The other, that you do not peremptorily break off, in any business, in a fit of anger; but howsoever you shew bitterness, do not act anything that is not revocable.
For raising and appeasing anger in another; it is done chiefly by choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, to incense them. Again, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you can find out to aggravate the contempt. And the two remedies are by the contraries. The former to take good times, when first to relate to a man an angry[1] business; for the first impression is much; and the other is, to sever, as much as may be, the construction of the injury from the point of contempt; imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or what you will.
LVIII. Of Vicissitude of Things.
Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth.[2] So that as Plato had an imagination, That all knowledge was but remembrance;[3] so Salomon giveth his sentence, That all novelty is but oblivion. Whereby you may see that the river of Lethe run-
- ↑ Angry. Provoking anger; irritating.
- ↑ Ecclesiastes i. 9.
- ↑ The doctrine that 'all knowledge is but remembrance' is expounded by Plato in the two Dialogues, Phaedo, 72 and Meno, 81. In "The First Book of Francis Bacon; of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human, To the King," Bacon asserts, with fulsome flattery, "I have often thought, that of all the persons living that I have known, your Majesty were the best instance to make a man of Plato's opinion, that all knowledge is but remembrance."
