Not to catch inhumanity. A single line with a mirror-trap: "see that you never suffer (πάθῃς) toward the inhuman (ἀπάνθρωποι) what the inhuman suffer toward men." πάθῃς — not "do" but "suffer, undergo": the point is a passion that seizes one from within. The danger is not that you will be wronged but that the wrong will make you the same — the misanthrope infects with misanthropy. To answer the inhuman with his own feeling is to lose to him in substance, taking on his colour (cf. 7.15 — the emerald keeps its own colour; 06-06 — "the best revenge is not to be like").

The asymmetry is kept deliberately. In Marcus the ἀπάνθρωποι remain ἀπάνθρωποι (inhuman), and human beings remain ἄνθρωποι: their conduct does not turn them from an object of your philanthropy into a legitimate target. The Stoic's DOGMAlove of humankind is unconditional: it is not handed out as a reward for good treatment nor withdrawn for bad, else it is not a virtue but a bargain. Whoever avenges the inhuman with inhumanity strikes himself off the roll of the ἄνθρωποι. (Rogovin renders ἀπανθρώπους as "lower beings" — interpretively; literally it is "the inhuman, misanthropes.") The discipline is action: to keep φιλανθρωπία independent of what the people around one are like.