so vexed and bitter are you at people's weaknesses and infirmities, which is not reasonable in you. Even your own private affairs are not always managed by simple and good and suitable instruments, so to speak, but very frequently by sharp and crooked ones. Do not think it then either your business, or an easy matter either, to set all these things to rights. But if you take people as they are, as the surgeon uses his bandages and instruments for drawing teeth, and with cheerfulness and serenity welcome all that happens, as you would look upon barking dogs as only following their nature, you will be happier in the disposition you will then have than you will be distressed at other people's disagreeableness and shortcomings. For you will forget to make a collection of disagreeable things,[731] which now inundate, as some hollow and low-lying ground, your littleness of mind and weakness, which fills itself with other people's bad points. For seeing that some of the philosophers censure compassion to the unfortunate (on the ground that it is good to help our neighbours, and not to give way to sentimental sympathy in connection with them), and, what is of more importance, do not allow those that are conscious of their errors and bad moral disposition to be dejected and grieved at them, but bid them cure their defects without grief at once, is it not altogether unreasonable, look you, to allow ourselves to be peevish and vexed, because all those who have dealings with us and come near us are not good and clever? Let us see to it, dear Paccius, that we do not, whether we are aware of it or not, play a part, really looking[732] not at the universal defects of those that approach us, but at our own interests through our selfishness, and not through our hatred of evil. For excessive excitement about things, and an undue appetite and desire for them, or on the other hand aversion and dislike to them, engender suspiciousness and peevishness against persons, who were, we think, the cause of our being deprived of some things, and of being troubled with others. But he that is accustomed to adapt himself to things easily and calmly is most cheerful and gentle in his dealings with people.