foster, rather than lessen, the pedantry and the self-study which it is
intended to combat. Why not simply drop the worry and the doubt without
further argument? The difficulty is that the mental processes of the
over-scrupulous person are such that he cannot summarily drop a habit of
thought. He must reason himself out of it. There is no limit to his ability
if properly directed; he can gradually modify all his faulty tendencies,
and may even finally acquire the habit of automatically dismissing worry,
but it would be too much to expect that he suddenly change his very nature
at command.

Soukanhoff's description of obsessives is peculiarly apt: "over-scrupulous,
disquieted over trifles, indecisive in action, and anxious about their
affairs. They are given early to morbid introspection, and are easily
worried about their own indispositions or the illnesses of their friends.
They are often timorous and apprehensive, and prone to pedantism. The
moral sentiments are pronounced in most cases, and if they are, as a rule,
somewhat exigent and egotistic, they have a lively sense of their own
defects."

A common obsession is the compulsion to dwell upon the past, to reproduce
the circumstances, and painfully to retrace the steps which we took in
coming to an erroneous decision which led to a foolish, unnecessary, or
perhaps even a wrong decision. One of my earliest impressions in golf was
the remark of a veteran who was good enough to make a round with me. "If
I had only approached better, I should have made that hole in five," I
remarked, after taking seven strokes for a hole.

"Perhaps not," he replied; "if you had _approached better_, perhaps you
would have _putted worse_ and taken _eight_ strokes for the hole. At all
events, that hole is ancient history now, and you will play this one better