Ἴδιον ἀνθρώπου. Not an "ideal of sainthood" but a specific property: to love even those who stumble (τοὺς πταίοντας — from πταίω, "to trip": error as a stumble, not as villainy) is what is "proper" to the human being, ἴδιον in the logical sense — what distinguishes the rational creature as such. Whoever does not love the erring falls short not of heroism but of the definition of a human being. Then comes the recipe: love is reached not by an effort of feeling but by a set of thoughts that must "co-occur" with the event (συμπροσπίπτῃ — to fall in together with the impression: the technique of formulae held ready).

Four ingredients. (1) They are TERMyour kin (συγγενεῖς — community of reason and origin: 2.1, "akin to me not by blood but by mind and a share in the divine"). (2) They err TERMthrough ignorance and (3) against their will (ἄκοντες) — the Socratic thesis "no one goes wrong willingly," absorbed by the Stoa: vice is an error of evaluative knowledge, and anger at the erring is as absurd as anger at the blind. (4) "In a little while both of you will be dead" (memento mori as a solvent of enmity: against the background of two imminent deaths a quarrel is comic; cf. 04-48). The ingredients escalate — from kinship through involuntariness to the mortal horizon.

The chief argument. πρὸ πάντων — "above all": DOGMAthe wrongdoer DOGMAhas done you no harmDOGMA, for he has not made your ἡγεμονικόν worse than it was. Harm in the strict sense is only the corruption of the ruling part; and no one can inflict that from outside (7.14, 7.16). Insult, loss, obstruction are events in the realm of indifferents; the only one who can hurt you through another's offence is you yourself, by answering it with the corruption of your own soul. Thus the doctrine of the invulnerability of the virtuous turns out to be not a consolation but the foundation of philanthropy: it is easy to love the one who stumbled when he has nothing of yours to take. The governing discipline is action (φιλεῖν is a deed); the sustaining one, assent (the four thoughts are work on judgment).