Look, we fear fever, gout, and painful sores, don't we? But that doesn't mean these diseases are good things. In fact, we despise them. We think they're disgusting and harmful — and that's exactly why we fear them. Anger works the same way. It's ugly and nothing to admire, yet many people fear it. It's like children being scared of a hideous mask. But here's something to think about: fear always comes back to haunt the person who causes it. No one fears a person who is truly at peace. This reminds me of that line by Laberius. When an actor spoke it in the theater during our civil war, the whole audience went wild. It captured exactly how everyone felt:
Why, do we not fear fever, gout, consuming ulcers? and is there, for that reason, any good in them? nay; on the other hand, they are all despised and thought to be foul and base, and are for this very reason feared. So, too, anger is in itself hideous and by no means to be feared; yet it is feared by many, just as a hideous mask is feared by children. How can we answer the fact that terror always works back to him who inspired it, and that no one is feared who is himself at peace? At this point it is well that you should remember that verse of Laberius, which, when pronounced in the theatre during the height of the civil war, caught the fancy of the whole people as though it expressed the national feeling:—