“Well; and your opinion is that of——.”
“Neither.”
“Neither! I had no idea the question had more than two sides.”
“It has yet a third; and I hardly ever heard a question that had not. Had I regarded the vicious with indignation, I had never gained one to virtue. Had I viewed them with contempt, I had never sought to gain one.”
“How is it,” said Leontium, “that the scholars are so little familiar with the temper of their master? When did Epicurus look on the vicious with other than compassion?”
“True,” said Metrodorus. “I know not how I forgot this, when perhaps it is the only point which I have more than once, presumed to argue with him: and upon which I have persisted in retaining a different opinion.”
“Talk not of presumption, my son. Who has not a right to think for himself? Or who is he whose voice is infallible, and worthy to silence those of his fellow-men? And remember, that your remaining unconvinced by my arguments on one occasion, can only tend to make your conviction more flattering to me upon others. Yet, on the point in question, were I anxious to bring you over to my opinion, I know one, whose argument, better and more forcible than mine, will ere long most effectually do so.”
“Who mean you?”
“No other than old hoary Time,” said the Master, “who, as he leads us gently onwards in the path of life, demonstrates to us many truths that we never heard in the schools, and some that, hearing there, we found hard to receive. Our knowledge of human life must be acquired by our passage through it; the lessons of the sage are not sufficient to impart it. Our knowledge of men must be acquired by our own study of them; the report of others will never convince us. When you, my son, have seen more of life, and studied more men, you will find, or at least, I think you will find, that the judgment is not false which makes us lenient to the failings—yea! even to the crimes of our fellows. In youth, we act on the impulse of feeling, and we feel without pausing to judge. An action, vicious in itself, or that is so merely in our estimation, fills us with horror, and we turn from its agent without waiting to listen to the plea which his ignorance could make to our mercy. In our ripened years, supposing our judgment to have ripened also, when all the insidious temptations that misguided him, and all the disadvantages that he has labored under, perhaps from his birth, are apparent to us—it is then, and not till then, that our indignation at the crime is lost in our pity of the man.”
“I am the last,” said Metrodorus, a crimson blush spreading over his face, “who should object to my master his clemency towards the offending. But there are vices, different from those he saved me from, which, if not more unworthy, are perhaps more unpardonable, because committed with less temptation; and more revolting, as springing less from thoughtless ignorance than calculating depravity.”