Seneca · c. 4 BCE – 65 CE
On Anger 1.3 ¶3 — Seneca
Translation by Aubrey Stewart (1889)
Seneca, On Anger 1.3 ¶3
When he speaks of beasts being angry he means that they are excited, roused up: for indeed they know no more how to be angry than they know how to pardon. Dumb creatures have not human feelings, but have certain impulses which resemble them: for if it were not so, if they could feel love and hate, they would likewise be capable of friendship and enmity, of disagreement and agreement. Some traces of these qualities exist even in them, though properly all of them, whether good or bad, belong to the human breast alone. To no creature besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflection. To animals not only human virtues but even human vices are forbidden: their whole constitution, mental and bodily, is unlike that of human beings: in them the royal and leading principle is drawn from another source, as, for instance, they possess a voice, yet not a clear one, but indistinct and incapable of forming words: a tongue, but one which is fettered and not sufficiently nimble for complex movements: so, too, they possess intellect, the greatest attribute of all, but in a rough and inexact condition. It is, consequently, able to grasp those visions and semblances which rouse it to action, but only in a cloudy and indistinct fashion. It follows from this that their impulses and outbreaks are violent, and that they do not feel fear, anxieties, grief, or anger, but some semblances of these feelings: wherefore they quickly drop them and adopt the converse of them: they graze after showing the most vehement rage and terror, and after frantic bellowing and plunging they straightaway sink into quiet sleep.
Cite this passage
Seneca, On Anger 1.3 ¶3, tr. Aubrey Stewart (1889)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/on-anger/1.3.3
Seneca, Dialogues, tr. Aubrey Stewart (1887–1889). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesAnimals show something like anger but not the real thing, since true emotions depend on human reason, foresight and reflection. Their rages and terrors are brief impulses, which is why a furious beast soon goes back to grazing or sleep.
Older wording
- “fettered”
- — bound or restricted
- “constitution”
- — natural makeup
Themes and situations
- Anger
- Nature and the cosmos
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