disposition of soul, which people call irascibility, and which
ends in passionateness, bitterness, and peevishness, whenever the mind
becomes sore and vexed at trifles and querulous at everyday occurrences,
like iron thin and beaten out too fine. But when the judgement checks
and suppresses at once the rising anger, it not only cures the soul for
the moment, but restores its tone and balance for the future. It has
happened to myself indeed twice or thrice, when I strongly fought
against anger, that I was in the same plight as the Thebans, who after
they had once defeated the Lacedaemonians, whom they had hitherto thought
invincible, never lost a battle against them again. I then felt
confident that reason can win the victory. I saw also that anger is not
only appeased by the sprinkling of cold water, as Aristotle attested,
but is also extinguished by the action of fear; aye, and, as Homer tells
us, anger has been cured and has melted away in the case of many by some
sudden joy. So that I came to the conclusion that this passion is not
incurable for those who wish to be cured. For it does not arise from
great and important causes, but banter and joking, a laugh or a nod, and
similar trifles make many angry, as Helen by addressing her niece,

"Electra, maiden now for no short time,"[680]

provoked her to reply,

"Your wisdom blossoms late, since formerly
You left your house in shame;"[681]

and Callisthenes incensed Alexander, by saying, when a huge cup was
brought to him, "I will not drink to Alexander till I shall require the
help of AEsculapius."

Sec. IV. As then it is easy to put out a flame kindled in the hair of hares
and in wicks and rubbish, but if it once gets hold of things solid and
thick, it quickly destroys and consumes them, "raging amidst the lofty
work of the carpenters," as AEschylus[682] says; so he that observes
anger in its rise, and sees it gradually smoking and bursting forth into
fire from some chatter or rubbishy scurrility, need have no great
trouble with it, but can frequently smother it merely by silence and
contempt. For as a person puts out a fire by bringing no fuel to it, so
with respect to anger, he that does not in the beginning fan it, and
stir up its rage in himself, keeps it off and destroys it. And so,
though Hieronymus has given us many useful sayings and precepts, I am
not pleased with his remark that there is no perception of anger in its
birth, but only in its actual