him to propose some opinion about concord, mounted the platform, took a cup of cold water, sprinkled it with barley-meal, stirred it with penny-royal, drank it up, and departed, thus demonstrating to them that to be satisfied with whatever they happen upon and not to want expensive things is to keep cities in peace and concord.
Commentary on 511B-C
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Themes
Plutarch's De garrulitate, or, "On Talkativeness," is a plea for temperance in speech, on the grounds that the "principal vice of loquacious persons is this, that their ears are stopped to every thing else but their own impertinencies."
In the Western tradition, initiates into the Mysteries were reminded that “Harpocrates enjoins silence.”
The emphasis on communicating “by signs, without a word” finds similar expression in the Chinese Taoist principle of “wu wei” or “action without action.”
The lesson Heraclitus expresses in this anecdote, “to be satisfied” with what one has, was echoed by advice Mephistopheles gave to Faust during the Witch’s Kitchen episode in Goethe’s Faust.