“’Tis true I know what evil I shall do,
  But passion overpowers the better counsel.”

She thought that to indulge her passion and take vengeance on her husband was more profitable than to spare her children.  It was so; but she was deceived.  Show her plainly that she is deceived, and she will not do it; but so long as you do not show it, what can she follow except that which appears to herself (her opinion)?  Nothing else.  Why then are you angry with the unhappy woman that she has been bewildered about the most important things, and is become a viper instead of a human creature?  And why not, if it is possible, rather pity, as we pity the blind and the lame, so those who are blinded and maimed in the faculties which are supreme?

Whoever then clearly remembers this, that to man the measure of every act is the appearance (the opinion), whether the thing appears good or bad.  If good, he is free from blame; if bad, himself suffers the penalty, for it is impossible that he who is deceived can be one person, and he who suffers another person—­whoever remembers this will not be angry with any man, will not be vexed at any man, will not revile or blame any man, nor hate, nor quarrel with any man.

So then all these great and dreadful deeds have this origin, in the appearance (opinion)?  Yes, this origin and no other.  The Iliad is nothing else than appearance and the use of appearances.  It appeared to Alexander to carry off the wife of Menelaus.  It appeared to Helene to follow him.  If then it had appeared to Menelaus to feel that it was a gain to be deprived of such a wife, what would have happened?  Not only would the Iliad have been lost, but the Odyssey also.  On so small a matter then did such great things depend?  But what do you mean by such great things?  Wars and civil commotions, and the destruction of many men and cities.  And what great matter is this?  Is it nothing?  But what great matter is the death of many oxen, and many sheep, and many nests of swallows or storks being burnt or destroyed?  Are these things then like those?  Very like.  Bodies of men are destroyed, and the bodies of oxen and sheep; the dwellings of men are burnt, and the nests of storks.  What is there in this great or dreadful?  Or show me what is the difference between a man’s house and a stork’s nest, as far as each is a dwelling; except that man builds his little houses of beams and tiles and bricks, and the stork builds them of sticks and mud.  Are a stork and a man then like things?  What say you?  In body they are very much alike.

Does a man then differ in no respect from a stork?  Don’t suppose that I say so; but there is no difference in these matters (which I have mentioned).  In what then is the difference?  Seek and you will find that there is a difference in another matter.  See whether it is not in a man the understanding of what he does, see if it is not in social community, in fidelity, in modesty, in steadfastness, in intelligence.