Of Cruelty

There is so near an affinity betwixt anger and cruelty, that many people confound them; as if cruelty were only the execution of anger in the payment of a revenge: which holds in some cases, but not in others. There are a sort of men that take delight in the spilling of human blood, and in the death of those that never did them any injury, nor were ever so much suspected for it; as Apollodorus, Phalaris, Sinis, Procrustus, and others, that burnt men alive; whom we cannot so properly call angry as brutal, for anger does necessarily presuppose an injury, either done, or conceived, or feared, but the other takes pleasure in tormenting, without so much as pretending any provocation to it, and kills merely for killing sake. The original of this cruelty perhaps was anger, which by frequent exercise and custom, has lost all sense of humanity and mercy, and they that are thus affected are so far from the countenance and appearance of men in anger, that they will laugh, rejoice, and entertain themselves with the most horrid spectacles, as racks, jails, gibbets, several sorts of chains and punishments, dilaceration of members, stigmatizing, and wild beasts, with other exquisite inventions of torture; and yet, at last the cruelty itself is more horrid and odious than the means by which it works.

It is a bestial madness to love mischief; beside, that it is womanish to rage and tear. A generous beast will scorn to do it when he has any thing at his mercy. It is a vice for wolves and tigers, and no less abominable to the world than dangerous to itself.