Of Anger 
   – Francis Bacon

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.