ge, in the proper sense of that word,
must not be practised. "The best way of avenging thyself," says the
emperor, "is not to become like the wrong-doer." It is plain by this
that he does not mean that we should in any case practise revenge; but
he says to those who talk of revenging wrongs, Be not like him who has
done the wrong. Socrates in the Crito (c. 10) says the same in other
words, and St. Paul (Ep. to the Romans, xii. 17). "When a man has done
thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or
evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him
and wilt neither wonder nor be angry" (vii. 26). Antoninus would not
deny that wrong naturally produces the feeling of anger and resentment,
for this is implied in the recommendation to reflect on the nature of
the man's mind who has done the wrong, and then you will have pity
instead of resentment; and so it comes to the same as St. Paul's advice
to be angry and sin not; which, as Butler well explains it, is not a
recommendation to be angry, which nobody needs, for anger is a natural
passion, but it is a warning against allowing anger to lead us into sin.
In short the emperor's doctrine about wrongful acts is this: wrong-doers
do not know what good and bad are: they offend out of ignorance, and in
the sense of the Stoics this is true. Though this kind of ignorance will
never be admitted as a legal excuse, and ought not to be admitted as a
full excuse in any way by society, there may be grievous injuries, such
as it is in a man's power to forgive without harm to society; and if he
forgives because he sees that his enemies know not what they do, he is
acting in the spirit of the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do."

The emperor's moral philosophy was not a feeble, narrow system, which
teaches a man to look directly to his own happiness, though a man's
happiness or tranquillity is indirectly promoted by living as he ought
to do. A man must live conformably to the universal nature, which means,
as the emperor explains it in many passages, that a man's actions must
be conformable to his true relations to all other human beings, both as
a citizen of a political community and as a member of the whole human
family. This implies, and he often expresses it in the most forcible
language, that a man's words and actions, so far as they affect others,
must be measured by a fixed rule, which is their consistency