Anger

9. Pride leads you to deem yourselves to be more than you really are; you cannot endure any comparison that might belittle you. On the contrary, pride makes you consider yourselves to be so far above your brothers and sisters – whether in spirit, social position or personal advantage – that the least parallel irritates and hurts you. And then what happens? You give in to anger.

Seek the origin of these outbursts of temporary insanity that make you resemble brutes, causing you to lose your poise and your reason. Seek and you will find that they are almost always based on wounded pride. Is it not wounded pride at being contradicted that makes you reject wise remarks and makes you angrily reject the wisest counsels? Even impatience, which often causes puerile annoyances, is connected to the importance that one attributes to one’s person, before which one thinks everyone else should bow down.

In their frenzy, angry persons attack everything from brute nature to inanimate objects, which they crush because they do not obey. Ah! If at such moments they could serenely see themselves, they would either be afraid of themselves or they would discover that they look ridiculous! Let them thereby deduce the impression they must have on others. Even if it were for nothing else but self- respect, they should make an effort to overcome a propensity that makes them an object of pity.

If persons would realize that anger does not solve anything, that it affects their health and compromises their life, they would see that they themselves are its primary victim. However, another consideration should especially restrain them: the thought that they make everyone around them unhappy. If they have a heart, should they not  regret making those whom they love most to suffer? What a deadly grief it would be if in a hot-headed outburst they committed an act that they would deplore for the rest of their lives!

In  sum, anger does not  exclude certain qualities of the heart, but it keeps one from practicing much good and can lead to practicing much evil. This fact should be enough to motivate efforts to control it. Moreover, Spiritists are encouraged for another reason: anger is contrary to charity and Christian humility.

A Protector Spirit (Bordeaux, 1863)