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BUT it is like all poisonous kinds of serpents or of wild beasts,
which, while they remain in solitude and their own lairs, are still not
harmless; for they cannot really be said to be harmless, because they
are not actually hurting anybody. For this results in their case, not from
any feeling of goodness, but from the exigencies of solitude, and when they
have secured an opportunity of hurting some one, at once they produce the
poison stored up in them, and show the ferocity of their nature. And so in
the case of men who are aiming at perfection, it is not enough not to be
angry with men. For we recollect that when we were living in solitude a
feeling of irritation would creep over us against our pen because it was
too large or too small; against our penknife when it cut badly and with a
blunt edge what we wanted cut; and against a flint if by chance when we
were rather late and hurrying to the reading, a spark of fire flashed out,
so that we could not remove and get rid of our perturbation of mind except
by cursing the senseless matter, or at least the devil. Wherefore for a
method of perfection it will not be of any use for there to be a dearth of
men against whom our anger might be roused: since, if patience has not
already been acquired, the feelings of passion which still dwell in our
hearts can equally well spend themselves on dumb things and paltry objects,
and not allow us to gain a continuous state of peacefulness, or to be free
from our remaining faults: unless perhaps we think that some advantage and
a sort of cure may be gained for our passion from the fact that inanimate
and speechless things cannot possibly reply to our curses and rage, nor
provoke our ungovernable temper to break out into a worse madness of
passion.
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