[Footnote 41: Thomas Aquinas, _Summa Theologia_, ii.-ii. 108. 1. 2. _Cf._ Lactantius, _De ira Dei_, 17.] [Footnote 42: Aristotle, _Ethica Nicomachea_, ii. 7. 10; iii. 1. 24; iv. 5. 3 _sqq._] [Footnote 43: Plutarch, _De invidia et odio_, 5.] [Footnote 44: Douglas, _op. cit._ p. 257.] [Footnote 45: _Dhammapada_, i. 15, 17; x. 137 _sqq._] [Footnote 46: _Cf._ _Romans_, xii. 19: "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."] It is easy to see why enlightened and sympathetic minds disapprove of resentment and retaliation springing from personal motives. Such resentment is apt to be partial. It is too often directed against persons whom impartial reflection finds to be no proper objects of indignation, and still more frequently it is unduly excessive. As Butler ays, "we are in such a peculiar situation, with respect to injuries done to ourselves, that we can scarce any more see them as they really are, than our eye can see itself."[47] "As bodies seem greater in a mist, so do little matters in a rage"; hence the old rule that we ought not to punish whilst angry.[48] The more the moral consciousness is influenced by sympathy, the more severely it condemns any retributive infliction of pain which it regards as undeserved; and it seems to be in the first place with a {79} view to preventing such injustice that teachers of morality have enjoined upon men to love their enemies. It would, indeed, be absurd to blame a person for expressing moral indignation at an act simply because he himself happens to be the offended party; practically we allow him to be even more indignant than the impartial spectator would be, whereas excessive placability often meets with censure. Like Aristotle, we maintain that "to submit to insult, or to overlook an insult offered to our friends, shows a slavish spirit"[49]; and we agree with the Confucian maxims, that injuries should be recompensed, not with kindness, but with justice, and that nobody but he who deserves it should be an object of hatred.[50] [Footnote 47: Butler, 'Sermon IX.--Upon Forgiveness of Injuries,' in _Analogy of Religion, &c._, p. 469.] [Footnote 48: Plutarch, _De cohibenda ira_, 11. Montaigne, _Essais_, ii. 31 (_Oeuvres_, p. 396).] [Footnote 49: Aristotle, _Ethica Nicomachea_, 5. 6.] [Footnote 50: _Lun Yü_ xiv. 36. 3; xvii. 9. 1, 5; xvii. 24. 1. Douglas, _Confucianism and Taouism_, p. 9. _Cf._ _Chung Yung_, x. 3; xxxi. 1; xxxiii. 4.] At the same time, the injunctions of moralists that unjust resentment should be suppressed, are far from introducing any absolutely new element into the estimation of conduct. They only represent a higher stage of a process of moral development the early phases of which are found already in primitive societies. Even the savage who enjoins revenge as a duty, regards revenge under certain circumstances as wrong.[51] The restraining rule of like for like, as we shall see, is an instance of this.