We should neither satisfy our will with the first object nor our mind with the first proposition: for that were superficial. Many are like new casks who keep the scent of the first liquor they hold... Always therefore leave room for a second hearing. Alexander always kept one ear for the other side. Wait for the second or even third edition of news.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The first version of anything, the first account, the first impression, the first proposal, arrives fastest and lodges deepest, and that is precisely the danger. A falsehood travels quickly and settles in before the correction can arrive, and a mind that commits to the first thing it hears is like a new cask that keeps the smell of whatever was first poured into it. The discipline is to leave room for a second hearing: to withhold final judgment until the other side has spoken, the fuller facts have come, the second edition of the news has arrived. This is not indecision. It is refusing to let the accident of what reached you first decide what you end up believing, and keeping one ear deliberately open for the account you have not yet heard.
Practice
- Withhold final judgment on the first account; ask what the second and third editions of the story will add before you commit (maxim 248 keeps the last speaker from owning you too).
- Notice when a first impression has set like a stain; the strong early feeling is exactly the one to test, not to trust.
- Keep one ear deliberately for the other side; hearing only the first version is how the cunning colour a credulous mind.
Use this when
- Use this whenever a story reaches you fast and one-sided, especially when it flatters the view you already hold.
- Use it in judging people; the first impression is vivid and often wrong, and the correction rarely arrives as loudly.
Ignore this when
- Don't turn a second hearing into endless deferral; leave room for revision, then decide (maxim 232's practical sense).
- Don't override a strong first read that is actually a trained instinct; the caution is against the accidental first, not the expert one (maxim 224 reads behaviour).
A picture of it
The first account reaches a manager fast and damning: a team member has supposedly botched a client call. It arrives one-sided, from someone with a grudge, and it lodges instantly, colouring how she reads everything the accused does next. Only because she keeps one ear for the second edition does she ask the client directly, and the client's version is nearly the opposite. The swift lie had a week's head start on the slow truth. Had she married the first account, as she nearly did, a good employee would have been managed out on the strength of whoever reached her first.
The first version is the fastest, not the truest. Leave room for the second hearing, and keep one ear for the other side.