UNIVERSITY COURIER.
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was there greater need for clear heads and hearts, warm and true to the Commonwealth. Never were honesty and integrity more essential to the complete renovation of every branch of the public service, or more necessary for the preservation of our free institutions from certain dissolution. It therefore behooves every prospective citizen of free America to lay broad and deep the foundation of an upright character. Let the corner stone be common honesty, and the ruling motive the common good. Then will the superstructure be as grand and glorious as it now is corrupt and despicable.
ANGER.
Every passion in the breast of man when allowed to control his action, unrestrained by the conservative power of reason, is attended with the unhappiest consequences, both to himself and the community in which he lives. If this is true of the passions in general, even of those which are comparatively mild in their nature, now emphatically is it the case with anger, which, more than all the others, disdains the control of good sense and a sound understanding.
C. G. U.
Anger is displeasure, or vexation, accompanied by a passionate desire to break out in acts or words of violence against the cause of the displeasure, which must of course be a sentient being capable of feeling the infliction. A proverb found in various languages, even in languages which have had no connection, says it is a "short-lived madness;" because the person is insane for the time being, but soon the madness passes off and the person is sorry for his conduct.
A man in a violent fit of anger looks as if he were insane, because he commits the strangest vagaries, pulling his hair, slamming things around, and acting as if without reason. His mind is beyond the control of reason and judgment; it is like a chariot without a driver, or a ship in a storm without a pilot.
"When head-strong passions get the reins of reason The force of nature, like too strong a gale, For want of ballast oversets the vessel."
He says and does things so unreasonable that they must be the result of temporary derangement. He may be compared to a tornado, a mountain torrent, or a conflagration, to whose fury none can set bounds, and whose disastrous effects are visited even on the innocent. Locke says: "Madmen do not appear to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths, and they err as men do that argue right from wrong."
The world, and even the law, in a measure deal with him as if he were a maniac. Opinion is divided as to the justice of this; for some argue that if he is a maniac, he should be "shut up" in the lunatic asylum, instead of being allowed to run at liberty, for a lunatic is liable to injure person and property.
Even the angry man himself admits that he has no control over his reason, deeming it sufficient apology for the most unseemly act or word to say that it was done in a passion.
This, of course, is a good plea, for the law always endeavors to prove it "malice of forethought."
Mortification, humiliation, remorse, and regret, at what has been done under the influence of passion, always follows. Remorse is always felt most, for example :
Abel was slain by his eldest brother, Cain, under the influence of jealousy, because the offering of the latter had been rejected by Jehovah, and that of the former accepted.
During Alexander's stay at Samercand, on his return in a drunken orgy, he killed with his own hand his general and friend, Clitus, who had saved his life at the battle of the Granicus, and now ventured to rebuke him for his overbearing pride and infatuated belief in his divine origin. After killing Clitus, Alexander was seized with such remorse that he went three days without food or drink.
"An angry man," says Publius Syrus, "is again angry with himself when he returns to reason." He may be likened to a scorpion which stings itself as well as others.
It is at variance with the principles of the Gospel. "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous." The controlling of anger is a part of moral discipline. In a rudimentary state of society, by imposing some restraint on the selfish aggressions of one individual upon an another, it renders the beginning of social co-operation and intercourse possible.
In individuals it leads to crime, as in the above examples; makes enemies and becomes a source of adversity. A man of placid temper is never disturbed by what goes on around him, while a man with a hasty temper is always displeased with himself and everyone else. In families and communities it produces hard feelings and unhappiness. In nations it causes war, with all its attending evils. For example, Francis I. of France, was always involved in war to please his own haughty desire.
The best mode of regulating this passion is by moral and intellectual education with self-restraint.
"No man is free who does not command himself."
"When passion enters at the fore-gate, wisdom goes out at the postern."
E. B.
It is said of Caleb Cushing that he could read sixteen hours a day for a month and never forget an important fact obtained in that time, and this faculty made him the profoundest authority on federal law in the country. His memory and his power of work were the secrets of his success. When he was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts he was out of practice. He set to work, however, and in nineteen days had read sixty volumes on different laws—questions of precedent, laws of exchange, etc. About seventeen volumes were devoted to Massachusetts law; twice as many more were made up of reports, and the reading was altogether extremely varied. He was accustomed in Washington to get to work at five o'clock in the evening and labor tremendously through meal hours, and without taking a rest, until eleven o'clock at night. Then he would smoke a cigar, get into bed and read history until he fell asleep. In one winter he finished in this manner thirteen octavo volumes of scientific travel and recent history.
A Professor of Classics and Comparative Philology and Literature is wanted in the University of Australia. Salary, £1,000. Here now is a chance for some one of our enterprising American scholars. Apply to Arthur Blythe, 8 Victoria Chambers, Westminster, London, S.W.-Christian Union.
Princton College flourishes under the presidency of Dr. McCosh. Since he became president she has received gifts to the amount of over $2,000,000, and the number of students has doubled.-Spectator.
A student at Iowa University has recovered $300 from the Democratic judges of election, because of their refusal to let him vote there in October. - Ex.