Gentleness
[3] Since the opposite to becoming angry is becoming gentle, and anger and gentleness are contraries, we need to understand the conditions in which people are gentle, with whom they are gentle, and for what reasons. Let us take it that becoming gentle is a settling and quietening of anger. So, if a man gets angry with those who disparage him, and disparagement is a voluntary act, it is easy to see that he is gentle with:
Those who do or seem to do nothing to disparage him, or who do so or seem to do so involuntarily.
Those who intended to do the opposite of what they did.
Those who treat him as they treat themselves, on the supposition that no one disparages himself.
Those who confess and repent, because, feeling himself recompensed by their remorse, he stops being angry. This is confirmed by the punishment of slaves: we punish them more severely if they talk back and insist on their innocence, but if they admit the justice of their punishment we stop being angry. The reason for this is that to deny what is obvious is impudence, and to be impudent is to disparage and show contempt. At any rate, we feel no shame before those for whom we feel little but contempt.
Those who humble themselves before him and do not talk back, because this is a clear admission of inferiority, and inferiors feel fear, and no one disparages anyone he is afraid of. That anger dies down in the face of humility is shown also by the fact that dogs do not bite people who are sitting down.
Those who are serious when he is serious, because this gives him the impression that he is being treated seriously and not despised.
Those who have done him more good than bad.
Those who plead and beg for mercy, because these are prime cases of humility.
Those who never insult, mock, or disparage anyone, or at least not good men or his peers.
As a general rule, we should try to understand the conditions that make a man gentle by considering the conditions that make him angry. We do not get angry with those we fear or revere, because anger does not arise in these conditions: it is impossible to fear and be angry with the same person at the same time. Nor do we get angry, or only to a lesser degree, with people who acted in anger, because we see no intention to disparage in what they did. For, given that disparaging is pain-free while being angry is not, no one disparages in anger.
Those who feel shame before him.
As for the conditions, it goes without saying that those in which people are gentle are the opposite of those in which they are angry. So they are gentle when they are playing, laughing, partying, in a good mood, successful, satisfied, and in general when they are feeling no pain, when the pleasure they are feeling has no trace of abusiveness about it, and when they entertain reasonable hopes for the future. People also become gentle if their anger is of long standing and no longer fresh, because anger dies down over time. Also, retaliation that is taken first against one person puts an end to greater anger that is directed against another person.â Hence Philocrates* did well: once the people of Athens were angry with him and someone said: âWhy arenât you defending yourself?â âItâs not time,â he replied. âWhen, then?â âWhen I see someone else receiving a dressing-down.â The point is that people become gentle once they have exhausted their anger on someone else. That is what happened in Ergophilusâ case:* although the people were angrier with him than they were with Callisthenes, they acquitted him because they had condemned Callisthenes to death the day before.
A man is also gentle:
If he has convicted someone, and especially if the offender has suffered a worse misfortune than he would have received when the injured party was angry, because he thinks that in a sense he has had his revenge.
If he thinks that he is in the wrong and deserves to suffer, because then he does not regard his suffering as inappropriate, which is critical for anger, as we saw.* What one has to do, then, is explain the punishment beforehand, because then even slaves are less surly when they are being punished.
If he thinks that the offenders will not realize that it is he who is punishing them and that they are being punished for what they did to him, because, as is clear from its definition,* anger is always directed against a particular individual.â Hence Homer was right to say âTell them it was Odysseus, sacker of citiesâ,* because Odysseus would not have had his revenge if the Cyclops had not known by whom and for what he was being punished. And this means not only that we do not feel angry with a man who is unaware of why and by whom he is being punished, but also that we do not stay angry with a man after his death, seeing that there is nothing left for him to suffer, and he is incapable of feeling pain or being aware of anything that in our anger we want him to know. Hence, in Hectorâs case, when Homer wanted Achilles to stop being angry, seeing that the man was dead, he was right to say: âFor look: it is senseless clay he abuses in his anger.â*
It is clear, then, that these are the topics a speaker has to draw on if he wants to make his audience gentle. That is, he has not only to ensure that they are in the right frame of mind, but also to present those they are angry with as frightening, or as deserving their respect, or as having done them good, or as involuntary agents, or as filled with remorse. âOn Aristotle.
