Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

ON MERCY, I. XXIV. 1-xxv. 2Numerous executions are not less discreditable to aprince than are numerous funerals to a physician ;the more indulgent the ruler, the better he is obeyed.Man's spirit is by nature refractorj-, it strugglesagainst opposition and difficulty, and is more readyto follow than to be led ; and as well-bred and highspiritedhorses are better managed by a loose rein,so a voluntary uprightress follows upon mercy underits own impulse, and the state accounts it" worthyto be maintained for the state's own sake. By thiscourse, therefore, more good is accompHshed.Cruelty is an e\i\ thing befitting least of all a man,and is unworthy of his spirit that is so kindly ; forone to take dehght in blood and wounds and, throwingoff the man. to change into a creature of thewoods, is the madness of a ^^^ld beast. For whatdifference does it make, I beg of you, Alexander,whether you throw Lysimachus * to a hon, or yourselftear him to pieces with your teeth ? That hon's mawis yours, and yours its savager}". How pleased youwould have been had its claws been yom^ instead,and yours those gaping jaws, big enough to swallowmen I We do not require of you that that hand ofyours, the surest destruction of familiar friends,should save the life of any man, that yoiu* savagespirit, the insatiate curse of nations, should sateitself with anything short of blood and slaughter ;we call it now a mercy if to kill a friend the butcher ischosen among niankind. The reason why brutalityis most of all abhorred is this : because it transt^ressesfirst all ordinary, and then all human,liounds, searches out new kinds of torture, callsingenuity into play to invent de\ices by whichsuffering may be varied and prolonged, and takes423