Lectures · Lecture 10

10.1

As for a charge of assault, he said that he himself would never bring one against anyone, nor would he advise any other man who claims to pursue philosophy to do so. For of the things that some people, when they suffer them, think of as an outrage, none is in fact an outrage or a disgrace to those who suffer them: for instance, being reviled, or struck, or spat upon, of which the most severe is being struck. That these things contain nothing shameful or insulting is shown, he said, by the boys of the Spartans, who are whipped in public and even take pride in this very thing. And if the philosopher cannot despise blows or abuse, what use would he be, seeing that he ought to appear to despise even death? "But by Zeus," someone says, "the intention of the one who does these things is terrible—to strike, or revile, or do some such thing while sneering and believing himself to be committing an outrage." Demosthenes at any rate thinks that some people commit an outrage even by a look, that such things are unbearable, and that people are driven out of their senses by them, one way or another. But it is those who are ignorant of what is truly noble and what is truly shameful, and who gape after reputation, who suppose that they themselves are outraged if someone either looks at them too sharply, or laughs at them, or strikes them, or reviles them. But a man of sound understanding and sense, such as the philosopher ought to be, is disturbed by none of these things, and does not think that suffering them is shameful, but rather that doing them is. For in what way does the one who suffers do wrong? He who does wrong is immediately also in disgrace, whereas the one who suffers—just as he does no wrong insofar as he suffers, so neither does he fall into any disgrace. Hence the man of sense would not proceed to lawsuits or accusations, since he would not even consider himself to have been outraged; for it is small-minded to be indignant or worked up about such matters. Rather, he will bear what has happened gently and calmly, since this too is fitting for a man who wishes to be great-souled. Socrates at any rate was clearly disposed in this way: when he was publicly reviled by Aristophanes, so far from being indignant, he even, upon meeting him, asked him whether he wished to make use of him for any other such purpose as well.

10.2

Would that man, one may say, be quickly provoked at being reviled among a few, when even being reviled in the theater did not make him indignant? And Phocion the good, when his wife was insulted by someone, was so far from bringing a charge against the one who had insulted her that, when the man in fear approached and asked Phocion to forgive him, saying that he had not known she was that man's wife against whom he had offended—Phocion said: "But my wife has suffered nothing at your hands; some other woman perhaps has. So you need not even make any defense to me." And I could name many other men as well who have experienced outrage, some wronged by certain people with the tongue, others with the hands so that their bodies were maltreated; and they are seen neither to have retaliated against those who wronged them, nor to have proceeded against them in any other way, but to have borne their injustice very gently. For indeed to consider how one may bite back the one who has bitten, and how one may return the harm to the one who began it, belongs to some wild beast rather than to a man, since such a creature cannot even reckon this: that most of the wrongs committed by people are committed through ignorance and lack of learning, from which a man, once taught otherwise, at once desists. To receive people's wrongs, however, not savagely, and not to be implacable toward those who have offended, but rather to be to them a cause of good hope, belongs to a gentle and humane character. How much better it is, then, for the philosopher to appear so disposed that he thinks it right to grant pardon if someone has offended against him, than to seem to be defending himself by going to law and bringing charges, while in truth behaving in an unseemly way, doing things inconsistent with his own words. For if he says that the good man could never be wronged by a bad man, and yet himself brings charges as though he were being wronged by wicked people, while claiming to be good himself—