flames too late. And powerless to avert disaster, you are condemned,
therefore, to watch the damage of valuable property. The flames leap
higher and higher, and they do not die down till they have burned
themselves out. You avert your gaze from the spectacle, and until you
are gone the owner of the house pretends that nothing has occurred. When
alone he curses himself for his carelessness.

The foregoing is meant to be a description of what happens when a man
passes through the incendiary experience known as 'losing his temper.'
(There! the cat of my chapter is out of the bag!) A man who has lost his
temper is simply being 'burnt out.' His constitutes one of the most
curious and (for everybody) humiliating spectacles that life offers. It
is an insurrection, a boiling over, a sweeping storm. Dignity, common
sense, justice are shrivelled up and destroyed. Anarchy reigns. The
devil has broken his chain. Instinct is stamping on the face of reason.
And in that man civilisation has temporarily receded millions of years.
Of course, the thing amounts to a nervous disease, and I think it is
almost universal. You at once protest that you never lose your
temper--haven't lost your temper for ages! But do you not mean that you
have not smashed furniture for ages? These fires are of varying
intensities. Some of them burn very dully. Yet they burn. One man loses
his temper; another is merely 'ruffled.' But the event is the same in
kind. When you are 'ruffled,' when you are conscious of a resentful
vibration that surprises all your being, when your voice changes, when
you notice a change in the demeanour of your companion, who sees that he
has 'touched a tender point,' you may not go to the length of smashing
furniture, but you have had a fire, and your dignity is damaged. You
admit it to yourself afterwards. I am sure you know what I mean. And I
am nearly sure that you, with your courageous candour, will admit that
from time to time you suffer from these mysterious 'fires.'