Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, . . defines anger to be "a desire, accompanied by mental uneasiness, of avenging one's self, or, as it were, inflicting punishment for something that appears an unbecoming slight, either in things which concern one's self, or some of one's friends." And he hence infers that, if this be anger, it must be invariably felt towards some individual, not against a class or description of persons. WHATELY: Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Anger. ANGLING. Angling was, after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness. IZAAK WALTON. I have known a very good fisher angle diligently four or six hours for a river carp, and not have a bite. IZAAK WALTON. He that reads Plutarch shall find that angling was not contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. IZAAK WALTON. ANTICIPATION. As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is passed, we have other faculties that agitate and employ her for what is to come. These are the passions of hope and fear. By these two passions we reach forward into futurity, and bring up to our present thoughts objects that lie hid in the remotest depths of time. We suffer misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being; we can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity, when the heavens and earth shall be no more. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 471. I would not anticipate the relish of any happiness, nor feel the weight of any misery, before it actually arrives. ADDISON. The problem is, whether a man constantly and strongly believing that such a thing shall be, it don't help any thing to the effecting of the thing. LORD BACON. We shall find our expectation of the future to be a gift more distressful even than the former. To fear an approaching evil is certainly a most disagreeable sensation; and in expecting an approaching good we experience the inquietude of wanting actual possession. Thus, whichever way we look, the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we GOLDSMITH: possess them. Citizen of the World, Letter XLIV. All fear is in itself painful; and when it conduces not to safety is painful without use. Every consideration, therefore, by which groundless terrors may be removed, adds something to human happiness. It is likewise not unworthy of remark, that, in proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties, to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose; for he, doubtless, mistakes his true interest who thinks that he can increase his safety when he impairs his virtue. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 29. A man that is in Rome can scarce see an object that does not call to mind a piece of a Latin poet or historian. ADDISON. There are in Rome two sets of antiquities,the Christian and the Heathen: the former, though of a fresher date, are so embroiled with fable and legend that one receives but little satisfaction. ADDISON. The antiquaries are for cramping their subject into as narrow a space as they can; and for reducing the whole extent of a science into a few general maxims. ADDISON. Several supercilious critics will treat an author with the greatest contempt if he fancies the old Romans wore a girdle. ADDISON. Our admiration of the antiquities about Naples and Rome does not so much arise out of their greatness as uncommonness. ADDISON. When a man sees the prodigious pains our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy what miracles of architecture they would have left us had they been instructed in the right way. ADDISON. As for the observation of Machiavel, traducing Gregory the Great, that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiquities: I do not find that those zeals last long; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian, who did revive the former antiquities. LORD BACON. In matters of antiquity, if their originals escape due relation, they fall into great obscurities, and such as future ages seldom reduce into a resolution. SIR T. BROWNE. [An antiquary] is one that has his being in Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted) this age, but his life and conversation is in the but man's authority born some ages before us? days of old. He despises the present age as Now, for the truth of things, time makes no alan innovation, and slights the future; but has a teration; things are still the same they are, let great value for that which is past and gone, the time be past, present, or to come. Those like the madman that fell in love with Cleo- things which we reverence for antiquity, what patra. All his curiosities take place of one an- were they at their first birth? Were they false? other according to their seniority, and he values-time cannot make them true. Were they them not by their abilities, but their standing. He has a great veneration for words that are stricken in years and are grown so aged that they have outlived their employments. . . . He values things wrongfully upon their antiquity, forgetting that the most modern are really the most ancient of all things in the world, like those that reckon their pounds before their shillings and pence, of which they are made up. SAMUEL BUTLER: Characters. It is with antiquity as with ancestry; nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other. C. C. COLTON. The ancient pieces are beautiful because they resemble the beauties of nature; and nature will ever be beautiful which resembles those beauties of antiquity. DRYDEN. In the dark recesses of antiquity, a great poet may and ought to feign such things as he finds not there, if they can be brought to embellish that subject which he treats. DRYDEN. The prints which we see of antiquities may contribute to form our genius and to give us great ideas. DRYDEN. We have a mistaken notion of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world's nonage. GLANVILL. The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use: the former are often prized above their intrinsic value, and kept with care; the latter seldom pass for more than they are worth, and are often subject to the merciless hands of sweating critics and clipping compilers: the works of antiquity were ever praised, those of the moderns read: the treasures of our ancestors have our esteem, and we boast the passion: those of contemporary genius engage our heart, although we blush to own it: the visits we pay the former resemble those we pay the great: the ceremony is troublesome, and yet such as we would not choose to forego: our acquaintance with modern books is like sitting with a friend; our pride is not flattered in the interview, but it gives more internal satisfaction. GOLDSMITH: Citizen of the World, Letter LXXV. Considering the casualties of wars, transmigrations, especially that of the general flood, there might probably be an obliteration of all those monuments of antiquity that ages precedent at some time have yielded. SIR M. HALE. true?-time cannot make them more true. The Of Inquiry and Private Judgment in It is looked upon as insolence for a man to adhere to his own opinion against the current stream of antiquity. LOCKE. He had . . . that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary. LORD MACAULAY. The dearest interests of parties have frequently been staked on the results of the researches of antiquaries. LORD MACAULAY. This fear of any future difficulties or misfortune is so natural to the mind, that were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him, than from those evils which had really befallen him. To this we may add, that among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 505. Anxiety is the poison of human life. It is the parent of many sins, and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, where you may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment,-what means this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can your solicitude alter the cause or unravel the intricacy of human events? Can your curiosity pierce through the cloud which the Supreme Being hath made impenetrable to mortal eye? To provide against every important danger by the employment of the most promising means is the office of wisdom; but at this point wisdom stops. APATHY. BLAIR. There are some men formed with feelings so blunt, that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives. BURKE. 40 APOPHTHEGMS.—APOSTASY.—APOTHECARY. As the passions are the springs of most of our actions, a state of apathy has come to signify a sort of moral inertia, the absence of all activity or energy. According to the Stoics, apathy meant the extinction of the passions by the ascendency of reason. FLEMING. In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found. HUME.. APOSTASY. against grace, and forsaking and departing from Their sins have the aggravation of being sin God; which respect makes the state apostate. as the most unexcusable, so the most despe rately dangerous, state. HAMMOND. It Julius Cæsar did write a collection of apophthegms, as appears in an epistle of Cicero. is a pity his book is lost, for I imagine they were collected with judgment and choice. LORD BACON : Apophthegms. We may magnify the apophthegms, or reputed replies of wisdom, whereof many are to be seen in Laertius and Lycosthenes. SIR T. BROWNE: Vulgar Errors. Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms, and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism. COLERIDGE. Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim. If it be very moral and very true, it may serve for a copy to a charity boy. If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few indeed of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered, from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action. LORD MACAULAY: Machiavelli, March, 1827. In a numerous collection of our Saviour's apophthegms there is not to be found one ex ample of sophistry or of false subtilty, or of any thing approaching thereunto. PALEY. The word parable is sometimes used in Scripture in a large and general sense, and applied to short, sententious sayings, maxims, or aphorisms. BISHOP PORTEUS. It is astonishing the influence foolish apothegms have upon the mass of mankind, though they are not unfrequently fallacies. REV. SYDNEY SMITH, APOTHECARY. The ideal physician of Hippocrates is, in this country, the apothecary of the present day. Ga len says that he had an apotheke in which his drugs were kept, and where his medicines were always made under his own eye, or by his hand. For one moment we pause on the word apo. theké, whence apothecary is derived. It meant among the Greeks a place where anything is put by and preserved,-especially, in the first instance, wine. The Romans had no wine. cellars, but kept their wine-jars upon upper floors, where they believed that the contents would ripen faster. The small floors were called fumaria, the large ones apothecæ. The apotheca, being a dry, airy place, became, of course, the best possible store-room for drugs, and many apothecas became drug-stores, with then-if it be one-attached to the name of an apothecarius in charge. It is a misfortune apothecary that it has in it association with the shop. But, to say nothing of Podalirius and Machaon, Cullen and William Hunter dispensed their own medicines. Household Words. In the year one thousand three hundred and forty-five, Coursus de Gangeland, called an apothecary of London, serving about the person of King Edward the Third, received a pension of sixpence a day as a reward for his attendance on the king during a serious illness which he had in Scotland. Henry the Eighth gave forty marks a year to John Soda, apothecary, as a medical attendant on the Princess Mary, who was a delicate, unhealthy young woman; so that we thus have the first indications of the position of an English apothecary, as one whose calling for two hundred years maintained itself, and continued to maintain itself till a few years after the establishment of the College of Physicians, as that of a man who might be engaged even by kings in practice of the healing art. But in the third year of Queen Mary's reign, thirtyseven years after the establishment of the College of Physicians, both surgeons and apothe caries were prohibited the practising of physic. In Henry the Eighth's time it had been settled, on the other hand, that surgery was an especial lowship of physicians were allowed to engage part of physic, and any of the company or fel in it. Household Words. About one hundred and fifty years ago, talking like an apothecary was a proverbial phrase for talking nonsense; and our early dramatists when they produced an apothecary on the stage always presented him as a garrulous and foolish man. It was in what may be called the middle period of the history of the apothecary's calling in this country that it had thus fallen into grave contempt. At first it was honoured, and it is now, at last, honoured again. At first there were few of the fraternity. Dr. Freind mentions a time when there was only one apothecary in all London. Now [August, 1856] there are in England and Wales about seven thousand gentlemen who, when tyros, took their freedom out to kill (or cure) Where stands a structure on a rising hill, Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams To wash his sooty Naiads in the Thames,namely, at the Hall of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in Blackfriars. Of course apothecaries do not monopolize the license to kill, or we never should have heard of that country in which it was a custom to confer upon the public executioner, after he had performed his office on a certain number of condemned people, the degree of doctor apothecary. Household Words. ARGUMENT. to appear easy and well-bred in conversation, Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order you may assure yourself that it requires more than to contradict the notions of another: but wit, as well as more good humour, to improve if you are at any time obliged to enter on an argument, give your reasons with the utmost coolness and modesty, two things which scarce ever fail of making an impression on the hearers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical, nor show either by your actions or words that you are full of yourself, all will the more heartily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you be pinched in your argument, you may make your retreat with a very good grace. You were never positive, and are now glad to be better informed. This has made some approve the Socratic way of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm anything, you can hardly be caught in an abSocrates introduced a catechetical method of | surdity; and though possibly you are endeavourarguing. He would ask his adversary questioning to bring over another to your opinion, which upon question, till he had convinced him out is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire informaof his own mouth that his opinions were wrong. tion from him. BUDGELL: This way of debating drives an enemy up into Spectator, No. 197. a corner, seizes all the passes through which he can make an escape, and forces him to surrender I have sometimes amused myself with considering the several methods of managing a debate which have obtained in the world. The first races of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rules of art. at discretion. Aristotle changed this method of attack, and invented a great variety of little weapons, called syllogisms. As in the Socratic way of dispute you agree to everything your opponent advances, in the Aristotelic you are still denying and contradicting some part or other of what he says. Socrates conquers you by stratagem, Aristotle by force. The one takes the town by sap, the other sword in hand. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 239. When arguments press equally in matters indifferent, the safest method is to give up ourselves ADDISON. to neither. The terms are loose and undefined; and, what less becomes a fair reasoner, he puts wrong and invidious names on everything to colour a false way of arguing. ADDISON. It is not to be expected that every one should guard his understanding from being imposed on by the sophistry which creeps into most of the books of argument. LOCKE. of argument, which is information, it may be a Lastly, if you propose to yourself the true end seasonable check to your passion; for if you search purely after truth, it will be almost indifferent to you where you find it. I cannot in this place omit an observation which I have often made, namely, That nothing procures a man more esteem and less envy from the whole company, than if he chooses the part of moderator, without engaging directly on either side in a dispute. BUDGELL: Spectator, No. 197. of combat, so intellectual acumen has been displayed to the most advantage and to the most effect in the contests of argument. The mind of a controversialist, warmed and agitated, is turned to all quarters, and leaves none of its resources unemployed in the invention of arguments, tries every weapon, and explores the hidden recesses of a subject with an intense vigilance, and an ardour which it is next to impossible in a calmer state of mind to command. ROBERT HALL: Preface to Hall's Help to Zion's Travellers. A metaphysical argument might have been printed from the mouth of Sir J. Mackintosh, unaltered and complete. That arrangement of the parts of an abstruse subject which to others would be a laborious art was to him a natural suggestion and pleasurable exercise. In no instance have I seen an equal power of distributing methodically a long train of argument, adhering to his scheme, and completing it in all its parts. SIR HENRY HOLLAND: Mackintosh's Life. They that are more fervent to dispute be not always the most able to determine. HOOKER. The fair way of conducting a dispute is to exhibit, one by one, the arguments of your opponent, and, with each argument, the precise and specific answer you are able to make to it. PALEY. He cannot consider the strength, poise the weight, and discern the evidence of the clearest argumentations where they would conclude SOUTH. against his desires. If your arguments be rational, offer them in as moving a manner as the nature of the subject will admit; but beware of letting the pathetic part swallow up the rational. SWIFT. While we are arguing with others, in order to convince them, how graceful a thing is it, when we have the power of the argument on our own side, to keep ourselves from insult and triumph! how engaging a behaviour toward our opponent, when we seem to part as though we were equal in the debate, while it is evident to all the company that the truth lies wholly on our side! Yet I will own there are seasons when the obstinate and the assuming disputant should be made to feel the force of an argument by displaying it in its victorious and triumphant colours. But this is seldom to be practised so as to insult the opposite party, except in cases where they have shown a haughty and insufferable insolence. Some persons perhaps can hardly be taught humility without being severely humbled; and yet where there is need of this chastisement I had rather any other hand should be employed in it than mine. DR. I. WATTS: Christian Morality. Academical disputation gives vigour and briskness to the mind thus exercised, and relieves the languor of private study and meditation. DR. I. WATTS. By putting every argument, on one side and the other, into the balance, we must form a judgment which side preponderates. DR. I. WATTS. We should dwell upon the arguments, and impress the motives of persuasion upon our own hearts, till we feel the force of them. DR. I. WATTS. |