The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

in consequence to recommend what they know to
be the best course. These are the only possible cases. It follows
that any one who is thought to have all three of these good
qualities will inspire trust in his audience. The way to make
ourselves thought to be sensible and morally good must be gathered
from the analysis of goodness already given: the way to establish
your own goodness is the same as the way to establish that of
others. Good will and friendliness of disposition will form part of
our discussion of the emotions, to which we must now turn.
    The Emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to
affect their judgements, and that are also attended by pain or
pleasure. Such are anger, pity, fear and the like, with their
opposites. We must arrange what we have to say about each of them
under three heads. Take, for instance, the emotion of anger: here
we must discover (1) what the state of mind of angry people is, (2)
who the people are with whom they usually get angry, and (3) on
what grounds they get angry with them. It is not enough to know one
or even two of these points; unless we know all three, we shall be
unable to arouse anger in any one. The same is true of the other
emotions. So just as earlier in this work we drew up a list of
useful propositions for the orator, let us now proceed in the same
way to analyse the subject before us.
2
    Anger may be defined as an impulse, accompanied by pain, to a
conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight directed without
justification towards what concerns oneself or towards what
concerns one’s friends. If this is a proper definition of anger, it
must always be felt towards some particular individual, e.g. Cleon,
and not ‘man’ in general. It must be felt because the other has
done or intended to do something to him or one of his friends. It
must always be attended by a certain pleasure-that which arises
from the expectation of revenge. For since nobody aims at what he
thinks he cannot attain, the angry man is aiming at what he can
attain, and the belief that you will attain your aim is pleasant.
Hence it has been well said about wrath,
Sweeter it is by far than the honeycomb
dripping with sweetness,
And spreads through the hearts of men.
    It is also attended by a certain pleasure because the thoughts
dwell upon the act of vengeance, and the images then called up
cause pleasure, like the images called up in dreams.
    Now slighting is the actively entertained opinion of something
as obviously of no importance. We think bad things, as well as good
ones, have serious importance; and we think the same of anything
that tends to produce such things, while those which have little or
no such tendency we consider unimportant. There are three kinds of
slighting-contempt, spite, and insolence. (1) Contempt is one kind
of slighting: you feel contempt for what you consider unimportant,
and it is just such things that you slight. (2) Spite is another
kind; it is a thwarting another man’s wishes, not to get something
yourself but to prevent his getting it. The slight arises just from
the fact that you do not aim at something for yourself: clearly you
do not think that he can do you harm, for then you would be afraid
of him instead of slighting him, nor yet that he can do you any
good worth mentioning, for then you would be anxious to make
friends with him. (3) Insolence is also a form of slighting, since
it consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the
victim, not in order that anything may happen to yourself, or
because anything has happened to yourself, but simply for the
pleasure involved. (Retaliation is not ‘insolence’, but vengeance.)
The cause of the pleasure thus enjoyed by the insolent man is that
he thinks himself greatly superior to others when ill-treating
them. That is why youths and rich men are insolent; they think
themselves superior when they show insolence. One sort of insolence
is to rob people of the honour due to them; you certainly slight
them thus; for it is the unimportant, for good or evil, that has no
honour paid to it. So Achilles says in anger:
He hath taken my prize for himself
and hath done me dishonour,
    and
Like an alien honoured by none,
    meaning that this is why he is angry. A man expects to be
specially respected by his inferiors in birth, in capacity, in
goodness, and generally in anything in which he is much their
superior: as where money is concerned a wealthy man looks for
respect from a poor man; where speaking