Our anger is stirred either by those from whom we could not have received any injury at all, or by those from whom we might have received one. To the former class belong certain inanimate things, such as the manuscript which we often hurl from us because it is written in too small a script or tear up because it is full of mistakes, or the articles of clothing which we pull to pieces because we do not like them. But how foolish it is to get angry at these things which neither deserve our wrath nor feel it! “But of course,” you say, “it is those who made them who have given us the affront.” But, in the first place, we often get angry before we make this distinction clear to our minds; in the second place, perhaps also the makers themselves will have reasonable excuses to offer: this one could not do better work than he did, and it was not out of disrespect for you that he was poor at his trade; another did not aim to affront you by what he did. In the end what can be madder than to accumulate spleen against men and then vent it upon things? But as it is the act of a madman to become angry at things without life, it is not less mad to be angry at dumb animals, which do us no injury because they cannot will to do so; for there can be no injury unless it arises from design. Therefore they can harm us just as the sword or a stone may do, but they cannot injure us. But some people think that a man is insulted when the same horses which are submissive to one rider are rebellious toward another, just as if it were due to the animal’s choice and not rather to the rider’s practiced skill in management that certain animals prove more tractable to certain men. But it is as foolish to be angry with these as it is to be angry with children and all who are not much different from children in point of wisdom; for in the eyes of a just judge all such mistakes can plead ignorance as the equivalent of innocence.