HKB
upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away” (II. 1).
Further he says: “Take pleasure in one thing, and rest in it in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God” (VI. 7). Again: “Love mankind. Follow God” (VI. 31). It is the characteristic of the rational soul for a man to love his neighbor (XI. 1). Antoninus teaches in various passages the forgiveness of injuries, and we know that he also practiced what he taught. Bishop Butler remarks that “this divine precept to forgive injuries and to love our enemies, though to be met with in Gentile moralists, yet is in a peculiar sense a precept of Christianity, as our Saviour has insisted more upon it than on any other single virtue.” The practise of this precept is the most difficult of all virtues. Antoninus often enforces it and gives us aid towards following it. When we are injured, we feel anger and resentment, and the feeling is natural, just, and useful for the conservation of society. It is useful that wrong-doers should feel the natural consequences of their actions, among which is the disapprobation of society and the resentment of him who is wronged. But revenge, in the proper sense of that word, must not be practiced. “The best way of avenging thyself,” says the emperor, “is not to become like, the wrongdoer.” It is plain by this that he does not mean that we should in any case practise revenge; but he says to those who talk of revenging wrongs, “Be not like him who has done the wrong. When a man has done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what opinion about good or evil he has done wrong. For when thou hast seen this, thou wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry” (VII. 26). Antoninus would not deny that wrong naturally produces the feeling of anger and resentment, for this is implied in the recommendation to reflect on the nature of the man’s mind who has done the wrong, and then you will have pity instead of resentment; and so it comes to the same as St. Paul’s advice to be angry and sin not; which, as Butler well explains it, is not a recommendation to be angry, which nobody needs, for anger is a natural passion, but it is a warning against allowing anger to lead us into sin. In short the emperor’s doctrine about wrongful acts is this: wrong-doers do not know what good and bad are: they offend out of ignorance, and in the sense of the Stoics this is true. Though this kind of ignorance will never be admitted as a legal excuse, and ought not to be admitted as a full excuse in any way by society, there may be grievous injuries, such as it is in a man’s power to forgive without harm to society; and if he forgives because he sees that his enemies know not what they do, he is acting in the spirit of the sublime prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”