enemy hunger, give him
bread to eat; if he thirst, give him water to drink," said the Hebrew
proverb. "He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he
who suffers it," said Plato, and adds, "It is never right to return an
injury." "No one will dare maintain," said Aristotle, "that it is
better to do injustice than to bear it." "We should do good to our
enemy," said Cleobulus, "and make him our friend." "Speak not evil to
a friend, nor even to an enemy," said Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise
Men. "It is more beautiful," said Valerius Maximus, "to overcome
injury by the power of kindness than to oppose to it the obstinacy of
hatred." Maximus Tyrius has a special chapter on the treatment of
injuries, and concludes: "If he who injures does wrong, he who returns
the injury does equally wrong." Plutarch, in his essay, "How to profit
by our enemies," bids us sympathize with them in affliction and aid
their needs. "A philosopher, when smitten, must love those who smite
him, as if he were the father, the brother, of all men," said
Epictetus. "It is peculiar to man," said Marcus Antoninus, "to love
even those who do wrong.... Ask thyself daily to how many ill-minded
persons thou hast shown a kind disposition." He compares the wise and
humane soul to a spring of pure water which blesses even him who
curses it; and the Oriental story likens such a soul to the
sandal-wood tree, which imparts its fragrance even to the axe that
cuts it down.[D]

How it cheers and enlarges us to hear of these great thoughts and
know that the Divine has never been without a witness on earth! How it
must sadden the soul to disbelieve them. Worse yet to be in a position
where one has to hope that they may not be correctly reported,--that
one by one they may be explained away. A prosecuting attorney once
told me that the most painful part of his position was that he had to
hope that every man he prosecuted would be proved a villain. What is
the painful circumstance in Mrs. Stowe's Byron controversy? That she
is obliged to hope that the character of a sister woman, hitherto
stainless, may be hopelessly blackened. But what is this to their
position who are bound to hope that the character of humanity will be
blackened by wholesale, who are compelled to resist every atom of
light that history reveals. For instance, as the great character of
Buddha has come out from the darkness, within fifty years, how these
reluctant people have struggled agains