ANGER
A’NGER 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. Like most other emotions, it is accompanied by effects on the body, and in this case they are of a very marked kind. The arterial blood-vessels are highly excited; the pulse, during the paroxysm, is strong and hard, the face becomes red and swollen, the brow wrinkled, the eyes protrude, the whole body is put into commotion. The secretion of bile is excessive, and it seems to assume a morbid consistency. In cases of violent passion, arid especially in nervous persons, this excitement of the organs soon passes to the other extreme of depression; generally, this does not take place till the A. has subsided, when there follows a period of general relaxation. The original tendency to A. differs muck in individuals according to temperament; but frequent giving way to it begets a habit, and increases the natural tendency.
From the nature of A., it is easy to see that it must be—often at least—prejudicial to health. It frequently gives rise to bile-fever, inflammation of the liver, heart, or brain, or even to mania. These effects follow immediately a fit of the passion; other evil effects come on, after a time, as the consequence of repeated paroxysms—such as paralysis, jaundice, consumption and nervous fever. The milk of a mother or nurse in a fit of passion will cause convulsions in the child that sucks; it has been known even to occasion instant death, like a strong poison.
The controlling of A. is a part of moral discipline. In a rudimentary state of society, its active exercise would seem to be a necessity; by imposing some restraint on the selfish aggressions of one individual upon another, it renders the beginnings of social co-operation and intercourse possible. This is its use, or, as it is sometimes called, its final cause. But the more social intercourse comes to be regulated by customs and laws, the less need is there for the vindictive expression of A. It seems an error, however, to suppose that the emotion ever will be—or that it ought to be—extirpated. Laws themselves lose their efficacy when they have not this feeling for a background; and it remains as a last resource for man, when society, as it does every now and then, resolves itself into its elements. Even in the most artificial and refined states of society, those minor moralities on which half the happiness of social intercourse depends, are imposed upon the selfish, in great measure, by that latent fund of A. which every man is known to carry about with him.