Plutarch is admirable throughout, Montaigne says, especially where he judges of human actions. In the comparison of Lycurgus and Numa he names our great folly in abandoning children to the care and government of their fathers. Aristotle says most civil governments leave, after the manner of the Cyclopes, the ordering of wives and children to every man's foolish fancy; the Lacedaemonian and Cretan are almost the only ones that have committed education to the laws. All depends upon nurture, yet children are left to the mercy of parents, let them be as foolish as they may, without any manner of discretion. Passing along the streets, Montaigne has a good mind to get up a farce to revenge poor boys hided, knocked down, and miserably beaten by a father or mother mad with rage, often against those newly come from nurse, lamed and spoiled whilst justice takes no cognisance. There is no passion that so much transports men from right judgment as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who condemned a criminal from his own choler; why, then, should fathers and pedagogues whip children in their anger? It is then no longer correction, but revenge. Would we endure a physician enraged at his patient? When the pulse beats, defer the business; passion commands and speaks, not we. Faults seen through passion appear much greater than they are, as bodies seen through a mist. Caius Rabirius, condemned by Caesar, was favoured by the people because of the animosity Caesar had manifested in that sentence.
A vicious slave, being whipped by Plutarch's command, rails that his master is no philosopher, having written that it is indecent to be angry. Plutarch calmly asks by what the slave judges him angry: face, colour, voice, foam? Those are the true signs. He tells the whipper to ply on whilst they dispute. Archytas, finding his lands out of tillage, tells his receiver to go: if I were not in anger I would soundly drub your sides. Plato gives Speusippus order to chastise a slave because he himself is in anger. Carillus tells an insolent Helot that if he was not angry he would put him to death. Piso, a man of eminent virtue, condemns a soldier who returns alone from forage and cannot account for a companion. The wanderer arrives as the man mounts the gibbet. Shame and spite redouble the fury still uncooled: Piso makes three criminals of one innocent, and despatches the first because sentence had passed, the second because he caused his companion's death, and the hangman for not having obeyed. Celius, wonderfully choleric, begs a gentle supper companion who agrees with everything to deny him something, that they may be two. Phocion answers injurious interruption with silence until the storm blows over, then proceeds where he had left off. A man incorporates anger by concealing it, as Diogenes told Demosthenes withdrawing into a tavern: the more you retire backward, the farther you enter in. Montaigne would rather give a servant a box of the ear unseasonably than brood over passions at his own expense. Those with authority to be angry in his family must not lavish it on every occasion, for rash scolding runs into custom; they must also make the reprehension reach the person, not attack his shadow after he is gone.
When Montaigne is angry, his anger is very sharp but very short, and he commonly makes use of no other weapon than his tongue. His servants have a better bargain of him in great occasions than in little; the little ones surprise him. Once upon the precipice, it is no matter who gave the push: you always go to the bottom; the fall makes haste of itself. He can contain himself when he expects a passion, be the cause never so great; if it once seizes him, it carries him away, be the cause never so small. He bargains with those who may contend with him: when you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong; I will do the same for you. The storm is only begot by a concurrence of angers. Sometimes he puts on a seeming anger for the better governing of his house, without any real emotion. As age renders his humours more sharp, he studies to oppose them. Aristotle says anger sometimes serves for arms to virtue and valour. Those who contradict him answer that it is a weapon of novel use: we move all other arms, this moves us; our hand guides it not; it holds us, we hold not it.
