Perturbation, they
contended, is necessarily imperfection, and none of its forms can in
consequence be ascribed to a perfect being. We have a clear intuitive
perception that reason is the highest, and should be the directing power
of an intelligent being; but every act which is performed at the
instigation of the emotions is withdrawn from the empire of reason.
Hence it was inferred that while the will should be educated to act
habitually in the direction of virtue, even the emotions that seem most
fitted to second it should be absolutely proscribed. Thus Seneca has
elaborated at length the distinction between clemency and pity, the
first being one of the highest virtues, and the latter a positive vice.
Clemency, he says, is an habitual disposition to gentleness in the
application of punishments. It is that moderation which remits something
of an incurred penalty; it is the opposite of cruelty, which is an
habitual disposition to rigour. Pity, on the other hand, bears to
clemency the same kind of relation as superstition to religion.
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