What are some meanings of the essay "Of Anger" by Francis Bacon? In particular, what are the three causes and motives of anger that Francis Bacon...

In his essay “Of Anger,” Sir Francis Bacon lists various
causes or motives of anger, including the
following:

• a “natural inclination and habit to
  be angry”: in other words, a tendency toward anger may be part of a particular person’s
  character and is probably also innate in human nature.


• an
  inability or disinclination to be patient, so that we behave like bees (in the words of
  Seneca):

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. . . animasque in vulnere
ponunt

[that
put their lives in the
sting].

• weakness.
  Bacon suggests that weak persons are more likely to be angry than strong persons.
  

Bacon cites three causes of anger
especially:

1. being overly sensitive – in other
   words, having feelings that are too easily hurt.


2. assuming
   that any injuring one receives from others was full of contempt and disrespect – in
   other words, immediately assuming that one has been
   disrespected.


3. assuming that an injury will damage one’s
   reputation.

Bacon suggests a number of ways of
overcoming anger, including the following:

• Don’t
  assume, as did the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome, that anger can be utterly
  extinguished by an act of mere will.  Anger cannot be dealt with so easily; it must be
  allowed to diminish with the passage of time.


• Consider
  the negative effects that anger causes in the life of the person who is angry. Anger
  injuries the angry person most of all and is thus
  self-defeating.


• Try to be
  patient.


• Try not to be easily hurt or easily worried
  about one’s reputation. An honorable person need not worry about his/her reputation.
  Therefore, truly honorable people are less likely to be
  angry.


• Let time pass, even telling oneself that one can
  take revenge later for an injury suffered today. Meanwhile, the passage of time will
  diminish one’s anger.

All in all, Bacon looks
at anger from a Christian rather than from a Stoic perspective.  At the same time, his
advice is also highly pragmatic. In other words, he shows an awareness of how anger
actually develops and can be dealt with in ordinary life. His comment about waiting to
take revenge is especially intriguing. He knew that taking revenge was frowned about in
Christianity, but instead of suggesting that a person refrain from revenge altogether,
he suggests that any contemplated revenge should be postponed.  He seems to have assumed
that postponing revenge would make it ultimately less likely to occur.  This is a bit of
shrewd psychology on Bacon’s part.