Character and Conduct – 3 April – Irritability

IRRITABILITY is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh.  It is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit:  in fact, it comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of.  There are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we could not conceive of even an angelic spirit, confined in a body thus disordered, as being able to do any more than simply endure.  It is a state of nervous torture;  and the attacks which the wretched victim makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia…

I think it is undeniable that the peace and happiness of the home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its members of these states of bodily irritability.  Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings, his hopes and expectations, are all very much modified by these things.  Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-singing morning to find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night?  Our friends are nice people, after all;  the little things that annoyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine; and we are fortunate individuals.

Little Foxes, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

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