31

31. On anger

[Montaigne first read the Moral Works of Plutarch (as distinct from his Parallel Lives) in Amyot’s great French translation during 1573. This chapter shows how philosophy is not merely a matter of argument and abstractions but of basic practical morals affecting wives and children as much as generals and statesmen. That a true philosopher should not give way to anger was a commonplace, emphasized by the Stoics and taken over by many Christians – in Le Tartuffe Molière will make the servant-girl laugh at Orgon with the taunt: ‘Ah! You are devout: and you are angry!’ Anger was believed to be caused by choler, one of the four humours, which made a man bilious and irascible. Montaigne also associated it with chagrin, that grievous vexation brought on by melancholy.]

[A] Plutarch is amazing in every respect but especially where he makes judgements on men’s actions. In his parallel lives of Lycurgus and Numa we can see the beauty of what he says when treating of our great stupidity in abandoning children to the responsibility and control of their fathers. [C] The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws.1 [A] Anyone can see that all things within a State depend upon the way it educates and brings up its children. Yet quite injudiciously that is left to the mercy of the parents, no matter how mad or wicked they may be.

How many times have I been tempted, among others things, to make a dramatic intervention so as to avenge some little boys whom I saw being bruised, knocked about and flayed alive by some frenzied father or mother beside themselves with anger. You can see fire and rage flashing from their eyes–

[B] rabie jecur incendente, feruntur Præcipites, ut saxa jugis abrupta, quibus mons Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit

[they are carried away by burning wrath, like boulders wrenched free from the cliff crashing down the precipitous slope]

(according to Hippocrates the most dangerous of distempers are those which contort the face)2 – [A] as with shrill wounding voices, they scream at children who are often barely weaned. Children are crippled and knocked stupid by such batterings: yet our judicial system takes no note of it, as though it were not the very limbs of our State which are thus being put out of joint and maimed.

[B] Gratum est quod patriæ civem populoque dedisti, Si facis ut patriæ sit idoneus, utilis agris, Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis.

[It is good to have given a citizen to the people and the State – provided that you make him fit for his country, good at farming, good in war and peace.]3

[A] No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does. No one would hesitate to punish with death a judge who was led to condemn his man as a criminal out of anger: then why is it any more permissible for fathers and schoolmasters to punish and flog children in anger? That is no longer correction, it is vengeance. For a child punishment is a medicine: would we tolerate a doctor who was animated by wrath against his patient? We ourselves, if we would act properly, should never lay a hand on our servants as long as our anger lasts. While our pulse is beating and we can feel the emotion, let us put off the encounter: things will really and truly look different to us once we have cooled off a bit and quietened down. Until then passion is in command, passion does all the talking, not us. [B] Faults seen through anger are like objects seen through a mist: they appear larger. If a man is hungry, then let him eat food: but he should never hunger and thirst for anger if he intends to chastise.

[A] And then punishments applied after being judiciously weighed are more acceptable and more useful to the sufferer. Otherwise he does not think that he has been justly condemned by a man shaking with anger and fury; he cites in his own justification the inflamed face of the schoolmaster, his unaccustomed swearing, his mental disturbance and his precipitate haste.

[B] Ora tument ira, nigrescunt sanguine venæ, Lumina Gorgoneo sævius igne micant.

[His face swells with anger, the blood darkens in his veins and his eyes flash with fire more savage than a Gorgon’s.]4

[A] Suetonius relates that Lucius Saturninus, after being condemned by Caesar, was helped in winning his case before the People (to whom he had appealed) above all by the bitter animus that Caesar brought to his verdict.

Saying is one thing: doing is another; we must consider the preaching apart and the preacher apart. Those who in our own time have made an assay at shaking the truth taught in our Church by citing the vices of her ministers have given themselves an easy game. Her testimonies are drawn from elsewhere. That way of arguing is stupid: it would throw everything into confusion. A man of good morals may hold false opinions: A wicked man can preach the truth – yes, even truths he does not believe. It is most certainly harmonious and beautiful when saying and doing go together; I have no wish to deny that saying has more authority and efficacity when followed by doing – as Eudamidas remarked on hearing a philosopher discoursing about war: ‘Beautiful words: but the man who spoke them cannot be believed since his ears are not used to the sound of the trumpet.’ And when Cleomenes heard a professor of rhetoric declaiming about valour he burst out laughing; the professor was scandalized but Cleomenes replied: ‘I would do the same if it were a swallow speaking: now if it were an eagle, I would willingly listen.’5

It seems to me that I can perceive from the writings of the Ancients that the man who says what he really thinks drives it home in a livelier way than he who only pretends. Listen to Cicero talking about the love of liberty: then listen to Brutus! The very writings declare that Brutus was the man to purchase liberty at the cost of his life. Let Cicero, the father of eloquence, treat the theme of contempt for death; let Seneca treat it too: Cicero drags it out lifelessly and you can feel that he wants to make you resolute about something for which he himself has no resolution at all. He cannot put heart into you: he has none to give. But Seneca rouses you and inflames you.

I never read an author, especially one treating of virtue and duty, without curiously inquiring what sort of man he was. [B] The Ephors of Sparta, on seeing a dissolute man giving useful advice in a speech before the people, ordered him to stop and requested a man of honour to sponsor the new idea and to speak for it.6

[A] The writings of Plutarch if you savour them well adequately reveal him – and I believe that I know Plutarch, penetrating even into his soul. Yet I could wish that we had some personal memoirs. If I have let myself go in this digression it is because of the gratitude I feel towards Aulus Gellius for having bequeathed to us in his writings the following account of his manners which touches again on my subject: anger.

One of Plutarch’s slaves, a bad, wicked man whose ears had however drunk in a few lectures in philosophy, had been stripped for some crime by order of Plutarch; at first, while he was being flogged, he snarled about its not being right and that he had not done anything wrong; but in the end he started to shout abuse at his master in good earnest, accusing him of not really being a philosopher as he boasted, since he had often heard him say that it was ugly to get angry and had even written a book on the subject; the fact that he was now immersed in anger and having him cruelly flogged completely gave the lie to his writings. To which Plutarch, quite without heat and completely calm, replied: ‘What makes you think, you ruffian, that I am angry at this time? Does my face, my voice, my colouring or my speech bear any witness to my being excited? I do not think my eyes are wild, my face distorted nor my voice terrifying. Is my face inflamed? Am I foaming at the mouth? Do words escape me which I will later regret? Am I all a-tremble? Am I shaking with wrath? Those, I can tell you, are the true symptoms of anger.’ Then turning towards the man who was doing the flogging he said, ‘Carry on with your job, while this man and I are having having a discussion.’

That is the account in Aulus Gellius.

On returning from a war in which he had served as Captain-General, Archytas of Tarentum found in his house every sign of mismanagement and his lands lying fallow through the neglect of his steward. He summoned him before him and said, ‘Go. If I were to not so angry I would give you a good going over.’ So too Plato: when he was inflamed against one of his slaves he handed him over to Speucippus for punishment, apologizing for not laying hands on him himself since he was angry. Charillus, a Spartan, said to a helot who was behaving most insolently and audaciously toward him: ‘By the gods! If I were to not so angry I would have you put to death at once.’7

Anger is a passion which delights in itself and fawns on itself. How often, if we are all worked up for some wrong reason and then offered some good defence or excuse, we are vexed against truth and innocence itself! I can recall a marvellous example of this from Antiquity. Piso, a great man in every other way, noted for his virtue, was moved to anger against one of his soldiers. Because that soldier had returned alone after foraging and could give no account of where he had left his comrade, Piso was convinced that he had murdered him and at once condemned him to death. When he was already on the gallows, along comes the lost comrade! At this the whole army was overjoyed and, after many a hug and embrace between the two men, the executioner brought both of them into the presence of Piso; all those who were there were expecting that Piso himself would be delighted. Quite the contrary: for, through embarrassment and vexation, his fury, which was still very powerful, suddenly redoubled and, by a quibble which his passion promptly furnished him with, he found three men guilty because one had just been found innocent, and had all three of them executed: the first soldier because he was already sentenced to death; the second, the one who had gone missing, because he had caused the death of his comrade; the hangman for failing to obey orders.8

[B] Those who have had to deal with obstinate women may have made an assay of the raging madness that they are thrown into when you confront their agitated minds with silence and coldness and do not condescend to feed their bad temper. Celius the orator was of a marvellously choleric nature. There was, dining in his company, a man of mild and gentle manners who, so as not to provoke him, decided to approve of everything he said and always to agree with him; but Celius could not tolerate that his evil temper should thus pass unfed and exclaimed: ‘For the gods’ sake challenge something that I say, so that there can be two of us!’9 Similarly women get angry only to make us angry in turn, imitating the laws of love. Phocion, when a man kept interrupting what he was saying with bitter insults, simply stopped talking, giving him enough time to exhaust his choler; when that was over, without mentioning the disturbance, he took up his speech just where he had left off. No retort goads a man more sharply than disdain such as that.

Of the most choleric man in France (and it is always a defect, though pardonable in a fighting man since in the exercise of that profession there are certainly situations where it cannot be dispensed with) I often say that he is in fact the most long-suffering man I know in restraining his choler. It shakes him with such violence and frenzy –

magno veluti cum flamma sonore Virgea suggeritur costis undantis aheni, Exultantque æstu latices; furit intus aquaï Fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis; Nec jam se capit unda; volat vapor ater ad auras

[as when, beneath a brazen cauldron, the fire roars noisily into flame and licks its sides, the water boils with the heat and, madly foaming in its prison, breaks over the edge and can contain itself no longer, sending black fumes off into the air]

– that, to moderate it, he has to keep himself under cruel restraint.10 Personally I know of no passion of mine for which I could ever make so great an effort to hide and withstand. I would not care to rate wisdom at so high a price as that. I do not so much look at what that man does, as what it costs him not to do worse.

Another great man boasted to me of the gentle correctness of his manners, which was truly unique. I replied that, especially in one of so eminent a rank and on whom all eyes were turned, it was indeed something to present oneself always moderate to the world, but that the main thing was to provide inwardly for oneself: to my taste a man was not managing his business well if he was eating his insides out. I am afraid that he was doing just that, so as to maintain the mask of that outward appearance of correctness.

By hiding our choler we drive it into our bodies: as Diogenes said to Demosthenes, who kept drawing back further inside so as not to be spotted in a tavern: ‘The more you draw back, the further in you go!’11 I would advise you to give your valet a rather unseasonable slap on the cheek rather than to torture your mind so as to put on an appearance of wisdom; I would rather make an exhibition of my passions than brood over them to my cost: express them, vent them, and they grow weaker; it is better to let them jab outside us than be turned against us: [C] ‘Omnia vitia in apertoleviora sunt;… et tunc perniciosissima cum simulata sanitate subsidunt.’ [All defects are lighter in the open:… they are most pernicious when concealed beneath a pretence of soundness.]12

[B] I advise those of my family who have the right to show their anger, firstly to be sparing of their choler and not to scatter it abroad no matter what the cost, since that thwarts its action and its weight; even the anger you vent on a servant for a theft makes no impression then: it is the same anger he has seen you use against him a hundred times already, for a glass badly rinsed or a stool left out of place. Secondly, let them not get angry in the void; let them see that their reprimand falls to the one they are complaining about, for as a rule they are yelling before he has answered their summons; and they go on doing so for ages after he has gone:

et secum petulans amentia certat. [petulant madness turns against itself.]13

They go at their own shadows and bluster about in places when nobody is punished or affected by it, except such as cannot stand their din.

I similarly blame those who boast and bluster about in quarrels where there is no adversary: let them keep such rodomontades for when they can have a target:

Mugitus veluti cum prima in prælia taurus Terrificos ciet atque irasci in cornua tentat, Arboris obnixus trunco, ventósque lacessit Ictibus, et sparsa ad pugnam proludit arena.

[Thus roars the bull fresh to the combat. With terrifying bellows it tries out its anger by dashing its horns against a tree-trunk; it lashes out at the air and paws the sand in the arena as a prelude to battle.]

When I get angry it is as lively, but also as short and as secret, as I can make make it. I lose control quickly and violently, but not with such turmoil that I go gaily hurling about all sorts of insults at random and fail to lodge my goads pertinently where I think they can do the most damage: for I normally use only my tongue. My servants get off more cheaply in serious cases than in little ones. The little ones take me by surprise: unfortunately, once you are over the edge, no matter what gave you the shove, you go right down to the bottom; the very fall, of itself, presses on in haste and confusion. In the serious cases I am satisfied with their being so obvious that everybody expects me to give birth to justified anger: I glory in disappointing their expectations. I prepare and brace myself against those serious cases: they dig into my brain and threaten to carry me too far if I follow where they lead. No matter how violent the cause it is easy to prevent myself from giving way to the impulsion of that passion, and I am strong enough to resist it, provided I am expecting it. But if it takes me unawares and once gets a hold on me I am carried away, no matter how trivial the cause.

This is the bargain I strike with those who may have to contend with me: when you see I am the first to get worked up, just let me go on, right or wrong: I will do the same in return. The storm is engendered only by the confluence of cholers, both prone to beget the other: and they are not both born at the same instant. Let us allow each one to run its course: then we always have peace.

A useful prescription but difficult in practice.

It sometimes happens that, without any real emotion, I put on an act of being angry in order to govern my household. But as my age renders my humours more and more acrid I strive to oppose them; if I can, I will see that, from this time forth, the more justification and inclination I have, the less I shall be chagrined and difficult – although I have been among the least so up till now.

[A] One more word to close this chapter. Aristotle says that choler sometimes serves virtue and valour as a weapon.14 That is most likely; nevertheless those who deny it have an amusing reply: it must be some new-fangled weapon; for we wield the other weapons: that one wields us; it is not our hand that guides it: it guides our hand; it gets a hold on us: not we on it.