ANGER, a painful emotion, or excited in the human mind on receiving any injury. or affront, and which prompts us to repel the injury, .and to avenge it on the offending person. When moderate in degree, it is more commonly known by the name of resentment ; and when it degenerates into excessive violence, and takes a firm and lasting hold of the mind, it is called re venge.
As things are constituted at present, such a principle as resentment is necessary for the well-being of man. He is frequently exposed to injury from various sources, which could hot be effectually repelled without the suggestions of such an impulse as this. St Paul him self, as Butler remarks, has justified the moderate in dulgence of resentment, in the well known precept, " Be ye angry, and sin not," (Eph. iv. 26) "which" says that author, " though it is by no means to be considered as an encouragement to indulge ourselves in anger, the sense being certainly this, though ye be angry, sin not ; yet here is evidently a distinction made between anger and sin ; between the natural passion and sinful anger." Yet certainly resentment is but too liable to exceed its due limits, and to degenerate into the most violent and culpable malevolence. It becomes us, therefore, to keep a strict guard over this head-strong principle in our na ture. cc The gratification of resentment," says the ex cellent author just quoted, " if it be not conducive to the end for which it was given us, must necessarily tradict, not only the general obligation to benevolence, but likewise that particulr; r ;tself. The end for which it was given, is to 1 remedy injury, i. e.
the misery occasioned by ii,, 71. N.. e. misery itself, and the gratification of it consists in 'producing misery, i. e. in contradicting the end for which it was implanted in our nature." (Sermon 9. ) Anger is either instinctive or deliberative. The first is a rash and ungovernable emotion, which we have in common with the brutes: it is exercised without reflec tion ; and seems implanted in us for the immediate purpose of self-preservation, and the repelling of inju ry, when reason might come too late to our assistance. It may be excited by the lower animals, and even by inanimate objects ; for we not only feel resentment at the dog that bites, and the ox that gores, but at the stone that strikes us, or the knife that hurts us. But
this is an emotion that soon gives way to reflection, and ceases immediately when the danger is removed. It is only a rational being, capable at once of inflicting aff injury, and of wilfully purposing to do us harm, and who may be made sensible of the punishment we intend to inflict in return, that can become an object of perma nent and deliberate resentment.
Anger produces very sensible effects on the voice, countenance, and gestures, as well as in the internal organization of' the human frame. Its consequences are thus eloquently described by Seneca. " Ut autem scias non esse sanos, quos ira possedit ipsorum illurunz ha bitum intuere. Nam ut furentiunz certa indicia cunt, ita et irascentium. Flagrant oculi, et multus ore toto rubor. Labia qurationtor, dentes comprimuntur, horrent ac su briguntur caJziiii, tumescunt venx, concutitzzr crebro spi ritu pectus, parunz explazzat‘e voces cunt, conzploduntur seepius nz us, pulsator humus Jzedibus, totum concutitur corpus, ut nescias :arum magis detestabile vitiunz sit an deforme." SENEC. De ira.
Anger affects the whole nervous system, and throws it into a preternatural commotion. It produces a stric ture of the muscular parts, and greatly increases the systole of the heart. It also excites spasms in the stomach and intestines,. which are highly nervous, and in the membranous parts ; and by irritating the biliary and hepatic ducts, often occasions an obstruction in the free passage of bile from the liver. Hence, in conse quence of violent passion, .the liver is sometimes ren dered scirrhous, stones are generated in the gall-blad der, or jaundice ensues : dangerous haemorrhages also frequently arise from this cause. Instances are on re cord, in which anger has not only produced jaundice, cholera morbus, epilepsy, and other dangerous diseases hut in which it has occasioned instant death. Valenti nian the first, Wenceslaus, and Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, are said to have fallen victims to vio lent passion. In other cases, extraordinary cures are said to have been effected through the intervention of anger. The gout, the ague, the palsy, and even dumb ness, have been said to yield to the shock of a sudden fit of passion, where the ordinary resources of medicine had failed.