Moralia: On The Control Of Anger

Posted on ; Last updated on April 9, 2018

He that wishes to come through life safe and sound must continue throughout his life to be under treatment.

Anger is a Disease of the Soul

I should like an attentive friend of mine to hold a mirror up to me during my moments of rage. For to see oneself in a state which nature did not intend, with one’s features all distorted, contributes in no small degree toward discrediting that passion. The intemperate, bitter, and vulgar words which temper casts forth defile the speakers and fill them with disrepute, for their anger have laid bare their inner nature.

In the butcheries that tyrants perpetrate, their meanness of soul is apparent in their cruelty and their perverted state in their action, and is like the bites of vipers, which, when thoroughly inflamed with rage and pain, eject their excessive fiery passion upon those who have hurt them. For just as with the flesh a swelling results from a great blow, so with the weakest souls the inclination to inflict a hurt produces a flaring up of temper as great as the soul’s infirmity is great.

The Causes of Anger

Different persons are liable to anger from different causes; yet in the case of practically all of them there is present a belief that they are being despised or neglected. For this reason we should assist those who endeavour to avoid anger, by removing as far as possible the act that rouses wrath from any suspicion of contempt or arrogance and by imputing it to ignorance or necessity or emotion or mischance.

Once when Socrates took Euthydemus home with him, Xanthippê came up to them in a rage and scolded them roundly, finally upsetting the table. Euthydemus, deeply offended, got up and was about to leave. But Socrates said, “At your house the other day did not a hen fly in and do precisely this same thing, yet we were not put out about it?”

Reason is the Antidote to Anger

For the power of reason is not like drugs, but like wholesome food, engendering an excellent state, together with great vigour, in those who become accustomed to it. Exhortations and admonitions, if applied to the passions when they are at their height and swollen, can scarcely accomplish anything at all. For temper shuts out sense completely and locks it out, and just like those who burn themselves up in their own homes, it makes everything within full of confusion and smoke and noise, so that the soul can neither see nor hear anything that might help it.

It is hard for a man tossed upon the billows of passion and anger to admit the reasoning of another, unless he has his own powers of reason prepared to receive it. Just as those who expect a siege collect and store up all that is useful to them if they despair of relief from without, so it is most important that we should acquire far in advance the reinforcements which philosophy provides against temper and convey them into the soul in the knowledge that, when the occasion for using them comes, it will not be possible to introduce them with ease.

Conquering Anger

When the temper becomes ulcerated, it creates in the soul an evil state called irascibility, and this usually results in sudden frequent outbursts of rage, moroseness, and peevishness. But if judgement at once opposes the fits of anger and represses them, it not only cures them for the present, but for the future also. When I had opposed anger two or three times, I acquired the proud consciousness that it is possible for reason to conquer. For he who gives no fuel to fire puts it out, and likewise he who does not in the beginning nurse his wrath and does not puff himself up with anger takes precautions against it and destroys it.

The best course is for us to compose ourselves, or else to run away and conceal ourselves, and anchor ourselves in a calm harbour, as though we perceived a fit of epilepsy coming on, so that we may not fall, or rather may not fall upon others; and we are especially likely to fall most often upon our friends.

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