be thus moved to pity, for he desires the destruction of the object of his hatred.1

Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, seems to consider as the chief point of distinction (and this, too, is noticed by Aristotle also) between anger and hatred, the necessity to the gratification of the former that the object of it should not only be punished, but punished by means of the offended person, and on account of the particular injury inflicted. Anger requires that the offender should not only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which has been done by him. The natural gratification of this passion tends, of its own accord, to produce all the political ends of punishment; the correction of the criminal, and example to the public."

It is to be observed, that in seeking to pacify one who is angry, opposite courses must be pursued with persons of two opposite dispositions.

One man is at once calmed by submission, and readily accepts an apology. Another is more and more irritated the more you acknowledge a fault, and is led, by the earnestness of your entreaty for pardon, to think himself more grievously wronged than he had at first supposed. The former has something of the character of the dog, which will never bite a man, or another dog, who lies down. And he will sometimes come to convince himself that he had no reason to be so angry, unless you deny that he had. The other can only be pacified by stoutly defending yourself, and maintaining that he was wrong to be displeased. These persons resemble respectively the thistle and the nettle; of which the one hurts most when pressed hard, and the other, when touched gently.

There is a kind of false courage noticed by Aristotle (Ethics, book iii.) produced by Anger [vuos], which he calls the courage of brutes. Savages accordingly work themselves up into a rage by their war-dance, preparatory to going into battle; just as the lion was believed by the ancients to lash himself into fury with his tail. And one may find not a few, in civilized

Aristotle's Rhetoric.

* Adam Smith. Eleventh edition.

Book II., chap. iv.

Theory of Moral Sentiments. Part II., chap. i., p. 113.

society, who are brave only under the excitement of anger. But it is cool courage that is the most to be relied on. The firmest men are almost always calm.

A man of a violent and revengeful temper will sometimes exercise great self-control from motives of prudence, when he sees that he could not vent his resentment without danger or loss to himself. Such self-restraint as this does not at all tend to subdue or soften his fierce and malignant passions, and to make him a mild and placable character. It only keeps the fire smouldering within, instead of bursting out into a flame. He is not quelling the desire of revenge, but only repressing it till he shall have an opportunity of indulging it more safely and effectually. And, accordingly, he will have to exercise the same painful self-restraint again and again on every fresh occasion. But to exert an equal self-restraint, on a good principle, with a sincere and earnest desire to subdue revengeful feelings, and to form a mild, and generous, and forgiving temper,-this will produce quite a different result. A man who acts thus on a right motive, will find his task easier and easier on each occasion; because he will become less sensitive to provocations, and will have been forming a habit of not merely avoiding any outward expression of anger in words or acts, but also of indulging no resentful feelings within.

It is to be observed, that generous forgiveness of injuries is a point of christian duty respecting which some people fall into confusion of thought. They confound together personal resentment and disapprobation of what is morally wrong. As was remarked above (Essay iv.), a man who has cheated you, or slandered, or otherwise wronged you, is neither more nor less a cheat or a slanderer, than if he had done the same to a stranger. And in that light he ought to be viewed. Such a person is one on whom you should not indeed wish to inflict any suffering beyond what may be necessary to reform him, and to deter other wrong-doers; and you should seek to benefit him in the highest degree by bringing him to a sense of his sin. But you ought not to chuse such a man as an associate, or to trust him, and in all respects treat him as if he had done nothing wrong. You should therefore take care, on the one hand, that the personal injury you may

have suffered does not lead you to think worse of a man than e deserves, or to treat him worse; and, on the other hand, you should not allow a false generosity to destroy in your mind the distinctions of right and wrong. Nor, again, should the desire of gaining credit for great magnanimity, lead you to pretend to think favourably of wrong conduct, merely because it is you that have suffered from it. None but thoughtless or misjudging people will applaud you for this. The duty of christian forgiveness does not require you, nor are you allowed, to look on injustice, or any other fault, with indifference, as if it were nothing wrong at all, merely because it is you that have been wronged.

But even where we cannot but censure, in a moral point of view, the conduct of those who have injured us, we should remember that such treatment as may be very fitting for them to receive, may be very unfitting for us to give. To cherish, or to gratify, haughty resentment, is a departure from the pattern left us by Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself,' not to be justified by any offence that can be committed against us. And it is this recollection of Him who, faultless Himself, designed to leave us an example of meekness and long-suffering, that is the true principle and motive of christian forgiveness. We shall best fortify our patience under injuries, by remembering how much we ourselves have to be forgiven, and that it was while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' Let the christian therefore accustom himself to say of any one who has greatly wronged him, 'that man owes me an hundred pence."

An old Spanish writer says, 'To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; but to return good for evil is godlike.'

1 Matt. xviii.

ESSAY LVIII. OF VICISSITUDES OF THINGS.

SOLOM

OLOMON saith, 'There is no new thing upon the earth:" so that as Plato had an imagination that all knowledge was but remembrance, so Solomon giveth his sentence, "That all novelty is but oblivion;' whereby you may see, that the river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as below. There is an abstruse astrologer that saith, 'If it were not for two things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer together, nor go farther asunder; the other that the diurnal motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one moment.' Certain it is, that matter is in a perpetual flux,' and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion are two, deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople and destroy. Phaeton's car went but a day; and the three years' drought, in the time of Elias,' was but particular, and left people alive. As for the great burnings by lightnings, which are often in the West Indies, they are but narrow; but in the other two destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is farther to be noted, that the remnant of people which hap' to be reserved, are commonly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no account of the time past; so that the oblivion is all one, as if none had been left. If you consider well of the people of the

1 Eccles. i. 9.

* See Advancement of Learning. Dedication.

Flux. Fluctuation. Our language, like our bodies, is in a perpetual flux.'— Felton.

4

Dispeople. Depopulate.

'Kings, furious and severe,

Who claim'd the skies, dispeopled air and floods,

The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods.'-Pope.

1 Kings xvii.

• West Indies. 'In Bacon's time was meant by West Indies all the countries included under the name of the Spanish Main; that is, all the continental parts of America discovered by the Spaniards, or the countries which now form Venezuela, New Granada, Central America, Equator, Peru, &c.'-Spiers.

7 Hap. Happen. To brandish the tongue wantonly, to slash and smite with it any that hoppeth to come in our way, doth argue malice or madness.'-Barrow.

West Indies, it is very probable that they are a newer or a younger people than the people of the old world; and it is much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told Solon, concerning the island of Atlantis,' that it was swallowed by an earthquake), but rather, that it was desolated by a particular deluge-for earthquakes are seldom in those parts: hut on the other side, they have such pouring rivers, as the rivers of Asia, and Africa, and Europe, are but brooks to them. Their Andes likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with us; whereby it seems, that the remnants of generations of men were in such a particular deluge saved. As for the observation that Machiavel' hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much extinguish the memory of things-traducing Gregory the Great, that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities-I do not find that those zeals' do any great effects, nor last long; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian, who did revive the former antiquities.

The vicissitudes, or mutations, in the superior globe, are no fit matter for this present argument." It may be, Plato's great year, if the world should last so long, would have some effect, not in renewing the state of like individuals (for that is the fume of those that conceive the celestial bodies have more accurate influences upon these things below, than indeed they have) but in gross." Comets, out of question, have likewise

10

1 Vid. Plat. Tim. iii. 24, seq.

2 Particular. Partial; not general.

As. That. See page 23.

Mach. Disc. Sop. liv. ii, 5.

Traduce. To condemn; to censure, whether justly or unjustly. (Now, to cal umniate, to slander.)

• Zeals. (Not now used in the plural.)

7

Argument. Subject.

'She who even but now was your best object,

Your praise's argument, balm of your age,

Dearest and best.'—Shakespere.

Plat. Tim. iii. 38, seq.

Fume. Idle conceit; vain imagination. If his sorrow bring forth amend ment, he hath the grace of hope, though it be clouded over with a melancholy fume.'-Hammond.

Gross. On the whole. The confession of our sins to God may be general, when we only confess in gross that we are sinful; or particular, when we mention the several sorts and acts of our sins,'-Duty of Man.