Perfidy may be either in property, or in rank, or in any other such object of pursuit; and all its divisions are sorts of treachery, which is the worst vice of the vicious, and such as no reasonable being would incline to think lightly of. The refuge of revelation has counted this among the species of hypocrisy, saying, that on the day of resurrection the perfidious will be gathered under one standard [with other hypocrites], and their perfidy be exposed to the assembled world.* This disposition prevails chiefly among the Turks;* and sincerity, which is its opposite, chiefly among the people of Rum* and Æthiopia.*

To bear malice is to be at pains in supporting injury, in order more effectually to revenge it. The difference between this, and oppression or servility, is easily understood. Now a reasonable person should never attempt revenge till he is certain that it will not lead to further injury:* that it will not, can only be ascertained by the careful exercise of thought and reflection, after the attributes of knowledge have been fully mastered. Nay, the expedient course is to forgive at once; for by this course the enemy becomes a friend, and is at the same time outdone and discredited in the public mark. Men of passion, however, feel it an injury to themselves to forgive an enemy whom they have power to punish: as the saying is, “It is worse to spare our enemies than to afflict our friends.”*

Eagerness in the pursuit of rarities is fraught with several dangers, of which it were well for princes and persons of consequence to beware — how much more those of the middle classes. No king can be secure against losing the jewels, however valuable, which his treasury contains. For it is well known that the revolutions of cycle involved in the celestial movements, nay, the very vicissitudes in the tides of authority, which is ever consuming its own depository, lead to unavoidable changes in circumstance, to fluctuation and transition without end.* From the beams of the stars doth fortune weave the tangled web of systems, and then mangles it with the shears of corruption, and casts it into the fire of decay: preparation after preparation doth fate compound of the elementary simples, only to grind them in the mechanism of the heavens, and concoct some fresher invention out of their remains. Only the law of God it is which hath no antecedent; the law of God, in which no change is to be dis­covered.*

Now when a prince is visited with the loss of any valuable, the love of which is treasured in his inmost heart, symptoms of disturbance and dismay are sure to appear, and he is subjected to a suffering greater than the degree of satisfaction derivable from its possession. We are told of a crystal globe, that was famed for its clear material and delicate appearance, and on the mould and rotundity of which the keenest mathematicians had employed their minutest skill, being brought in presentment to a king.* The more attentively he examined it, the more he felt its hidden beauties captivate his feel­ings, till he began to look upon it as the comple­ment to a trinity with the sun and moon, — a sort of corrective for the variations in the lunar phase: and the better to enjoy the means of observing it, he ordered it to the safeguard of his private trea­sury. At last, according to the text, What good thing is there that time doth not sweep away? — the accidents of fortune and the vicissitudes of the cycles, on their own eternal principles, made it the prey of destruction. At this the king was so deeply affected as to become an altered being; giving up all interference in the affairs of his kingdom — all observance of his subjects’ interests — all conviviality with his most favoured associates of the banquet or the sport. In the agony of sorrow and chagrin at its loss, he bit his lips as though he took them for rubies that he wished to crush: in the fulness of his deplorings, he poured tears down his cheeks, as it were wine to carry the fragments away.* His tears were a silver, and his cheeks a gold, which he lavished in the purchase of melancholy. The loss of his precious moments was a small outlay for the indulgence of his recollections. So deeply did sor­row for the artificial globe he had lost prey upon his system, that the real globe of the firmament, though studded with innumerable gems that illuminate the night, was darkness to his eyes. The stony heart of the ruby was melted into tears at his predicament, and the dull fabric of coral was observed to bleed at the calamity. Much as the nobles and princes exerted themselves to obtain some precious jewel that might comfort the king by replacing the lost, they returned in hopeless exclusion from his presence. In the end he lost all hold of the reins of his govern­ment or the guidance of his possessions, and irrepa­rable ruin crept into the affairs of his dominions.*

Such is the case with kings. As to inferior per­sons, should they become proprietors of any sur­passing valuable or attractive jewel, men of violence are sure to rise up in pursuit of it, and to fasten a quarrel on them, to excuse their taking it away. Do the proprietors give it up? They fall into sorrow and chagrin. Do they make open resistance? They fall into destruction, and lose their lives.* Why then should a rational being seek after any thing which may lead to evils such as these?

Such is our essay on the causes and cure of anger. But to any one graced with equability, (that pearl of great price,) the cure will be easy; for anger is injustice — a departure from the straight path of equity, which, under any circumstances, is indefen­sible. As to that which a certain class suppose, that violence of anger proceeds from superabun­dance of manhood, in the height of their self-decep­tion calling it courage, it is a most mischievous notion. With what justice can a habit productive of the worst consequences, ruinous to the peace of self, family, and friends, of dependents, household retinue, and followers, — with what justice can such a habit be considered with approbation? Hence that maxim of the refuge of revelation — “He who in a fit of anger can command his own soul, is bravest of the brave;”* and upon his return from certain holy wars, he said they were returning from the little contest to the great one. They inquired what great contest he meant. “The contest,” he replied, “with our own souls; for your worst of enemies is the soul between your shoulders.”* It generally happens that some perversion of state enters into excess of anger, the patient contracting a resemblance to brute beasts, and venting his rage upon animals and insensible objects, such as vessels, instruments, furni­ture, &c. Sometimes he relieves himself by destroying creatures, and slaying cat and mouse* together. If the slit of a pen does not suit his fancy, or a lock does not open agreeably to his haste, he breaks it, and bursts, like a madman, into abuse without a meaning. This is a sad vice; as in that story of some ancient king of celebrated impetuosity, who, when his ship was detained at sea, grew angry with the ocean, and took to intimi­dating it by drawing off its waters, and filling it up with mounds.* Hakeem Abú Aly Mashkovi speaks of some silly fellow, who, being unable to sleep one moonshiny night, took it in dudgeon; grew incensed at the moonshine, railed on it in good set terms, and composed the well-known lampoon on the occasion, beginning —

All such failings, in short, are ridiculous to the extreme of turpitude; and indicate impaired intel­lect and perverted feelings in their indulger. Such is usually the calamity of the weak;* women, dotards, children, men in sickness, &c.

In like manner as some states of the body inci­dentally conduce to their opposite, cases also arise in mental humour, where the vice of anger is engendered by excess of the appetent power, which is covetousness, in some sort an opposite of the first. The covetous person whose cravings are disappointed, bursts out into resentment; and the avaricious person whose property is lost, gets angry with lovers and kinsfolk who have no way con­duced thereto. From such execrable habits nothing is to be reaped but the loss of cordiality and the incidence of repentance. Let but a master of equity hold the feelings poised in the balance of reason, and in every occurrence that befalls, he ends on the equitable path, be it of censure or of reverence, of pardon or of punishment. We are told of a foolish oppugner of Alexander’s honor, who used to speak of him insultingly. One of the courtiers remarked, that probably if the king were to punish the man, he would desist from his offensive con­duct, and others at the same time would be intimi­dated by the example. Alexander replied, that such a course would be opposed to correct judg­ment and refined sense; for as long as no harshness had been used towards him, every one acquainted with the circumstances would rise up in contradic­tion: but if he were punished, assuredly his abuse and invective would be augmented, and men of sense would think him excusable for using it.* On another occasion, when one who had cast from his neck the yoke of obedience, was so unfortunate as to fall into captivity, Alexander cancelled the cata­logue of his offences, and gave him his life. Some one in the height of his zeal exclaimed, “If I were you I would kill him.” “Not being you,” said Alexander, “I do not kill him.”*

Cure of faint-heartedness, which is want of ten­dency in the soul to chastise, on occasions where such tendency is desirable. This then is the oppo­site of anger, which is excess in this tendency. It is invariably accompanied by certain incidents of perversion, — such as light-mindedness, vileness, bad living, bad designs upon the patient on the part of other people, want of constancy in undertakings, — indolence and love of ease, which leads to the loss of all that is desirable,* — successful injustice prac­tised upon him, endurance of affronts offered to self or family, listening unmoved to all that is odious in insult and raillery, want of shame at what is clearly disreputable and disgraceful, with a general suspension of interest in any thing.

The cure of this disease, as of all others, may be found in the removal of its causes; which may be effected by awakening the mind to a sense of the shamefulness of this situation, and devising methods of exciting anger: for anger is implanted in all indi­viduals of the human kind; and, however deficient it may appear, by continuous excitation it will put itself forth like fire from flint,* and by proper treatment be kindled into a flame. To this purpose a quarrel with some one who is secure from retribu­tion will conduce; or interference with persons who will treat the patient with aggravated indignity and contempt. Applicable to this principle is the story told of Mansoor bin Nuh,* who, in his own day, was lord paramount of Khorāsan and its depen­dencies. This prince suffered from a pain in the joints, which the greatest physicians of the age not only concurred in acknowledging their inability to cure, but admitted themselves at a loss to decide on the treatment which he ought to pursue. On this the pillars of the state determined to consult Muhammad Zākiria of Rei, who was profoundly versed in the principles of cure and the conduct of health, and a person was accordingly despatched to summon him. When the physician was come to the shore of the Kulzum sea,* he declared he would submit to any thing rather than go on board a ship; in so much that they were obliged to bind him hand and foot, and force him up the side. The water once passed, he soon reached the king, and put in practice a variety of appropriate remedies and rare expedients, but all without success.

He then told the king that no bodily remedies would be of any use, and it now remained to adopt a mental treatment. If it gave him relief, well — if not, he must despair altogether. With this he brought him unattended to the warm bath, and gave orders that no one else should enter. As soon as the heat of the bath had taken effect on his body, the physician came up to him, cutlass in hand, and broke out into all manner of abuse. “You it was,” he said, “who ordered me to be bound hand and foot, and dragged into the water — you it was who brought me all these miles with indignity. Lo! with this very knife I will visit it upon you.” The king’s anger kindled in an instant, and involuntarily he started to his feet. Zākiria ran out on the moment, and, bidding the attendants take the king out and treat him conformably with written direc­tions which he gave them, mounted on a swift-paced steed, and made the best of his way out of Khorāsan. Ultimately, on the king being treated according to the prescription, he entirely recovered his health: the warmth of anger, aided by that of the bath, having loosened the phlegmatic matter* that occasioned his complaint. Often as his majesty afterwards requested his attendance, the physician could never be prevailed on to present himself before him; saying, that although the outrage offered had been used entirely in furtherance of the cure, yet it might chance, that when the king called it to mind, it would prove offensive to his feelings: no one under any circumstances could be secure from kings.*

This anecdote is meant to show by what manner of means it is possible to stimulate anger to a flame, however feeble any coldness of temperament may chance to render it. Some philosophers have been known to throw themselves into battles and situa­tions of peril, and to take shipping when the sea was in a storm, in order to acquire the faculty of encountering difficulties and dangers.