Pity properly restricted to practical helpfulness without any sentimentality is a beautiful thing. There is always a danger, however, of its arousing in its object that self-pity which is so eminently unlovely and which has so often the direct tendency to increase rather than decrease whatever painful conditions are present. Crying over oneself is always to be considered at least hysterical. Crying, except over a severe loss, is almost unpardonable. {77} It is often said that a good cry, like a rainstorm, clears the atmosphere of murk and the dark elements of life, but it is dangerous to have recourse to it. It is a sign of lack of character almost invariably and when indulged in to any extent will almost surely result in deterioration of the power to withstand the trials of life, whatever they may be. Professor William James has suggested that not only should men and women stand the things that come to them in the natural course of events, but they should even go out and seek certain things hard to bear with the idea of increasing their power to withstand the unpleasant things of life. This is, of course, a very old idea in humanity, and the ascetics from the earliest days of Christianity taught the doctrine of self-inflicted suffering in order to increase the power of resistance. It is usually said that the principal idea which the hermits and anchorites and the saintly personages of the early Middle Ages, of whose mortifications we have heard so much, had in inflicting pain on themselves was to secure merit for the hereafter. Something of that undoubtedly was in their minds, but their main purpose was quite literally ascetic. _Ascesis_, from the Greek, means in its strict {78} etymology just exercise. They were exercising their power to stand trials and even sufferings, so that when these events came, as inevitably they would, seeing that we carry round with us what St. Paul called "this body of our death," they would be prepared for them. Practically any psychologist of modern times who has given this subject any serious thought will recognize, as did Professor James, the genuine psychology of human nature that lies behind these ascetic practices. Nothing that I know is so thoroughgoing a remedy for self-pity as the actual seeking at times of painful things in order to train oneself to bear them. The old-fashioned use of disciplines, that is, little whips which were used so vigorously sometimes over the shoulders as to draw blood, or the wearing of chains which actually penetrated the skin and produced quite serious pain no longer seems absurd, once it is appreciated that this may be a means of bracing up character and making the real trials and hardships of life much easier than would otherwise be the case.