And this is the pleasantest side on which to consider the life and the writings of Seneca. It is true that his style partakes of the defects of his age, that the brilliancy of his rhetoric does not always compensate for the defectiveness of his reasoning; that he resembles, not a mirror which clearly reflects the truth, but "a glass fantastically cut into a thousand spangles;" that side by side with great moral truths we sometimes find his worst errors, contradictions, and paradoxes; that his eloquent utterances about God often degenerate into a vague Pantheism; and that even on the doctrine of immortality his hold is too slight to save him from waverings and contradictions;[51] yet as a moral teacher he is full of real greatness, and was often far in advance of the general opinion of his age. Few men have written more finely, or with more evident sincerity, about truth and courage, about the essential equality of man,[52] about the duty of kindness and consideration to slaves,[53] about tenderness even in dealing with sinners,[54] about the glory of unselfishness,[55] about the great idea of humanity[56] as something which transcends all the natural and artificial prejudices of country and of caste. Many of his writings are Pagan sermons and moral essays of the best and highest type. The style, as Quintilian says, "abounds in delightful faults," but the strain of sentiment is never otherwise than high and true. [Footnote 51: Consol. ad Polyb. 27; Ad Helv. 17; Ad Marc. 24, _seqq_.] [Footnote 52: Ep. 32; De Benef. iii. 2.] [Footnote 53: De Irâ, iii. 29, 32.] [Footnote 54: Ibid. i. 14; De Vit. beat. 24.] [Footnote 55: Ep. 55, 9.] [Footnote 56: Ibid. 28; De Oti Sapientis, 31.]