Part 49

"A murrain on you, worthless wretches all, Have you no griefs at home, that here you come To sympathize with me?"

Good temper on the other hand is useful in some circumstances, adorns and sweetens others, and gets the better of all peevishness and anger by its gentleness. Thus Euclides, when his brother said to him in a dispute between them, "May I perish, if I don't have my revenge on you!" replied, "May I perish, if I don't persuade you!" and so at once turned and changed him. And Polemo, when a man reviled him who was fond of precious stones and quite crazy for costly seal-rings, made no answer, but bestowed all his attention on one of his seal-rings, and eyed it closely; and he being delighted said, "Do not look at it so, Polemo, but in the light of the sun, and it will appear to you more beautiful." And Aristippus, when there was anger between him and AEschines, and somebody said, "O Aristippus, where is now your friendship?" replied, "It is asleep, but I will wake it up," and went to AEschines, and said to him, "Do I seem to you so utterly unfortunate and incurable as to be unworthy of any consideration?" And AEschines replied, "It is not at all wonderful that you, being naturally superior to me in all things, should have been first to detect in this matter too what was needful."

"For not a woman only, but young child Tickling the bristly boar with tender hand, Will lay him prostrate sooner than an athlete."

But we that tame wild beasts and make them gentle, and carry in our arms young wolves and lions' whelps, inconsistently repel our children and friends and acquaintances in our rage, and let loose our temper like some wild beast on our servants and fellow-citizens, speciously trying to disguise it not rightly under the name of hatred of evil, but it is, I suppose, as with the other passions and diseases of the soul, we cannot get rid of any of them by calling one prudence, and another liberality, and another piety.

Sec. XV. And yet, as Zeno said the seed was a mixture and compound drawn from all the faculties of the soul, so anger seems a universal seed from all the passions. For it is drawn from pain and pleasure and haughtiness, and from envy it gets its property of malignity--and it is even worse than envy, for it does not mind its own suffering if it can only implicate another in misery--and the most unlovely kind of desire is innate in it, namely the appetite for injuring another. So when we go to the houses of spendthrifts we hear a flute-playing girl early in the morning, and see "the dregs of wine," as one said, and fragments of garlands, and the servants at the doors reeking of yesterday's debauch; but for tokens of savage and peevish masters these you will see by the faces, and marks, and manacles of their servants: for in the house of an angry man

"The only music ever heard is wailing,"

stewards being beaten within, and maids tortured, so that the spectators even in their jollity and pleasure pity these victims of passion.

Sec. XVI. Moreover those to whom it happens through their genuine hatred of what is bad to be frequently overtaken by anger, can abate its excess and acerbity by giving up their excessive confidence in their intimates. For nothing swells the anger more, than when a good man is detected of villainy, or one who we thought loved us falls out and jangles with us. As for my own disposition, you know of course how mightily it inclines to goodwill and belief in mankind. As then people walking on empty space, the more confidently I believe in anybody's affection, the more sorrow and distress do I feel if my estimate is a mistaken one. And indeed I could never divest myself of my ardour and zeal in affection, but as to trusting people I could perhaps use Plato's caution as a curb. For he said he so praised Helicon the mathematician, because he was by nature a changeable animal, but that he was afraid of those that were well educated in the city, lest, being human beings and the seed of human beings, they should reveal by some trait or other the weakness of human nature. But Sophocles' line,

"Trace out most human acts, you'll find them base,"

seems to trample on human nature and lower its merits too much. Still such a peevish and condemnatory verdict as this has a tendency to make people milder in their rage, for it is the sudden and unexpected that makes people go distracted. And we ought, as Panaetius somewhere said, to imitate Anaxagoras, and as he said at the death of his son, "I knew that I had begotten a mortal," so ought every one of us to use the following kind of language in those contretemps that stir up our anger, "I knew that the slave I bought was not a philosopher," "I knew that the friend I had was not perfect," "I knew that my wife was but a woman." And if anyone would also constantly put to himself that question of Plato, "Am I myself all I should be?" and look at home instead of abroad, and curb his propensity to censoriousness, he would not be so keen to detect evil in others, for he would see that he stood in need of much allowance himself. But now each of us, when angry and punishing, quote the words of Aristides and Cato, "Do not steal, Do not tell lies," and "Why are you lazy?" And, what is most disgraceful of all, we blame angry people when we are angry ourselves, and chastise in temper faults that were committed in temper, unlike the doctors who

"With bitter physic purge the bitter bile,"

for we rather increase and aggravate the disease. Whenever then I busy myself with such considerations as these, I try also to curtail my curiosity. For to scrutinize and pry into everything too minutely, and to overhaul every business of a servant, or action of a friend, or pastime of a son, or whisper of a wife, produces frequent, indeed daily, fits of anger, caused entirely by peevishness and harshness of character. Euripides says that the Deity

"In great things intervenes, but small things leaves To fortune;"

but I am of opinion that a prudent man should commit nothing to fortune, nor neglect anything, but should put some things in his wife's hands to manage, others in the hands of his servants, others in the hands of his friends, (as a governor has his stewards, and financiers, and controllers), while he himself superintends the most important and weighty matters. For as small writing strains the eyes, so small matters even more strain and bother people, and stir up their anger, which carries this evil habit to greater matters. Above all I thought that saying of Empedocles, "Fast from evil," a great and divine one, and I approved of those promises and vows as not ungraceful or unphilosophical, to abstain for a year from wine and Venus, honouring the deity by continence, or for a stated time to give up lying, taking great heed to ourselves to be truthful always whether in play or earnest. With these I compared my own vow, as no less pleasing to the gods and holy, first to abstain from anger for a few days, like spending days without drunkenness or even without wine at all, offering as it were wineless offerings of honey. Then I tried for a month or two, and so in time made some progress in forbearance by earnest resolve, and by keeping myself courteous and without anger and using fair language, purifying myself from evil words and absurd actions, and from passion which for a little unlovely pleasure pays us with great mental disturbance and the bitterest repentance. In consequence of all this my experience, and the assistance of the deity, has made me form the view, that courtesy and gentleness and kindliness are not so agreeable, and pleasant, and delightful, to any of those we live with as to ourselves, that have those qualities.

Homer, "Iliad," xxii. 373.

Alluded to again "On the tranquillity of the mind," Sec. i.

The allusion is to Homer's "Odyssey," xx. 23.

Reading [Greek: ex heautou] with Reiske.

Euripides, "Orestes," 72.

Euripides, "Orestes," 99.

Fragment 361.

Homer, "Iliad," xvii. 591.

The reading of the MSS. is [Greek: auton].

Lines of Callimachus. [Greek: phlien] is the admirable emendation of Salmasius.

Sophocles, "Thamyras," Fragm. 232.

"Iliad," v. 214-216.

Reading [Greek: eniois], as Wyttenbach suggests.

Aeschylus, "Prometheus," 574, 575.