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Sec. III. Now long-continued anger, and frequent giving way to it, produces an evil disposition of soul, which people call irascibility, and which ends in passionateness, bitterness, and peevishness, whenever the mind becomes sore and vexed at trifles and querulous at everyday occurrences, like iron thin and beaten out too fine. But when the judgement checks and suppresses at once the rising anger, it not only cures the soul for the moment, but restores its tone and balance for the future. It has happened to myself indeed twice or thrice, when I strongly fought against anger, that I was in the same plight as the Thebans, who after they had once defeated the Lacedaemonians, whom they had hitherto thought invincible, never lost a battle against them again. I then felt confident that reason can win the victory. I saw also that anger is not only appeased by the sprinkling of cold water, as Aristotle attested, but is also extinguished by the action of fear; aye, and, as Homer tells us, anger has been cured and has melted away in the case of many by some sudden joy. So that I came to the conclusion that this passion is not incurable for those who wish to be cured. For it does not arise from great and important causes, but banter and joking, a laugh or a nod, and similar trifles make many angry, as Helen by addressing her niece,

“Electra, maiden now for no short time,”[680]

provoked her to reply,

“Your wisdom blossoms late, since formerly
You left your house in shame;”[681]

and Callisthenes incensed Alexander, by saying, when a huge cup was brought to him, “I will not drink to Alexander till I shall require the help of AEsculapius.”

Sec. IV. As then it is easy to put out a flame kindled in the hair of hares and in wicks and rubbish, but if it once gets hold of things solid and thick, it quickly destroys and consumes them, “raging amidst the lofty work of the carpenters,” as AEschylus[682] says; so he that observes anger in its rise, and sees it gradually smoking and bursting forth into fire from some chatter or rubbishy scurrility, need have no great trouble with it, but can frequently smother it merely by silence and contempt. For as a person puts out a fire by bringing no fuel to it, so with respect to anger, he that does not in the beginning fan it, and stir up its rage in himself, keeps it off and destroys it. And so, though Hieronymus has given us many useful sayings and precepts, I am not pleased with his remark that there is no perception of anger in its birth, but only in its actual developement, so quick is it. For none of the passions when stirred up and set in motion has so palpable a birth and growth as anger. As indeed Homer skilfully shows us, where he represents Achilles as seized at once with grief, when word was brought him of Patroclus’ death, in the line,

“Thus spake he, and grief’s dark cloud covered him;”[683]

whereas he represents him as waxing angry with Agamemnon slowly, and as inflamed by his many words, which if either of them[684] had abstained from, their quarrel would not have attained such growth and magnitude. And so Socrates, as often as he perceived any anger rising in him against any of his friends, “setting himself like some ocean promontory to break the violence of the waves,” would lower his voice, and put on a smiling countenance, and give his eye a gentler expression, by inclining in the other direction and running counter to his passion, thus keeping himself from fall and defeat.

Sec. V. For the first way, my friend, to overcome anger, like the putting down of some tyrant, is not to obey or listen to it when it bids you speak loud, and look fierce, and beat yourself, but to remain quiet, and not to make the passion more intense, as one would a disease, by tossing about and crying out. In love affairs indeed, such things as revellings, and serenadings, and crowning the loved one’s door with garlands, may indeed bring, some pleasant and elegant relief.