Of Anger, in the edition presented here, is Sir Roger L'Estrange's seventeenth-century abstract of Senecan moral teaching on anger, revenge and cruelty. First published within Seneca's Morals by Way of Abstract, its twelve thematic chapters condense and rearrange material associated principally with Seneca's three-book dialogue De Ira. It is not a chapter-for-chapter translation of that ancient work. L'Estrange selects arguments, examples and practical remedies, placing them into a compact English manual intended for moral use.
The opening chapter defines anger as a desire to punish someone believed to have caused injury. Seneca's distinctive concern is that anger belongs to rational creatures because it requires judgement. Animals may display aggression, fear or excitement, but anger in the strict sense involves a conclusion: a wrong has occurred and retaliation is appropriate. This connection with judgement makes anger morally dangerous, but it also makes correction possible.
The second chapter analyses anger as a sequence. An involuntary first movement may arise before reflection: the body tightens, an impression of injury appears, and emotion begins to stir. A further movement accepts the impression and judges that revenge should follow. Once assent has been given, anger can become difficult to govern. The practical point is to intervene between impression and settled purpose, before the mind commits itself to retaliation.
L'Estrange's compilation repeatedly rejects the claim that anger is necessary for courage, punishment or public authority. Reason can recognise wrongdoing and impose consequences without becoming enraged. Anger does not strengthen judgement; it rushes beyond evidence, exaggerates offence and treats severity as proof of seriousness. A good decision should remain proportionate even when the offence is real.
The chapters on causes and occasions examine how expectation magnifies resentment. People become angry because others fail to show deference, gratitude, punctuality or agreement. Pride interprets ordinary frustration as deliberate contempt. Suspicion then supplies missing evidence, and the mind punishes an imagined motive as though it were an established fact.
Delay is the principal remedy. Time separates the first appearance from action, permits facts to emerge and reduces the bodily intensity that narrows judgement. Delay is not weakness or refusal to address wrongdoing. It creates the conditions under which correction can serve justice rather than the pleasure of retaliation.
Self-knowledge provides another restraint. Remembering one's own errors makes it harder to treat every fault in another person as monstrous. Seneca does not ask for moral equivalence between all acts; he asks for awareness that human beings commonly misjudge, forget and fail. This humility moderates punishment and replaces the fantasy that anger belongs only to the innocent.
The compilation also considers anger in rulers. Power removes many external checks, allowing a private passion to become public terror. A ruler who treats cruelty as strength teaches dishonesty, fear and mutual suspicion throughout the community. Clemency, proportion and willingness to hear evidence are therefore political virtues as well as personal disciplines.
Cruelty differs from temporary anger because it can become pleasure or habit. The cruel person no longer seeks correction but enjoys suffering and display. L'Estrange's examples are historically severe, particularly where Roman emperors use humiliation and death as entertainment. Their excess demonstrates what happens when authority and appetite operate without rational limit.
The archaic language and arrangement reflect Restoration England as well as ancient Rome. L'Estrange explicitly presents his project as an abstract, gathering Seneca's scattered ethics under practical headings. Readers should therefore treat Of Anger as a historical interpretation of Senecan Stoicism, not as a substitute for the original structure and wording of De Ira.
Its central argument nevertheless remains clear. Anger is not an unavoidable master or a trustworthy instrument of justice. Because judgement participates in its growth, attention, delay, evidence, humility and proportion can interrupt it. Moral strength lies not in feeling the greatest fury, but in retaining enough government to respond to wrongdoing without becoming governed by it.