ence in their intimates.
For nothing swells the anger more, than when a good man is detected of
villainy, or one who we thought loved us falls out and jangles with us.
As for my own disposition, you know of course how mightily it inclines
to goodwill and belief in mankind. As then people walking on empty
space,[706] the more confidently I believe in anybody's affection, the
more sorrow and distress do I feel if my estimate is a mistaken one. And
indeed I could never divest myself of my ardour and zeal in affection,
but as to trusting people I could perhaps use Plato's caution as a curb.
For he said he so praised Helicon the mathematician, because he was by
nature a changeable animal, but that he was afraid of those that were
well educated in the city, lest, being human beings and the seed of
human beings, they should reveal by some trait or other the weakness of
human nature. But Sophocles' line,

"Trace out most human acts, you'll find them base,"

seems to trample on human nature and lower its merits too much. Still
such a peevish and condemnatory verdict as this has a tendency to make
people milder in their rage, for it is the sudden and unexpected that
makes people go distracted. And we ought, as Panaetius somewhere said, to
imitate Anaxagoras, and as he said at the death of his son, "I knew that
I had begotten a mortal," so ought every one of us to use the following
kind of language in those contretemps that stir up our anger, "I knew
that the slave I bought was not a philosopher," "I knew that the friend
I had was not perfect," "I knew that my wife was but a woman." And if
anyone would also constantly put to himself that question of Plato, "Am
I myself all I should be?" and look at home instead of abroad, and curb
his propensity to censoriousness, he would not be so keen to detect evil
in others, for he would see that he stood in need of much allowance
himself. But now each of us, when angry and punishing, quote the words
of Aristides and Cato, "Do not steal, Do not tell lies," and "Why are
you lazy?" And, what is most disgraceful of all, we blame angry people
when we are angry ourselves, and chastise in temper faults that were
committed in temper, unlike the doctors who

"With bitter physic purge the bitter bile,"

for we rather increase and aggravate the disease. Whenever then I busy
myself with such considerations as these, I try also to curtail my
curiosity. For to scrutinize and pry into everything too