is a living illustration
of the central place of the emotions in the realm of the personality.

But it is not the nervous person only who needs a better understanding
of his emotional life. The well man also gets angry for childish
reasons; he is prejudiced and envious, unhappy and suspicious for the
very same reason as is the nervous man. Since the working-capital of
energy is limited to a definite amount, the control of the emotions
becomes a central problem in any life,--a deciding factor in the
output and the outcome, as well as in comfort and happiness by the
way.

Nothing is harder for the average man to believe than this fact that
he really has the power to choose his emotions. He has been
dissatisfied with himself in his past reactions, and yet he has not
known how to change them. His anger or his depression has appeared so
undesirable to his best judgment and to his conscious reason that it
has seemed to be not a part of himself at all but an invasion from
without which has swept over him without his consent and quite beyond
control.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

Most of the confusion comes from the fact that we know only a part of
ourselves. What we do not consciously enjoy we believe we do not enjoy
at all. What we do not consciously choose we believe to be beyond our
power of choice,--the work of the evil one, or the natural depravity
of human nature, perhaps; but certainly not anything of our choosing.

The point is that a human being is so constituted that he can, without
knowing it, entertain at the same time two diametrically opposite
desires. The average person is not so unified as he believes, but is,
in fact, "a house divided against itself."

The words of the apostle Paul express for most of us the truth about
ourselves: "For what I would, that I do not; but what I hate that I
do." What Paul calls the law of his members warring against the law of
his mind is simply what we call to-day the instinctive desires coming
into conflict with our conscious ideal.

=Hidden Desires.= Although we choose our emotions, we choose in many
cases in response to a buried part of ourselves of which we are wholly
unaware, or only half-aware. When we do not like what we have chosen,
it is because the conscious part of us is out of harmony with another
part and that part is doing the choosing. If the emotions which we
choose are not those that the whole of us--or at least the
conscious--would desire, it is b