Cure of anger. This is a quality of the mind pro­ducing agitation of the spirit, and of its vehicle the blood,* not extending beyond the causes of its excitement, and occasioned by the desire of revenge.* As it gathers vehemence, the agitation becomes excessive; the brain and nerves, which are the channels of the mental feelings, are filled with a murky vapour; in this darkness and denseness the light of the understanding is obscured, and its operation enfeebled. Men in this predicament phi­losophers have likened to a stove full of fire and smoke, wherein nothing is to be perceived but the uproar and the combustion. In such circumstances the cure is difficult; for, at this pitch, the more we exert ourselves to reprove and restrain them, the higher the flames of anger blaze. Change of posi­tion, as from sitting to standing (or the converse), and the like, is of some use; or to drink water (in case no objection* is discoverable), also to bathe, or to go to sleep.

Dispositions differ in their liability to anger. Some are of sulphureous nature, taking fire with the least spark; some resemble oil, and admit it not for the most part without urgent incentive; some are like dry wood, occupying an intermediate station of combustibility; and some are exceedingly slow to be affected; — which last characteristic, when not arising from weakness or cowardice, but from sobriety and a proper direction of the judgment upon consequences, is to be regarded with appro­bation. Now the difference between these classes is in the origin of the angry impulse. Let the incentives be sufficiently renewed, and all the classes may be carried equal lengths; or rather, the anger of the last class is most violent of all; because it can only have been educed by very urgent cause. And hence that maxim of the refuge of revelation, “Woe to ye, for the anger of a peaceful man.” In one of the prophetical traditions, we are told that men are of several orders: some quick to anger, and quick to recover from it; and some slow to anger, and slow to recover from it; but the best is he who is slow to anger, and quick to recover from it; and the worst is he who is quick to anger, and slow to recover from it.

Imām Ghazāly says, that since by anger men are carried beyond their own control, it is incumbent on the Prince to forbear ordering a believer to punishment while under the influence of anger. For in such a state he is likely to overpass what is due* to the offender, and consult the gratification of his own feelings. Hence that story of the Muhtasib or Censor, who, seeing a man drunk, and meaning to give him the bastinado, released him when he began to be abusive; saying, as he turned away, that if he had scourged him after being hurried into anger, he should have been torturing him for the relief of his own resentment, and not for the love of God. Once, too, when a man of sin was brought before Ibn Abd-ul-Aziz, and uttered impertinent language to his face, the Caliph said, that he would assuredly have punished him, if he had not felt that he was in a passion.*

There are ten causes of anger:* conceit, pride, disagreement, contentiousness, temper, arrogance, ridicule, perfidy, malice born, and eagerness in pur­suit of valuables of a rare order. The concomitants of anger (being accidental to the disease) are seven: repentance, dread of retribution in this world and the next, enmity of friends, derision by the worth­less, exultation of enemies, change of disposition, and suffering without change.*

Anger, as philosophers say, is essentially the madness of an hour. The temperament of an angry person inevitably tends from the healthy equipoise to superabundant heat. Such a temperament, were it to be permanent, would be raving madness, as is well known from the first principles of medicine.* Hence that saying of Aly’s — “Passion is a species of madness.” And the absence of repentance in one who has experienced it, is a sign that the mad­ness begins to be established. There are cases, too, when the violent direction of the spirit upon exter­nals leaves the heart empty; and this being the reservoir of animal spirits, the supply of these, which is constantly being forwarded to the members, becomes interrupted; or else, the angry heat, in the blaze of its combustion, inflames the vital principle, and fills it with feverish vapour: in either of which cases sudden death must follow, or perhaps the humours are inflamed, and diseases of structure generated, which terminate fatally. Hence when the Prophet was asked for a precept, he thrice cau­tioned the applicant against anger, and said no more. Another person came before his holiness, and inquired what religion was; he answered, “good behaviour.” Again he came on his right, and put the same question; his holiness gave the same answer. Again on his left he repeated the query, and received the same reply. At last he made the inquiry behind his back; on which his holiness turned to him and said, “Dost thou not comprehend? Religion is this, that you give not way to passion.” The Scripture likewise speaks with encomium of repressors of their anger and par­doners of men. Now the cure of anger, as of all other diseases, may be effected by the removal of its causes.

Definition and cure of conceit. If then the cause be conceit, (and that is a false opinion, in our own regard, that we are entitled to a position which in fact is above our desert,) the way to remove it is this. Let us observe our defects and failings, and compare them with the excellences of others. For there is no one in whom, if we examine his position with impartial eyes, we may not discover some excellence peculiar to himself. The holy, just, and glorious Creator having rendered each of all existing atoms an index of some peculiar title, a mirror of some assigned attribute, in which no other can partake —

Cure of pride, which is usually pride in some per­sonal or external good fortune, as wealth, beauty, or nobility of rank. If wealth, every sensible per­son must know that it is a matter quite external to ourselves, and eminently exposed to the chances of depredation: if beauty, surely a thing that is liable to decay on the slightest illness productive of a change of temperament, is not a fit reason for the exultation of a being capable of improvement and perfection.

If rank, which is a term for distinction in one of our forefathers, let us suppose that forefather to be present, and to say, “the distinction which you arrogate to yourself in reality belongs to me; what distinction have you in your own nature to be proud of?” What answer could he make? Or again, if one of the masters of the age were to compete with such our ancestor, possibly he would surpass him in his own distinction: how then can descent from him be matter for exulting over men who might be his superiors? Such is the practice with certain worthless persons, who, for some virtue which they suppose their fathers to have possessed, arrogate a superiority over men, the equals, perhaps, or even more than equals, of those fathers them­selves. Or even supposing them to be not their equals, a little merit in a person’s own nature is nobler than ever so much merit reflected from another:* yet on the strength of this vain fancy they consider themselves to hold patent for contemning the wise and insulting the eminent.

It was a saying of the Sanctified — “Come not to me with your pedigrees, but with your exploits” — of Aly, the commander of the faithful,

There is a story of one of the archons of Greece behaving proudly towards a philosophic attendant. “If the material of your exultation,” said he, “is the gorgeous apparel in which you are accoutred, the beauty is in the garment, and not in you; if it is the gallant beast on which you are mounted, the merit is the horse’s, and not yours; if it is the eminence of your fathers, that eminence belongs to them, and not to you. Wherefore, as no one medium of merit belongs to you, if we return each his right, (or indeed, never having been lodged with you, the return is superfluous,) what distinction will remain? ” It is said that a certain philosopher, when in company with a man of wealth, who prided him­self on his finery, had occasion to spit: whereupon he looked in every direction for a place proper for the reception of his saliva; and finding none, he spat in the rich man’s face. All present were loud in their censure; when the philosopher remarked, that it was proper to spit in the vilest place, and however much he looked about him, he could find no place so vile as the face of a person, who had been transfigured, in the hands of ignorance, from all the graces of the human shape.* The humble author of this compilation was told by certain his instructors, that once in the province of Fārs, a man of the world whose pride and joy was placed entirely in the vanities of transitory riches, went to visit one of those who look behind the veil, at a time when he was plunged in the abstraction of his own pur­suits. As soon as his eyes fell upon that worldly one, he desired his servant, with some asperity, to remove the jackass, and insisted on it so vehemently, that at last the worldly man withdrew. Afterwards, on his descending from that state, the attendant apprised him of what had passed, when he declared that what he saw was neither more nor less than the figure of a donkey.*

As for disagreement and contentiousness, they loosen and destroy the bond of unity and tie of con­cord; for opposition is the contrary of coalition: and in proportion to the prominence and prevalence of plurality, order is dissolved and combination overthrown. Plurality and unity are negatives of each other. The above qualities therefore go to destroy the system of the world, which is the greatest of all offences.* [Temper is omitted.]

Arrogance is akin to conceit: the difference lying in this, that conceit is the supposition, as regards ourselves, of a perfection which we do not really possess: while arrogance is the enforcing of such a claim, as regards others, even where no such supposition is entertained. Its cure is this. Let him reflect how far arrogance befits one who has twice* passed through the urinary passage. It was a saying of Aly the accepted, “How should man be arrogant, whose beginning is filthy semen, whose end is putrid carrion, and who carries about a load of fœtid fæces in the interim.” In the holy writings we are told, Grandeur is my garment, and magnifi­cence my mantle: whoso encroaches on them, I con­sign him to the flames.* The truth is, that none can be entitled to be arrogant, but that one supreme Lord whose robe of glory can never be tarnished by corroding want; of whose lustre the existence of all things is only a twinkle; in whose bounty the uni­verse is only a drop. Between such greatness and mere dependence, what can there be in common?*

Ridicule is a practice with certain low persons, by whom it is pursued in order to win the hearts and ensure the welcomes of wealthy men. A covetous­ness after rank and riches will also occasion it. When a person is reputed honorable, virtuous, or noted for any other good quality, these people take credit for the like, on the strength of discovering some fault in him; nay, they will even contrive by these means to hold rank for virtue and honor among those really possessed of them. There is a dictum of the Prophet’s, that on the day of resurrec­tion those who have indulged in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces when they reach it. Again, on their turning back, they will be called to another door, and again on reaching it will see it closed against them, and so on ad infinitum — punishment and retri­bution being exercised upon them in a form analo­gous to their offence.*