“Ah! what dense mists of darkness do power and prosperity cast over the human mind. He [the magistrate] believes himself to be raised above the common lot of mortality, and to be at the pinnacle of glory, when he has offered so many crowds of wretched human beings to the assaults of wild beasts; when he forces animals of the most different species to engage in conflict; when in the full presence of the Roman populace he causes torrents of blood to flow, a fitting school for the future scenes of still greater bloodshed.”[32] In his treatise _On Clemency_, dedicated to his youthful pupil Nero, he anticipates the very modern theory--_theory_, for the prevalent _practice_ is a very different thing--that _prevention_ is better than _punishment_, and he denounces the cruel and selfish policy of princes and magistrates, who are, for the most part, concerned only to punish the criminals produced by unjust and unequal laws:-- “Will not that man,” he asks, “appear to be a very bad father who punishes his children, even for the slightest causes, with constant blows? Which preceptor is the worthier to teach--the one who scarifies his pupils’ backs if their memory happens to fail them, or if their eyes make a slight blunder in reading, or he who chooses rather to correct and instruct by admonition and the influence of shame?... You will find that those crimes are most often committed which are most often punished.... Many capital punishments are no less disgraceful to a ruler than are many deaths to a physician. Men are more easily governed by mild laws. The human mind is naturally stubborn and inclined to be perverse, and it more readily follows than is forced. The disposition to cruelty which takes delight in blood and wounds is the characteristic of wild beasts; it is to throw away the human character and to pass into that of a denizen of the woods.” Speaking of giving assistance to the needy, he says that the genuine philanthropist will give his money-- “Not in that insulting way in which the great majority of those who wish to seem merciful disdain and despise those whom they help, and shrink from contact with them, but as one mortal to a fellow-mortal he will give as though out of a treasury that should be common to all.”[33] Next to the _De Clementiâ_ and the _De Irâ_ (“On Anger”), his treatise _On the Happy Life_ is most admirable. In the abundance of what is unusually good and useful it is difficult to choose. His warning (so unheeded) against implicit confidence in authority and tradition cannot be too often repeated:--