From the family we pass to the slaves, and here, as we should expect, Plutarch is an advocate of gentleness. In the tract _On Restraining Anger_ a high and humane character is drawn in Fundanus, who had successfully mastered a naturally passionate temper. It has been thought that Plutarch was drawing {87} his own portrait over his friend's name. A naive tendency to idealise his own virtues he certainly shares with other moralists. Fundanus urges that, while all the passions need care and practice if they are to be overcome, anger is the failure to which we are most liable in the case of our slaves. Our authority over them sets us in a slippery place; temper here has nothing to check it, for here we are irresponsible and that is a position of danger. A man's wife and his friends are too apt to call gentleness to the slaves mere easy-going slackness (_atonian kai rhathumian_). "I used to be provoked by such criticism myself against my slaves. I was told they were going to pieces for want of correction. Later on I realized that, first of all, it is better to let them grow worse through my forbearance than by bitterness and anger to pervert oneself for the reformation of others. And, further, I saw that many of them, through not being punished, began to be ashamed of being bad, and that forgiveness was more apt than punishment to be the beginning of a change in them--and indeed that they would serve some men more readily for a silent nod than they would others for blows and brandings. So I persuaded myself that reasoning does better than temper."[46] It will be remarked that Fundanus, or his recording friend, does not here take the Stoic position that the slave is as much a son of God as the master,[47] nor does he spare the slave for the slave's sake but to overcome his own temper. So much for theory; but men's conduct does not always square with their theories, and in life we see men guilty of kind-heartedness and large-mindedness not at all to be reconciled with the theories which they profess, when they remember them.