On Losing One's Temper

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

ALMOST too late I learned the true meaning of the exhortation which echoed in my ears during childhood, “ Don’t lose your temper!” My understanding of this precept was, “Control your temper, attain perfect composure,” and therefore I struggled conscientiously for Catonic indifference toward all provocation to wrath. Fortified by Reason, I dismissed my temper, hoping to lose it permanently

Happily, this was only a passing mood. Observation made me realize the values of temper in giving, through richness of experience, a poignant appreciation of life. Had not Dante and Carlyle deeper insight than Virgil and Addison ? Assuredly, for the wholly rational, human relations must be monotonous,but for the men of susceptible spirit existence is full of unmanageable moments and of dramatic variety. The poets knew this, otherwise where would the Iliad be, without Achilles ? What is true in the material world is true in the spiritual, —“ temper is the state of metal produced by heating or cooling;” it means capacity for gaining a keen edge.

When reflection made me aware that the old phrase was to be understood literally as “Cherish your temper,”ambition led me to work for the recovery of my former passions. I cannot say, with the theologians, that the old Adam was strong within me, because I had by direct descent inherited an Even temper, but some congenial force of nature kept alive what I had falsely deemed an evil spirit. Paradoxical as it may seem, practice has made me daily more temperate.

Much remains, still, to be won; I have not carried my reform to the uttermost. I have not acquired the language of passion. “ Dumb with rage ” we certainly are, since, in the midst of violent incentives to wield “Terrific Diction,” we are as helpless as the exasperated little Quaker boy who anathematized his playmate: “ I’ll swear at thee, I’ll call thee ‘you’ !”

My ideal of adequate self-expression is based upon the example of men of letters who have voiced the tumult of the soul with elemental vehemence. Literature is a safety-valve, and they are enviable who possess the gifts of Walter Savage Landor. When very angry he did not count a hundred, but wrote a Latin satire, and so worked off his rage in quantity.

Even if I cannot gain the much desired power of language, I find consolation in reading those poets whose masterly exclamation is relief to the reader’s intensity of mood. Each one of us has moments when the supreme need is of some voice that shall enunciate for us the passionate groans which rise from perception of our own inexplicable transgressions. Then it is solace to read in Othello, —

“Beware the fury of a patient man,” said Dryden. He did not know how seldom anger leads to action. None of the descriptive phrases which we apply to those in temper suggest decisive movement and performance. “Mad as a hornet,” “in a towering passion,” “anger at white heat,”or “at the boiling point,” are suggestive of restrained feeling, not of the all-conquering progress of righteous wrath. As a nation we are capable of being roused to immense passion, but “Iroquois” and “Slocum” do not suggest to any one our capacity for effective action. It is not cowardice that disgraces the American people, it is the inertia of our criminal good nature.

To gain “through action, passion, talk, the soul, that is the ideal, that is the hope of humanity. Our efforts for the extermination of temper are misdirected. Temper is a goal, not a handicap, an aspiration, not a birth-wrong.