You may judge a man by his type of argument and his reaction to the opinions of others. One should hold to his own beliefs and opinions, but only if they withstand the assaults of reason. To build ego feeling into opinions is to make ignorance sacred. For most of us there are certain opinions that we will not tolerate, and there are others to which we are indifferent. There are those who feel it incumbent on themselves to contradict any opinion, even if they agree fundamentally with it. The mere fact that some one else gave it utterance arouses a sort of jealousy. Then there are others who will not permit any opinion of their own to be discussed, to whom it is a personal affront to do this. What we call urbanity is tolerance of other opinions; what we call reasonableness is the willingness to change opinions if convinced. What we call vacillation is to have no fixed opinion, to be influenced at once by the opinions of others. The pleasure sought in argument is a victory for our opinions and thus for ourselves.
Here Montaigne's wisdom aptly expresses itself: "We deride ourselves a hundred times when we mock our neighbor." He is stubborn and unreasonable who does not agree with us. "Be reasonable," cry the unreasonable as they argue. "How stubborn and pigheaded you are," say those inaccessible to reason. The difficulty in reaching a true estimate of the world, ourselves and our neighbors lies in the egoism which permeates our beliefs and opinions.
A second direction of the impulse to superiority is personal beauty. Not only does the young girl (or any other, male or female) dress and adorn herself to attract those whose good opinion she seeks, but also she seeks superiority over her competitors. Her own self-valuation increases with the admiration of some and the discomfiture of others. To be beautiful, attractive or pretty becomes thus a goal to many aims of the personality; it offers a route to success in obtaining power, riches, etc.; it yields the longed-for admiration, and it gives the satisfaction of superiority. It rarely has in it any ideal of service or of help, though beauty in the abstract is an ideal of high value. To desire to be beautiful physically as a leading aim usually leads to selfishness and petty vanity. As a subsidiary aim it balances character, but unfortunately, as we have before seen, it is inculcated as a primary aim early in the life of a girl. True, men seek to be beautiful in a masculine way, but the goal of masculine beauty is strength, which is directly serviceable. This is not to say that there are no men who are vain of their good looks, for there are many. But only occasionally does one find a man who organizes his life efforts to be beautiful, who establishes criteria of success or failure on complexion, hair, features of face and lines of figure. So long, therefore, as woman can obtain power through beauty and *** appeal, so long may we expect a trivial trend in her character.
We have lost track of our hypothetical child in the history of his character development, lost sight of him as he struggles in a morass of desires and purposes of power, fellowship and superiority. His situations become still more complex as we watch him seek to unify his life around permanent purposes, against a pestering, surging, recurring, temporary desire. He desires, let us say, to conform to the restriction in ***, but as he approaches adolescence, within and without stimuli of breathless ardor assail him. He must inhibit them if he proposes to be chaste, and his continent road is beset with never-resting temptations. He calls himself a fool at times for resisting, and his mind pictures the delights he misses--if not from direct experience, from information he gathers in books and from those who know--and if he yields, then self-reproach embitters him. But correctly to portray the situation is to drop our hypothetical adolescent, for here is where individual reaction and individual situations are too varied to be met with in one case. Some do not inhibit their *** desires at all; others resist now and then, others yield occasionally; still others remain faithful to the ideal. Some drop the conventional ideal and replace with unconventional substitutes, some resist at great cost to themselves, and others find no difficulty in resisting what is no temptation at all to them. Passion, resistance, opportunity, training and sublimation differ as remarkably as nuns differ from prostitutes.
A similar situation is found in the work purposes. To work steadily, with industry and unflagging effort, at something perhaps not inherently attractive is not merely a measure of energy,--it is a measure of inhibition and will. For there are so many more immediate pleasures to be had, even if offering only variety and relaxation. There is the country, there is the lake for fishing; there is the dance hall where a pretty girl smiles as your arm encircles her waist; there is the ball field where on a fine day you may go and forget duty and strained effort in the swirl of an enthusiasm that emanates from the thousands around you as they applaud the splendid athletes; there is the good fellowship and pleasure that beckon as you bend to a task. To shut these out, to inhibit the temporary "good" for the permanent good, is the measure of character.
