The sin of Ira or Wrath
is one, perhaps, to which the English as a nation are not greatly
addicted, except in a rather specialised form. On the whole we are slow to
anger, and dislike violence. We can be brutal and destructive-usually,
however, only under provocation; and much of our apparent brutality is due
much less to violence of temper than to sheer unimaginative stupidity (a
detestable sin in itself, but quite different in nature and origin). On the
whole, we are an easy-going, good-humoured people, who hate with difficulty
and find it almost impossible to cherish rancour or revenge.
This is true, I think, of the
English. It is perhaps not quite true of those who profess and call
themselves British. The Celt is quarrelsome; he prides himself that with him
it is a word and a blow. He broods upon the memory of ancient wrongs in a
way that to the Englishman is incomprehensible; if the English were Irish by
temperament they would still be roused to fury by the name of the Battle of
Hastings, instead of summing
it up philosophically as “1066 and All
That." The Celt clings
fiercely to his ancient tribal savageries, and his religious habits are
disputatious, polemical and (in extreme instances, as on the Irish border)
disgraced by blood thirst and a persecuting frenzy. But let the Englishman
not be in too great a hurry to congratulate himself. He has one besetting
weakness, by means of which he may very readily be led or lashed into the
sin of Wrath: he is peculiarly liable to attacks of righteous indignation.
While he is in one of these fits he will fling himself into a debauch of
fury and commit extravagances which are not only evil but ridiculous.
We all know pretty well the
man—or perhaps still more frequently the woman—who says that anybody who
tortures a helpless animal should be flogged till he shrieks for mercy. The
harsh, grating tone and the squinting, vicious countenance accompanying the
declaration are enough to warn us that this righteous anger is devil-born,
and trembling on the verge of mania. But we do not always recognise this
ugly form of possession when it cloaks itself under a zeal for efficiency or
a lofty resolution to expose scandals—particularly if it expresses itself
only in print or in platform verbiage. It is very well known to the more
unscrupulous part of the Press that nothing pays so well in the newspaper
world as the manufacture of schism and the exploitation of wrath. Turn over
the pages of the more popular papers if you want to see how avarice thrives
on hatred and the passion of violence. To foment grievance and to set men
at variance is the trade by which agitators thrive and journalists make
money. A dog-fight, a brawl or a war is always news; if news of that kind
is lacking, it pays well to contrive it. The average English mind is a
fertile field in which to sow the dragon's teeth of moral indignation; and
the fight that follows will be blind. brutal and merciless.
That is not to say that scandals
should not be exposed or that no anger is justified. But you may know the
mischief-maker by the warped malignancy of his language as easily as by the
warped malignancy of his face and voice. His fury is without restraint and
without magnanimity—and it is aimed, not at checking the offence, but at
starting a pogrom against the offender. He would rather the evil were not
cured at all than that it were cured quietly and without violence. His evil
lust of wrath cannot be sated unless somebody is hounded down, beaten and
trampled on, and a savage war-dance executed upon the body.
I have said that the English are
readily tempted into this kind of debauch. I will add that it is a debauch,
and, like other debauches, leaves him with a splitting head, a bad
hang-over, and a crushing sense of shame. When he does give way to wrath,
he makes a very degrading exhibition of himself, because wrath is a thing
unnatural to him; it affects him like drink or drugs. In the shame-faced
mood that follows, he becomes spiritless, sick at heart, and enfeebled in
judgment. I am therefore the more concerned about a highly unpleasant
spirit of vindictiveness that is being commended to us at this moment,
camouflaged as righteous wrath and a warlike
spirit. It is not a warlike spirit at all—at any rate, it is
very unlike the spirit in which
soldiers make war. The good soldier is on the whole remarkable both for
severity in his measures, and for measure in his severity. He is as
bloodthirsty as his duty requires him to be, and, as a rule, not more. Even
in Germany, the difference between the professional and the political
fighter is said to be very marked in this respect. There are, however,
certain people here whose martial howls do not suggest the battle-cry even
of a savage warrior so much as Miss Henrietta Petowker reciting The
Blood-Drinker's Burial in Mrs. Kenwigs's front parlour. If I say: "Do
not listen to them," it is not because there is no room for indignation, but
because there is a point at which righteous indignation passes over into the
deadly sin of Wrath; and once it has passed that point, it is liable, like
all other passions, to stagger over into its own opposite, the equally fatal
sin of Sloth or Accidie, of which we shall have something to say presently.
Ungovernable rage is the sin of the warm heart and the quick spirit; in
such men it is usually very quickly repented of—though before that happens
it may have wrought irreparable destruction. We shall have to see to it that
the habit of wrath and destruction which war fastens upon us is not carried
over into the peace. And above all we must see to it now that our
blind rages are not harnessed and driven by those men of the cold head and
the cold heart—the Envious, the Avaricious and the Proud.
