Moral essays. With an English translation by J.W. Basore

ON ANGER, I. VIII. 1-6be£Qxn£S-filno_avajl after that it \\ill do, not whateveryou let it, but whatever it chooses. The enemy,;I repeat, must be stopped at the ven,' frontier ; forif he has passed it, and advanced within the citygates,he Avill not respect any bounds set by hiscaptives. For the mind is not a member apart, nof~^does it_N-ie\vJthe passions merely objectively, thus/forbidding them to advance farther than they ought, .;?/)Wics tbut it is itself transformed into the passion and \St>.tl>^**^therefore, unable to recover its former useful andsa\ing power when tliis has once been betrayed andwe^li^iied. For, as I said before, these two do notdwell separate and distinct, but passion^and reason ^are onh^ the transformatiQii of the mind toward thebetler-op^th«-w©rse. How, then, Mill the reason, afterit has surrendered to anger, rise again, assailed andcrushed as it is by ^ice ? Or how shall it free itselffrom the motley combination in which a blendingof all the worse quahties makes them supreme ?" Rut/' mp .oooL^li fhf>rf> are those who controlthemselves even in anger." You mean, then, thatthey doT^one of the things that anger dictates, oronly some of them ? If they do none, it is e\identthat anger is~nbt essential to the transactions of hfe,and yet you were advocating it on the ground thatit is something stronger than reason. I ask, in fine,is anger more powerful or weaker than reason ?If itis more powerful, how -oill reason be able to set limitationsupon it, since, ordinarily, it is only the lesspowerful thing that submits ? If it is weaker, thenreason without it is sufficient in itself for the accomplishment"~Df-DTrrta^k?, and requires no help from athingness powerful. Yet you say :" There are thosewHo^eventhough angry, remain true to themselves127