The wise man will collapse if he tries to get angry every time reason demands it. Look at all those thousands rushing to the courthouses at dawn. Their cases are shameful, and their lawyers are even worse. One person contests his father's will when he should have just earned his inheritance. Another accuses his own mother of crimes. A third informs on someone for the exact crime he himself is more obviously guilty of. Even the judge is chosen to punish people for doing what he has done himself. And the audience sides with whoever has the smoothest-talking lawyer.
He will faint, if he demands anger from himself as often as reason calls for it. All these thousands who are hurrying to the law courts at break of day, how base are their causes, and how much baser their advocates? One impugns his father’s will, when he would have done better to deserve it; another appears as the accuser of his mother; a third comes to inform against a man for committing the very crime of which he himself is yet more notoriously guilty. The judge, too, is chosen to condemn men for doing what he himself has done, and the audience takes the wrong side, led astray by the fine voice of the pleader.