It is a fixed rule with the wise never to defend themselves with the pen. For such defence always leaves a stain, and does more to glorify one's opponent than to punish his offence... There is no revenge like oblivion, through which they are buried in the dust of their unworthiness.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Responding to an attack usually helps the attacker, and this maxim states the mechanism plainly: a public defence leaves a stain even when it succeeds, and it lends your standing to an opponent who had none. The small person attacks the great precisely to be noticed, to win by association the attention they could never earn by merit, and every reply grants exactly that. The counter is contempt in its literal sense: withholding the notice they are fishing for. Oblivion buries them in the dust of their own unworthiness, which no rebuttal ever could. The discipline is hard because the urge to set the record straight is strong, but the record is rarely set straight by a defence; it is only kept alive.
Practice
- Refuse the pen against personal attacks; a defence keeps the charge alive and lends your name to the attacker (maxim 162 answers with work instead).
- Starve the notoriety-seeker of notice; the attention is the prize they came for, and withholding it is the actual defeat.
- Where a factual falsehood must be corrected, do it once, flatly, on the record, and never enter the running fight (maxim 172 declines the unequal contest).
Use this when
- Use this against critics, trolls, and rivals whose whole strategy is to provoke a response from someone bigger than them.
- Use it online above all, where every reply amplifies the attack to a wider audience than it would ever have reached alone.
Ignore this when
- Don't apply contempt to legitimate criticism that carries a real finding; that you mine and act on (maxim 84 takes the audit).
- Don't stay silent when a falsehood is doing real, spreading damage; the one flat correction on record is not the same as entering the brawl.
A picture of it
A respected author is attacked in a stream of posts by a minor figure hunting for the visibility a fight would bring. Every instinct says to correct the distortions, and doing so would hand the attacker exactly the association he wants, lifting his name into the author's orbit. She says nothing, continues publishing, and the attacks, denied the oxygen of a response, fade into the obscurity they came from. A colleague in the same position chose to defend himself at length, and years later the search results still pair his name with his attacker's. Oblivion buried one dispute. The defence embalmed the other.
Do not defend yourself with the pen. The reply is the prize the attacker came for; oblivion is the only revenge that holds.