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He that useth food doth it to gratify his hunger, which is natural; but he that inflicts punishment should do it without either hungering or thirsting after it, not needing anger, like sauce, to whet him on to punish; but when he is farthest off from desiring it, then he should do it as a deed of necessity under the guidance of reason. And though Aristotle reports, that in his time servants in Etruria were wont to be scourged while the music played, yet they who punish others ought not to be carried on with a desire of punishing, as of a thing they delight in, nor to rejoice when they punish, and then repent of it when they have done,—whereof the first is savage, the last womanish; but, without either sorrow or pleasure, they should inflict just punishment when reason is free to judge, leaving no pretence for anger to intermeddle.
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FUNDANUS.But this perhaps may seem to be not a cure of anger, but only a thrusting by and avoiding of such miscarriages as some men fall into when they are angry. And yet, as Hieronymus tells us, although the swelling of the spleen is but a symptom of the fever, the assuaging thereof abates the disease. But, considering well the origin of anger itself, I have observed that divers men fall into anger for different causes; and yet in the minds of all of them was probably an opinion of being despised and neglected. We must therefore assist those who would avoid anger, by removing the act which roused their anger as far as possible from all suspicion of contempt or insult, and by imputing it rather to folly or necessity or disorder of mind, or to the misadventure of those that did it. Thus Sophocles in Antigone:— The best resolved mind in misery Can’t keep its ground, but suffers ecstasy. Soph. Antig. 563.
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And so Agamemnon, ascribing to Ate the taking away of Briseis, adds:— Since I so foolish was as thee to wrong, I’ll please thee now, and give thee splendid gifts. Il. XIX. 138.
