He little realized how many times his advice would recur to me elsewhere than on the links. Retrospective worry can be absolutely eliminated from the most obsessive mind by the practice of the veteran's philosophy.
Mercier says the greatest intellectual gift is the ability to forget.
The conscientious self-analyst spends too much time in weighing his ability or inability to perform some task. Between his fear, his worry over the past, and his indecision whether the task should be attempted, he starts with an overwhelming handicap. If he learns to say, "Other people fail; it will not matter if I do this time," he will find the task already half accomplished.
The Rev. Francis Tiffany has observed that if a ship could think, and should imagine itself submerged by all the waves between here and Europe, it would dread to leave its moorings; but in reality it has to meet but one wave at a time.
The tendency of the average American in this bustling age, whether he is obsessive or not, is to live at least several hours in advance. On the train he takes no comfort and makes no observations, for his mind is upon his destination rather than on his journey.
Though the immediate object of these chapters is the promotion of the mental, and indirectly the physical, health of the individual, I cannot forbear referring to the effect of this training on the position of the individual in society and his relation toward his surroundings.
The endeavor to overcome obsessions is likely to be ignored by two classes: the self-centered individuals who see no reason for learning what they do not want to learn, and the individuals who have no time for, or interest in, self-training because of absorption in subjects of wider relation, as art, or science, or reform. The philosophy of Haeckel applies to both:
"Man belongs to the social vertebrates, and has, therefore, like all social animals, two sets of duties--first to himself, and secondly to the society to which he belongs. The former are the behests of self-love, or egoism, the latter love for one's fellows, or altruism. The two sets of precepts are equally just, equally natural, and equally indispensable. If a man desires to have the advantage of living in an organized community, he has to consult not only his own fortune, but also that of the society, and of the 'neighbors' who form the society. He must realize that its prosperity is his own prosperity, and that it cannot suffer without his own injury."