This rather is what you should think — that no one should be angry at the mistakes of men. For tell me, should one be angry with those who move with stumbling footsteps in the dark? with those who do not heed commands because they are deaf? with children because forgetting the observance of their duties they watch the games and foolish sports of their playmates? Would you want to be angry with those who become weary because they are sick or growing old? Among the various ills to which humanity is prone there is this besides — the darkness that fills the mind, and not so much the necessity of going astray, as the love of straying. That you may not be angry with individuals, you must forgive mankind at large, you must grant indulgence to the human race. If you are angry with the young and the old because they sin, be angry with babes as well; they are destined to sin. But who is angry with children who are still too young to have the power of discrimination? Yet to be a human being is an even greater and truer excuse for error than to be a child. This is the lot to which we are born — we are creatures subject to as many ills of the mind as of the body, and though our power of discernment is neither blunted nor dull, yet we make poor use of it and become examples of vice to each other. If anyone follows in the footsteps of others who have taken the wrong road, should he not be excused because it was the public highway that led him astray? Upon the individual soldier the commander may unsheathe all his sternness, but he needs must forbear when the whole army deserts. What, then, keeps the wise man from anger? The great mass of sinners. He understands both how unjust and how dangerous it is to grow angry at universal sin.
Whenever Heraclitus went forth from his house and saw all around him so many men who were living a wretched life — no, rather, were dying a wretched death — he would weep, and all the joyous and happy people he met stirred his pity; he was gentle-hearted, but too weak, and was himself one of those who had need of pity. Democritus, on the other hand, it is said, never appeared in public without laughing; so little did the serious pursuits of men seem serious to him. Where in all this is there room for anger? Everything gives cause for either laughter or tears.
The wise man will have no anger toward sinners. Do you ask why? Because he knows that no one is born wise but becomes so, knows that only the fewest in every age turn out wise, because he has fully grasped the conditions of human life, and no sensible man becomes angry with nature. Think you a sane man would marvel because apples do not hang from the brambles of the woodland? Would he marvel because thorns. And briars are not covered with some useful fruit? No one becomes angry with a fault for which nature stands sponsor. And so the wise man is kindly and just toward errors, he is not the foe, but the reformer of sinners, and as he issues forth each day his thought will be: “I shall meet many who are in bondage to wine, many who are lustful, many ungrateful, many grasping, many who are lashed by the frenzy of ambition.” He will view all these things in as kindly a way as a physician views the sick. When the skipper finds that his ship has sprung her seams and in every part is letting in a copious flow of water, does he then become angry with the seamen and with the ship herself? No, he rushes rather to the rescue and shuts out a part of the flood, a part he bales out, and he closes up the visible openings, the hidden leaks that secretly let water into the hold he tries to overcome by ceaseless labor, and he does not relax his effort simply because as much water springs up as is pumped out. The succor against continuous and prolific evils must be tenacious, aimed not at their cessation but against their victory.