To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery[580] of the
Stoics. We have better oracles: “Be angry, but sin not; let not the sun
go down upon your anger.”[581] 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.”[582] The Scripture exhorteth us “to possess our
souls in patience;”[583] whosoever is out of patience, is out of
possession of his soul. Men must not turn bees:—
“animasque in vulnere ponunt.”[584]
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[585]
of a man’s reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger; wherein the
remedy is, that a man should have, as Gonsalvo was wont to say, “Telam
honoris crassiorem.”[586] 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 mean time, 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 and proper,[587]
for “communia maledicta”[588] 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 any thing
that is not revocable.
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.