Causes of Sorrow and Anger

One struggles to encounter them. Indeed, desire rules over every pleasure, but sensation gives birth to desire; for what is without sensation is free from passion. For recluses the demons wrestle naked, but for those working out virtue in communities or companies they arm the less attentive of the brothers; and the second war is much lighter than the first, because it is not possible to find on earth men more bitter than demons, or all at once receiving their malice.

Concerning the eight logismoi: Eight are all the most general logismoi, in which every logismos is contained. First is that of gluttony, and after it that of fornication; third is that of avarice; fourth is that of sorrow; fifth is that of anger; sixth is that of acedia; seventh is that of vainglory; eighth is that of pride. Whether these all trouble the soul or do not trouble it is not up to us; but whether to let them linger or not, or to move passions or not to move them, is up to us.

The logismos of gluttony suggests a rapid fall to the monk of asceticism: picturing stomach and liver and spleen and dropsy, and a long disease, and scarcity of necessities, and helplessness of physicians. And it often brings him to the memory of certain brothers who have fallen into these passions. And there is a time when it even persuades him to compare those very sufferers with those exercising self-control, and to recount their own misfortunes, and how from asceticism they have become such.

The demon of fornication compels to desire different bodies; and he stands against those exercising self-control more fiercely, so that, accomplishing nothing, they may give up; and defiling the soul he bends it down toward those activities, making it say certain words and again hear, as if the matter were seen and present. Avarice suggests long old age and weakness of hands for work, and famines to come and diseases to befall, and the bitterness of poverty, and how shameful it is to receive from others the things for need.

10 Sorrow sometimes occurs by deprivation of desires, and sometimes it follows anger. By deprivation of desires it occurs thus: certain thoughts, having gone before, lead the soul into the memory of house and parents and former way of life. And when they see it not resisting but following, and being poured out in the pleasures according to the mind, then taking it they baptize it in sorrow, as if the former things did not exist nor could any longer exist through the present life; and the wretched soul, as much as it was poured out upon the former thoughts, so much was it contracted upon the second ones, having been humbled.

11 Anger is the sharpest passion; for it is called a heating and movement of temper against the one who has done wrong or is thought to have done wrong; which all day long makes the soul savage, but especially in prayers snatches away the mind, mirroring the face of the one who caused the grief. And sometimes, lingering and changing into wrath, it provides disturbances by night, wasting of the body and paleness, and attacks of venomous beasts. These four things, happening after wrath, one might find accompanied by more thoughts.

12 The demon of acedia, who is also called the noonday demon, is the heaviest of all demons; and he stands over the monk around the fourth hour, and circles his soul until the eighth hour. And first he makes the sun appear slow-moving or motionless to behold, showing the day as fifty hours. Then he compels him to look constantly toward the windows and to leap out of the cell, to gaze at the sun how far it is from the ninth hour, and to look here and there whether any of the brothers comes. Furthermore, he instills hatred toward the place and toward life itself, and toward the work of the hands; and suggests that love has departed from among the brothers and there is no one encouraging; and if during those days someone has grieved the monk, the demon adds this too to the increase of hatred. And he leads him also and