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 attempted 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. 

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. 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 and
proper; for cummunia maledicta 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. 

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.