Some things there are that cannot hurt us, and others will not; as good magistrates, parents, tutors, judges; whose reproof or correction we are to take as we do abstinence, bleeding, and other uneasy things, which we are the better for, in which cases, we are not so much to reckon upon what we suffer as upon what we have done. “I take it ill,” says one; and, “I have done nothing,” says another: when, at the same time, we make it worse, by adding arrogance and contumacy to our first error. We cry out presently, “What law have we transgressed?” As if the letter of the law were the sum of our duty, and that piety, humanity, liberality, justice, and faith, were things beside our business. No, no; the rule of human duty is of a greater latitude; and we have many obligations upon us that are not to be found in the _statute-books_. And yet we fall short of the exactness event of that _legal innocency_. We have intended one thing and done another; wherein only the want of success has kept us from being criminals. This very thing, methinks, should make us more favorable to delinquents, and to forgive not only ourselves, but the gods too; of whom we seem to have harder thoughts in taking that to be a particular evil directed to us, that befalls us only by the common law of mortality. In fine, no man living can absolve himself to his conscience, though to the world, perhaps, he may. It is true, that we are also condemned to pains and diseases, and to death too, which is no more than the quitting of the soul’s house. But why should any man complain of bondage, that, wheresoever he looks, has his way open to liberty? That precipice, that sea, that river, that well, there is freedom in the bottom of it. It hangs upon every crooked bow; and not only a man’s throat, or his heart, but every vein in his body, opens a passage to it. To conclude, where my proper virtue fails me, I will have recourse to examples, and say to myself, Am I greater than Philip or Augustus, who both of them put up with greater reproaches? Many have pardoned their enemies, and shall not I forgive a neglect, a little freedom of the tongue? Nay, the patience but of a second thought does the business: for though the first shock be violent; take it in parts, and it is subdued. And, to wind up all in one word, the great lesson of mankind, as well in this as in all other cases, is, “to do as we would be done by.” CHAPTER XII. OF CRUELTY.