[QUESTIONS FOR YOUNG MEN.]
ON SELF-RESPECT.
If you beat a dog he puts his tail between his legs and either skulks off, or hangs around to receive a pardon later on. The beating, no doubt, frequently does the dog good. He cannot be reasoned with and told why certain things are to be done, hence he must be taught a reason which he can understand, and he can understand that pain will be inflicted on him if he repeats whatever he has just done. You in beating him realize this. If you beat a little girl with a stick, you have done something that was unnecessary in the first place, because she could be taught or reasoned with, but also, having done something you know to be unnecessary, you lose a certain faith, confidence, respect in yourself.
If you treat a friend in an unfair way, if you deceive him, if you tell him a lie for any reason or for no reason, the same feelings occur to you. You have not been found out; no one criticises you; but there is a certain consciousness in your mind which signifies that you have done something your real self disapproves of absolutely.
In a game of football, for instance, it is easy enough to hit a man under a crowd after a scrimmage. Some boys do hit and scratch and claw. They are seldom found out. Football is a good example, for there are more chances for chivalry and for meanness in the game than in most others or in most situations of young manhood. Yet not being found out does not seem to be of such great importance in the long-run. The fact that you have resorted to such means is known to you, and you cannot avoid the feeling that it has really done you rather more harm than it has the fellow you injured or tried to injure.
If you treat your mother without much thought, do what she asks as you feel inclined, and not if you do not feel so inclined, she is naturally grieved, and that may hurt you; but coming afterwards to think it over and realizing that she has perhaps in the last fifteen years done a good deal more for you than you have for her, there is a suggestion of disappointment, to say the least, in yourself that you should so far forget yourself as to act so to one whom you not only have the greatest affection for, but one whom you know should have the greatest attention and regard you can bestow.
If you scoff at some one's religious views, or make fun of the "old-fashioned ideas" of others, very likely you are in the right as to the idea in mind, but you cannot fail to realize afterwards that perhaps it was a bad piece of business when you failed to give the other person credit for a little sense, and the general result is a lack of pride in the incident.
The feeling resulting from all these situations is much the same, and it goes by the name of loss of self-respect. It is a lack of pride in what you have done, and no one can be on the road to the formation of a bad character who has not begun by failing to call himself to account for such matters; no one can really go further on this road so long as he maintains this self-respect. When an occasion requires its use it should be ready at hand. When there is a chance to hit a man under the crowd, if this self-respect gets in its work quickly enough, you are safe; but there needs to be constant training to put it into such good condition that it can be used on any emergency no matter how sudden that may be. And this self-respect is just as easily trained as is your body for its coming trial in the hundred-yard race. Train it as you would anything else, and it will invariably carry you over difficult places. But it gets "out of condition" easily, and you will miss it at the most important time.