Sec. XI. Now though all the passions need such discipline as by exercise
shall tame and subdue their unreasoning and disobedient elements, yet
there is none which we ought to keep under by such discipline so much as
the exhibition of anger to our servants. For neither envy, nor fear, nor
rivalry come into play between them and us; but our frequent displays of
anger to them, creating many offences and faults, make us to slip as if
on slippery ground owing to our autocracy with our servants, which no
one resists or prevents. For it is impossible to check irresponsible
power so as never to break out under the influence of passion, unless
one wields power with much meekness, and refuses to listen to the
frequent complaints of one's wife and friends charging one with being
too easy and lax with one's servants. And by nothing have I been more
exasperated against them, as if they were being ruined for want of
correction. At last, though late, I got to see that in the first place
it is better to make them worse by forbearance, than by bitterness and
anger to distort oneself for the correction of others. In the next place
I observed that many for the very reason that they were not corrected
were frequently ashamed to be bad, and made pardon rather than
punishment the commencement of their reformation, aye, and made better
slaves to some merely at their nod silently and cheerfully than to
others with all their beatings and brandings, and so I came to the
conclusion that reason gets better obeyed than temper, for it is not as
the poet said,
"Where there is fear, there too is self-respect,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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