s true," quoth I. "If then," quoth she, "thou wert to
examine this cause, whom wouldest thou appoint to be punished, him that
did or that suffered wrong?" "I doubt not," quoth I, "but that I would
satisfy him that suffered with the sorrow of him that did it." "The
offerer of the injury then would seem to thee more miserable than the
receiver?" "It followeth," quoth I. "Hence therefore, and for other
causes grounded upon that principle that dishonesty of itself maketh men
miserable, it appeareth that the injury which is offered any man is not
the receiver's but the doer's misery." "But now-a-days," quoth she,
"orators take the contrary course. For they endeavour to draw the judges
to commiseration of them who have suffered any grievous afflictions;
whereas pity is more justly due to the causers thereof, who should be
brought, not by angry, but rather by favourable and compassionate
accusers to judgment, as it were sick men to a physician, that their
diseases and faults might be taken away by punishments; by which means
the defenders' labour would either wholly cease, or if they had rather
do their clients some good, they would change their defence into
accusations. And the wicked themselves, if they could behold virtue
abandoned by them, through some little rift, and perceive that they
might be delivered from the filth of sin by the affliction of
punishments, obtaining virtue in exchange, they would not esteem of
torments, and would refuse the assistance of their defenders, and wholly
resign themselves to their accusers and judges. By which means it cometh
to pass, that in wise men there is no place for hatred. For who but a
very fool would hate the good? And to hate the wicked were against
reason. For as faintness is a disease of the body, so is vice a sickness
of the mind. Wherefore, since we judge those that have corporal
infirmities to be rather worthy of compassion than of hatred, much more
are they to be pitied, and not abhorred, whose minds are oppressed with
wickedness, the greatest malady that may be.

[152] See discussion of this passage in _Boethius, An Essay,_ H. F.
Stewart (1891), pp. 98 ff.

IV.

Quod tantos iuuat excitare motus
Et propria fatum sollicitare manu?
Si mortem petitis, propinquat ipsa
Sponte sua uolucres nec remoratur equos.
Quos serpens leo tigris ursus aper 5
Dente petunt, id