OF ANGER 137 



LVII 

 OF ANGER 



To seek to extinguish Anger utterly is but a bravery 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 throughly 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. 



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 circum- 

 stances thereof, full of contempt : for contempt is that 

 which putteth an edge upon anger, as much or more than 



