Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/143

Rh And therefore at these and such-like faults, we should wink for the time, and make as though we saw them not, and yet think upon them nevertheless, and bear them in mind. But afterwards, when the storm is well overblown, we are without passion, and do not suspect ourselves, then we may do well to consider thereof: and then, if upon mature deliberation, when our mind is staid and our senses settled, the thing appear to be naught, we are to hate and abhor it, and in no wise either to forlet and put off, or altogether to omit and forbear correction, like as they refuse meats who have no stomach nor appetite to eat. For certainly it is not a thing so much to be blamed for to punish one in anger, as not to punish when anger is past and allayed, and so to be retchless and dissolute: doing as idle mariners, who so long as the sea is calm and the weather fair, loiter within the harbour or haven, but afterwards, when a tempest is up, spread sails and put themselves into danger. For even so we, condemning and neglecting the remissness and calmness of reason in case of punishment, make haste to execute the same during the heat of choler, which no doubt is a blustering and turbulent wind. As for meat, he calleth for it indeed, and taketh it naturally who is a-hungry: but surely he executeth punishment best who neither hungereth nor thirsteth after it: neither hath he need to use choler as a sauce or dainty dish for to get him a stomach and appetite to correct: but even when he is farthest off from desire of revenge, then of necessity he is to make use of reason and wisdom to direct him: for we ought not to do, as Aristotle writeth in his time the manner was in Tuscany; To whip servants with sound of flutes and hautboys; namely, to make a sport and pastime of punishing men, and to solace ourselves with their punishment for pleasure's sake, and then afterwards, when we have done, repent us of it: for as the one is brutish and beastlike, so the other is as womanish and unmanly: but without grief and pleasure both, at what time as reason and judgment is in force, we ought to let justice take punishment, and leave none occasion at all for choler to get advantage.

But peradventure some one will say, that this is not properly the way to remedy or cure anger; but rather a putting by or precaution that we should not commit any of those faults which ordinarily follow that passion: Unto whom I answer thus; That the swelling of the spleen is not the cause but a symptom or accident of a fever: howbeit, if the said humour be fallen and the pain mitigated, the fever also will be much eased,