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Essay LVII: Of Anger
Essay LVII: Of Anger
To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery ^1 of the Stoics. We
have better oracles: Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your
anger. Anger must be limited and confined both in race and in time. We will
first speak how the natural inclination and habit to be angry may be
attempered and calmed. Secondly, how the particular motions of anger may be
repressed, or at least refrained from doing mischief. Thirdly, how to raise
anger or appease anger in another.
For the first; there is no other way but to meditate and ruminate well
upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man`s life. And the best time to do
this is to look back upon anger when the fit is thoroughly over. Seneca saith
well, That anger is like ruin, which breaks itself upon that it falls. The
Scripture exhorteth us to possess our souls in patience. Whosoever is out of
patience, is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn bees;
. . . animasque in vulnere ponunt
[that put their lives in the sting].
[Footnote 1: Boast.]
Anger is certainly a kind of baseness; as it appears well in the weakness
of those subjects in whom it reigns; children, women, old folks, sick folks.
Only men must beware that they carry their anger rather with scorn than with
fear; so that they may seem rather to be above the injury than below it; which
is a thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it.
For the second point; the causes and motives of anger are chiefly three.
First, to be too sensible of hurt; for no man is angry that feels not himself
hurt; and therefore tender and delicate persons must needs be oft angry; they
have so many things to trouble them, which more robust natures have little
sense of. The next is, the apprehension and construction of the injury offered
to be, in the circumstances thereof, full of contempt: for contempt is that
which putteth an edge upon anger, as much or more than the hurt itself. And
therefore when men are ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt,
they do kindle their anger much. Lastly, opinion of the touch of a man`s
reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger. Wherein the remedy is, that a man
should have, as Consalvo was wont to say, telam honoris crassiorem [an honor
of a stouter web]. But in all refrainings of anger, it is the best remedy to
win time; and to make a man`s self believe, that the opportunity of his
revenge is not yet come, but that he foresees a time for it; and so to still
himself in the meantime, and reserve it.
To contain anger from mischief, though it take hold of a man, there be
two things whereof you must have special caution. The one, of extreme
bitterness of words, especially if they be aculeate ^2 and proper; ^3 for
cummunia maledicta [common revilings] are nothing so much; and again, that in
anger a man reveal no secrets; for that makes him not fit for society.
The other, that you do not peremptorily break off, in any business, in a fit
of anger; but howsoever you show bitterness, do not act anything that is not
revocable.
[Footnote 2: Stinging.]
[Footnote 3: Personal.]
For raising and appeasing anger in another; it is done chiefly by
choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, to incense
them. Again, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you can find out to
aggravate the contempt. And the two remedies are by the contraries. The
former to take good times, when first to relate to a man an angry business;
for the first impression is much; and the other is, to sever, as much as may
be, the construction of the injury from the point of contempt; imputing it to
misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you will.
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