Fear provides for self-preservation by flying from harm; anger, by repelling it. Nothing indeed can be better contrived to repel or prevent injury, than anger or resentment. Destitute of this passion, men, like defenceless lambs, would lie constantly open to mischief[24]. Deliberate anger caused by a voluntary injury, is too well known to require any explanation. If my desire be in general to resent an afront, I must use means, and these means must be discovered by reflection. Deliberation is here requisite; and in this, which is the ordinary case, the passion seldom exceeds just bounds. But where anger suddenly inflames me to return a blow, the passion is instinctive, and the action ultimate; and it is chiefly in such cases that the passion is rash and ungovernable, because it operates blindly, without affording time for reason or deliberation. Instinctive anger is frequently raised by bodily pain, which, when sudden and excessive as by a stroke on a tender part, ruffling the temper and unhinging the mind, is in its tone similar to anger. Bodily pain by this means disposes to anger, which is as suddenly raised, provided an object be found to vent it upon. Anger commonly is not provoked otherwise than by a voluntary injury. But when a man is thus beforehand disposed to anger, he is not nice nor scrupulous about an object. The man who gave the stroke, however accidentally, is by an inflammable temper held a proper object, merely because he was the occasion of the pain. It is still a stronger example of the kind, that a stock or a stone, by which I am hurt, becomes an object for my resentment. I am violently incited to bray it to atoms. The passion indeed in this case is but momentary. It vanisheth with the first reflection, being attended with no circumstance that can excuse it in any degree. Nor is this irrational effect confined to bodily pain. Inward distress, when excessive, may be the occasion of effects equally irrational. When a friend is danger and the event uncertain, the perturbation of mind occasioned thereby, will, in a fiery temper, produce momentary fits of anger against this very friend, however innocent. Thus Shakespear, in the _Tempest_, _Alonzo._---- Sit down and rest. Ev’n here I will put off my hope, and keep it No longer for my flatterer: he is drown’d Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go. _Act 3. sc. 3._