Thus we seldom feel keenly that our acts are wrong until we perceive that they arouse some sort of resentment in others, and whatever selfish aggression we can practise without arousing resistance, we presently come to look upon as a matter of course. Judging the matter from my own consciousness and experience, I have no belief in the theory that non-resistance has, as a rule, a mollifying influence upon the aggressor. I do not wish people to turn me the other cheek when I smite them, because, in most cases, that has a bad effect upon me. I am soon used to submission and may come to think no more of the unresisting sufferer than I do of the sheep whose flesh I eat at dinner. Neither, on the other hand, am I helped by extravagant and accusatory opposition; that is likely to put me into a state of unreasoning anger. But it is good for us that everyone should maintain his rights, and the rights of others with whom he sympathizes, exhibiting a just and firm resentment against any attempt to tread upon them. A consciousness, based on experience, that the transgression of moral standards will arouse resentment in the minds of those whose opinion we respect, is a main force in the upholding of such standards. But the doctrine of non-resistance, like all ideas that have appealed to good minds, has a truth wrapped up in it, notwithstanding what appears to be its flagrant absurdity. What the doctrine really means, as taught in the New Testament and by many individuals and societies in our own day, is perhaps no more than this, that we should discard the coarser weapons of resistance for the finer, and threaten a moral resentment instead of blows or lawsuits. It is quite true that we can best combat what we regard as evil in another person of ordinary sensibility by attacking the higher phases of his self rather than the lower. If a man appears to be about to do something brutal or dishonest, we may either encounter him on his present low plane of life by knocking him down or calling a policeman, or we may try to work upon his higher consciousness by giving him to understand that we feel sure a person of his self-respect and good repute will not degrade himself, but that if anything so improbable and untoward should occur, he must, of course, expect the disappointment and contempt of those who before thought well of him. In other words, we threaten, as courteously as possible, his social self. This method is often much more efficient than the other, is morally edifying instead of degrading, and is practised by men of address who make no claim to unusual virtue.