Self-regulation

“ And thus, rising above self, he rises above the competitive strife which is the outcome of self, and above the competitive laws which operate only in the region of self, and for the regulation of its blind impulses. ”

“ These preliminary steps will be at once adopted; and as the path of self-government and self-examination is pursued, a clearer and ever clearer perception of the nature, meaning, and effects of desire will be developed, until it will be seen that the mere regulation of one’s desires is altogether inadequate and insufficient, and that the desires themselves must be abandoned, must be allowed to fall out of the mind and to have no part hi the character and life. ”

“ Hence, in the ratio in which the pure intelligence is unfolded, and feelings of obligation arise, or conscience is developed, and becomes the practical rule of action, the individual acquires the right of self-control, and only in that ratio. ”

“ Should he give himself over? Should he make over his own life and body to the control of something which he knew was inferior, in spirit, to his own self? Should he commit himself into the power of an inferior control? ”

“ The conscious control of capital, the conscious control of labor, the conscious control of the public group—the arrival and the victory of the men who get their way by self-control and who are invited by all to have control of others because they have control of themselves, is a law of nature. ”

“ How, then, can there be looked for such power of self-guidance as, in the absence of inherited authoritative rules, would require them to understand why, in the nature of things, these modes of action are injurious and those modes beneficial—would require them to pass beyond proximate results, and see clearly the involved remote results as worked out on self, on others, and on society? ”

“ The intelligent practice of self-control, quickly leads to a knowledge of one’s interior thought-forces, and, later on, to the acquisition of that power by which they are rightly employed and directed. ”

“ And here is the line which divides the effective from the non-effective people, the great from the small, the good from the well-intentioned and respectable; it is in proportion as a man has self-controlling, self-compelling power that he is able to do, even of his own pleasure; that he can depend upon himself, and be sure of his own action in emergencies.
How the Will operates.—​Now, how does this autocrat of the bosom behave? Is it with a stern ‘Thou shalt,’ ‘Thou shalt not,’ that the subject man is coerced into obedience? ”

“ Self-respect, self-help, application, industry, integrity—all are of the nature of habits, not beliefs. Principles, in fact, are but the names which we assign to habits; for the principles are words, but the habits are the things themselves: benefactors or tyrants, according as they are good or evil. It thus happens that as we grow older, a portion of our free activity and individuality becomes suspended in habit; our actions become of the nature of fate; and we are bound by the chains which we have woven around ourselves. ”

“ And the self-control that is seen in the most spectacular instances in history, and in the simplest phases of daily life, is precisely the same in kind and in quality, differing only in degree. This control man can attain, if he only will; it is but a matter of paying the price.
The power of self-control is one of the great qualities that differentiates man from the lower animals. He is the only animal capable of a moral struggle or a moral conquest. ”

“ If you would conquer your morbidness, mingle with the bright people around you, no matter how difficult it may be. If you desire the power that someone else possesses, do not envy his strength, and dissipate your energy by weakly wishing his force were yours. Emulate the process by which it became his, depend on your self-reliance, pay the price for it, and equal power may be yours. The individual must look upon himself as an investment of untold possibilities if rightly developed,—a mine whose resources can never be known but by going down into it and bringing out what is hidden. ”

“ Those in this grade act as if they had memorized the following words of Herbert Spencer: "In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive—not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire—but to be self-restrained, self-balanced, governed by the just decision of the feelings in council assembled * * * that it is which moral education strives to produce." ”

“ Every step in the progress of the world has been a new “control.” It has been escaping from the tyranny of a fact, to the understanding and mastery of that fact. For ages man looked in terror at the lightning flash; to-day he has begun to understand it as electricity, a force he has mastered and made his slave. The million phases of electrical invention are but manifestations of our control over a great force. But the greatest of all “control” is self-control. ”

“ And—always remembering that control is of all virtues the one which strengthens with use and withers with disuse—every piece of new legislation should be most carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of the people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and death, is too dearly purchased by an ultimate diminution of self-control. ”

“ Instead of setting an example of self-control and self-denial and respect for law, together with a devotion to duty which would help to establish an orderly, strong society, they displayed extravagance, laxness and self-indulgences ”

“ I must more particularly advert to this most powerful argument in favour of this plan, which is, that it conduces to form the habit of self-control, which is the habit above all others which ought ever be our aim to form. It ought to be the primary object in every moral plan of cure. ”

“ In systematic self-control in the thousand and one claims and demands of life there is genuine heroism. Cultivate that virtue of self-control, not only in physical irregularities, but also in mental excesses and moral aberrations; that thus your growth might be all-round. Let each of you tell himself, 'I shall endeavour to subdue this excess or that exuberance, even because any excess and any exuberance in one direction tells against, retards, the growth in some other direction.' Be balanced ”

“ Having had their self-control decreased by social arrangements which lessened the need for self-control, other social arrangements are devised which will make self-control still less needful: and it is hoped so to make self-control greater. ”

“ He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. ”

“ In the measure that you master self, that you control your mental forces instead of being controlled by them, in just such measure will you master affairs and outward circumstances.
Show me a man under whose touch everything crumbles away, and who cannot retain success even when it is placed in his hands, and I will show you a man who dwells continually in those conditions of mind which are the very negation of power. ”

“ Self-control is the foundation on which alone freedom can be built. Without that you have anarchy, not freedom; and every increase of the present anarchy is paid for by the price of happiness, which is given in exchange. ”

“ Your self-repression known will yield you glory's gain.
Knowing that self-control is knowledge, if a man should control himself, in the prescribed course, such self-control will bring him distinction among the wise. ”

“ This view of the growth of character should be a mighty stimulus to the man who sincerely desires and determines to live nearer to the limit of his possibilities.
Self-control may be developed in precisely the same manner as we tone up a weak muscle,—by little exercises day by day. Let us each day do, as mere exercises of discipline in moral gymnastics, a few acts that are disagreeable to us, the doing of which will help us in instant action in our hour of need. ”

“ It is also possible, though it takes a much higher skill, to teach the same man to discipline himself, and this is to foster the development of will, of personality, of self-control, or whatever we please to call that central harmonizing power which makes us capable of directing our own lives. ”

“ Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. ”

“ At a moment, therefore, when it is agreed that we want a source of authority, and when it seems probable that the right source is our best self, it becomes of vast importance to see whether or not the things around us are, in general, such as to help and elicit our best self, and if they are not, to see why they are not, and the most promising way of mending them. ”

“ He maintains that the reality of a power or liberty, to will what we will, is testified to us indirectly, if not directly, by the experience of our own consciousness, and that the possession of it is essential to all activity of which the modes are properly objects of praise or blame. Such freedom is the root of man’s personality, and constitutes his power of self-control over the desires and affections that have been inserted in his mind and committed to his government. ”

“ The development of the individual, self-conscious that he is a reasoning being with the rights and responsibilities of self-determination, has put into the discard the divine right of kings and the infallibility of sphinx-like utterances from those in authority. The man who rules to-day does it through personal contacts with his subordinates. ”

“ The habit of seeing everything officially controlled fosters the belief that official control is everywhere needful; and a course of life which makes personal causation familiar and negatives experience of impersonal causation produces an inability to conceive of any social processes as carried on under self-regulating arrangements. And these traits of individual nature, needful concomitants as we see of the militant type, are those which we observe in the members of actual militant societies. ”

“ Indeed, the instinct of self-preservation in each institution soon becomes dominant over every thing else; and maintains it when it performs some quite other function than that intended, or no function at all. ”

“ The freewill, the reason, and the power of self-command, struggle perpetually with an array of chance incidents, of mechanical forces, of material causes, beyond foresight or control, but not beyond skilful management. ”

“ It is domination, the mastery, so far as it goes or exists at all, of the will, voluntary powers, and sensory organs of one individual, by the will of another; thus reversing completely the process of nature.
To dominate the will of another is to weaken it. Timidity, apprehension, fear, are in inverse ratio to confidence, self-assurance, courage, and self-control.
Health, happiness, and self-development lie along the lines of man’s higher evolution, and the basic principle, the primary power, the minister of state, is the rational and intelligent Will. ”

“ They can be no other than the maintenance or the perfection of his being on the one hand, and its impairment or imperfection on the other hand. The obligatory law, the duty which binds him, will be to do everything to maintain and strengthen his power of thought, of reason, of self-consciousness, and to avoid everything by which these may be weakened or overpowered. ”

“ The second quality that distinguishes them as good citizens is their self-control. Every preventive measure in normal individuals implies a certain amount of self-restraint, and in proportion as prudential motives are strong is the self-imposed restraint easy and effective.
The existence of these two qualities, prudence and self-control, is a very important factor in human character, and upon their presence and prevalence in its units depend the progress and stability of society. ”

“ And again, self-control, we say, is the principle of liberty. Practical freedom is the exercise of the right of self-control. How far does the right of self-control extend? I say that an instance in which a body of men emerged from a state of nature, (so called,) and formed a government by an original act, is unknown to history. ”

“ The contrast between true self-control and that which is merely repressed feeling, is, like all contrast between the natural and the artificial, immeasurable; and the steadily increasing power to be gained by true self-control cannot be conveyed in words, but must be experienced in actual use. ”

“ This conscious relinquishment of immediate and special good to gain distant and general good, while it is a cardinal trait of the self-restraint called moral, is also a cardinal trait of self-restraints other than those called moral—the restraints that originate from fear of the visible ruler, of the invisible ruler, and of society at large. ”

“ But it stifles desire only for a greater ultimate good; it rejects that needless repression of a part of the self which we call asceticism, and an undue subordination of self to others. It is, then the organizing or harmonizing principle, subordinating the interests of each aspect of the self, and of the many conflicting selves, to the total welfare of the individual and of the community. ”