There is always a capacity for unselfish will, the will of the better self, behind the personal selfish will, ready and waiting for us to use it, and it grows with use until finally it overrules the personal selfish will with a higher quality of power.  It is only false strength that supports the personal will,—­a false appearance of strength which might be called wilfulness and which leads ultimately to the destruction of its owner.  Any true observer of human nature will recognize the weakness of mere selfish wilfulness in another, and will keep entirely free from its trammels by refusing to meet it in a spirit of resentment or retaliation.

Real self-control, as compared to repression, is delightful in its physical results, when we have any difficult experience to anticipate or to go through.  Take, for instance, a surgical operation.  If I control myself by yielding, by relaxing the nervous tension which is the result of MY fear, true self-control then becomes possible, and brings a helpful freedom from, reaction after the trouble is over.  Or the same principle can be applied if I have to go through a hard trial with a friend and must control myself for his sake,—­dropping resistance in my mind and in my body, dropping resistance to his suffering, yielding my will to the necessities of the situation,—­this attitude will leave me much more clear to help him, will show him how to help himself, and will relieve him from the reaction that inevitably follows severe nervous strain.  The power of use to others is increased immeasurably when we control ourselves interiorly, and do not merely outwardly repress.

It often happens that a drunkard who is supposed to be “cured,” returns to his habit, simply because he has wanted his drink all the time, and has only been taught to repress his appetite; if he had been steadily and carefully taught real self-control, he would have learnt to control and drop his interior desire, and thus keep permanently free.  How often we see intemperance which had shown itself in drink simply turned into another channel, another form of selfish indulgence, and yet the victim will complacently boast of his self-control.  An extreme illustration of this truth is shown in the case of a well-known lecturer on temperance.  He had given up drink, but he ate like a glutton, and his thirst for applause was so extreme as to make him appear almost ridiculous when he did not receive it.

The opportunities for self-control are, of course, innumerable; indeed they constitute pretty much the whole of life.  We are living in freedom and use, real living use, in proportion as we are in actual control of our selfish selves, and led by our love of useful service.  In proportion as we have through true self-control brought ourselves into daily and hourly obedience to law, are we in the freedom that properly belongs to our lives and their true uses.