“Those animals,” you say, “which are much given to anger are held to be the noblest.” But it is wrong for one to hold up the creatures in whom impulse takes the place of reason as a pattern for a human being; in man reason takes the place of impulse. But not even in the case of such animals is the same impulse equally profitable for all; anger serves the lion, fear the stag aggressiveness the hawk, cowardice the dove. But what if it is not even true that it is the best animals that are most prone to anger? Wild beasts which gain their food by rapine, I can believe, do so the better the angrier they are; but it is the endurance of the ox and the horse, obedient to the rein, that I would commend. For what reason, however, do you direct man to such miserable standards when you have the cosmos and God, whom man of all creatures alone comprehends in order that he alone may imitate him? “Those who are prone to anger,” you say, “are of all men considered the most ingenuous.” Yes, in contrast with the tricky and the crafty they do seem ingenuous because they are undisguised. I, however, should call them, not ingenuous, but reckless; that is the term we apply to fools, to voluptuaries and spendthrifts, and to all who ill disguise their vices.