life shows on a small scale, and as history on every page of it on a
large. Does not the recognised need of a balance of power in Europe,
with the anxious way in which it is preserved, demonstrate that man
is a beast of prey, who no sooner sees a weaker man near him than he
falls upon him without fail? and does not the same hold good of the
affairs of ordinary life?

But to the boundless egoism of our nature there is joined more or
less in every human breast a fund of hatred, anger, envy, rancour and
malice, accumulated like the venom in a serpent's tooth, and waiting
only for an opportunity of venting itself, and then, like a demon
unchained, of storming and raging. If a man has no great occasion for
breaking out, he will end by taking advantage of the smallest, and by
working it up into something great by the aid of his imagination; for,
however small it may be, it is enough to rouse his anger--

_Quantulacunque adeo est occasio, sufficit irae[1]_--

[Footnote 1: Juvenal, _Sat_. 13, 183.]

and then he will carry it as far as he can and may. We see this in
daily life, where such outbursts are well known under the name of
"venting one's gall on something." It will also have been observed
that if such outbursts meet with no opposition the subject of them
feels decidedly the better for them afterwards. That anger is
not without its pleasure is a truth that was recorded even by
Aristotle;[1] and he quotes a passage from Homer, who declares anger
to be sweeter than honey. But not in anger alone--in hatred too, which
stands to anger like a chronic to an acute disease, a man may indulge
with the greatest delight: