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

ON ANGER, III. XI. 2-xii. 2ways anger must be circumvented ; most offences >may be turned into farce and jest. Socrates, it issaid, when once he received a box on the ear, merelydeclared that it was too bad that a man could nottell when he ought to wear a helmet while takinga walk. Not how an affront is offered, but how it isborne is oiu: concern ; and I do not see why it isdifficult to practise restraint, since I know that evendesjxjtSj^ though their hearts were puffed up withsuccess and pri\'ilege, have nevertheless repressedthe cruelt}^ that was habitual to them. At any rate,there is the story handed down about Pisistratus, theAthenian despot—that once when a tipsy tableguesthad declaimed at length about his cruelty,and there was no lack of those who would gladlyplace their swords at the ser\'ice of their master, andone from this side and another from that supphedfuel to the flame, the tyrant, none the less, bore theincident calmly, and rephed to those who were goad- ^ing him on that he was no more angry at the manthan he would be if some one ran against him bUndfold.A great many manufacture grievances either bysuspecting the imtrue or by exaggerating the tri\ial.Anger often comes to us, but more often we go to it.It should never be united ; even when it falls uponus, it should be repulsed. No man ever says tohimself, " I myself have done, or at least might havedone, this very thing that now makes me angry " ;nQ_ one considers the intention of the doer, butmerely the deed. Yet it is to the doer that we 1.should give thought—whether he did it intentionally »^or by accident, whether under compulsion or bymistake, whether he was led on by hatred or by the•283