Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/130

108 this point he hath not pleased and satisfied me, when he saith; That a man is not able to perceive in himself the breeding of anger (so quick and sudden it is), but only when it is bred, then it may be felt: for surely there is no vice or passion in us that giveth such warning, or hath either so evident a generation or so manifest an augment whiles it is stirred and moved, as anger, according as Homer himself right skilfully, and as a man of good experience, giveth us to understand, who bringeth in Achilles sore moved to sorrow and grief of heart, even with a word, and at the very instant, when he heard the speeches of Agamemnon: for thus reporteth the poet of him:

But of Agamemnon himself, he saith that it was long ere he was angry; namely, after he had been kindled with many hard speeches, that were dealt to and fro, which if any third person stepping between would have stayed or turned away, certes their quarrel and debate had not grown to such terms of extremity as it did. And therefore Socrates so often as he felt himself somewhat declining and more moved than he should against any one of his friends, and avoiding as it were a rock in the sea, before the tempest came and the billows arose, would let fall his voice, shew a smiling countenance, and compose his look and visage to mirth and lenity, and thus by bending and drawing another away to that whereunto his affection inclined, and opposing himself to a contrary passion, he kept upright on his feet, so that he fell not, nor was overthrown. For there is (my good friend) a ready means in the very beginning to break the force of choler, like as there is a way to dissolve a tyrannical rule and dominion, that is to say, not to obey at the first, not to give ear and be ruled by her commandment, when she shall bid thee to speak and cry out aloud, or to look with a terrible countenance, or to knock or beat thyself; but to be still and quiet, and not to reinforce and increase the passion, as men do exasperate a sickness with struggling, striving, tossing and roaring out aloud. For those things which ordinary lovers and amorous young men practise, that is to say, to go in a wanton and merry mask, to sing and dance at the doors of their sweethearts and mistresses, to bedeck their windows with coronets and flower-garlands, bring some ease and alleviation (such as it is) of their passions, and the same not altogether