The Anatomy of Melancholy

Gentleness might have achieved much more in this case. However perverse your adversary, you may win him by that means: “kindness and goodwill tame even a savage spirit.” Gentle words calm anger, and this is the quickest way to overcome the fiercest spirits.

A noble lion will not hurt a prostrate beast, nor an elephant a harmless creature: it is “hostile to the hostile,” a terror and scourge only to those that stubbornly resist. This was the emblem of Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, and he was not mistaken in choosing it, for

The greater a man, the more readily his anger is appeased; A noble mind admits gentle impulses.

A greater man is soonest pacified; A noble spirit quickly satisfied.

Walter Map, an old historian of ours who lived four hundred years ago, reports that King Edward the Elder and Llywelyn, Prince of Wales, were to meet near Aust on the Severn in Gloucestershire. The prince, when summoned, refused to come to the king, who insisted on crossing to him instead. Seeing this, Llywelyn waded into the water up to his arms and clasped the king’s boat, offering to carry him ashore on his shoulders. He added that the king’s humility and wisdom had triumphed over his pride and folly. He was then reconciled to him and did him homage.

If you cannot win him in this way, bear the injury. If you are a true Christian, a good theologian and an imitator of Christ—who endured insults, was whipped and sought no revenge—you will pray for your enemies and bless those who persecute you. Be patient, meek, humble, and so on.

An honest man will not injure you: “a good man has no wish to.” If he is a quarrelsome scoundrel, that is simply his way. Where there is least courage, there is most talk; “the more foolish a man, the more insolent he grows”: the greater his folly, the greater his insolence. “Do not answer a fool according to his folly.”

If he is your superior, bear it at all costs; do not grieve over it, but let him take his course. “Anytus and Meletus may kill me; they cannot harm me,” as noble Socrates answered in a similar case. “The mind remains unmoved.” Though the body is torn apart by wild horses, broken on the wheel or pinched with red-hot tongs, the soul cannot be shaken.

It is common for powerful men to vilify, insult, oppress, injure and tyrannize, taking whatever liberties they please; and who dares speak against them? “It is miserable to be injured by someone against whom you cannot complain”: miserable to suffer injury from one against whom there is no appeal. Nor is it safe to write against someone who can proscribe and punish a man at will, as Asinius Pollio understood when Octavian provoked him.

I admit that such injury is hard to bear. It is one of Chilo’s three difficult things: keeping secrets, spending one’s time well and enduring injuries.

But be patient and leave vengeance to the Lord. “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.” “I know the Lord,” says David, “will avenge the afflicted and judge the poor.”