Some of you may perhaps
be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever exaggeration
may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and I doubt myself
whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main
core of it is true, and that the mere giving way to tears, for example,
or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment
in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is,
accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the
moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that
which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not
to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse
in time, for example, or if we only _don't_ strike the blow or rip out
with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as
we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and
better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action
seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and
by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the
will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
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