THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE
The American Magazine was founded in the early 1900s and lasted in various forms until the mid-1900s. In this personal improvement section from a 1921 issue, the author offers self-help in the form of diagnosis and questioning. How you answer these questions will tell a lot about your character and the way you treat women.
Are your actions toward the opposite sex such as to suggest coarseness, over-familiarity, or lack of respect?
. . . Do you treat every woman acquaintance as you would have other men treat your sister? Do you confine your demonstrations of affectionate intimacy to your wife, or the woman you wish to make your wife?
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Is your self-respect and decent-mindedness such as is apparent from your everyday conduct, or is it the kind you talk about and to which you call attention?
Are you supercilious? Do you always find something to criticize in anybody or anything that is mentioned? Do you rarely find a book, a play, or a person that entirely pleases you? Are you anxious to be thought superior, sophisticated?
Are you cheerful? Are you frequently glum, morose, irritable, petulant? Or are you habitually, and do you constantly study to be, kindly, sympathetic, interested in others?
Are you egotistic? Are you vain, of your appearance, your position, your possessions, your success? Do you talk incessantly about yourself, of what people say of you, of what you think and of what you own?
Are you loyal? Can your friend depend upon you under all circumstances? Do you defend him when others cast aspersion upon him in his absence? Do you speak even more enthusiastically of him behind his back than to his face?
Are you loyal to your wife . . . to your sweetheart? Are you ashamed of your father or mother? Are you loyal to your country? Would you fight for it? Would you refuse to take part in anything that might work harm to your country? Are you interested enough in your country to do your duty as a citizen, or do you shirk your civic obligations?
In using these tests we should not be discouraged if we find many a weak spot in our character. The object is not to encourage morbidity nor to provoke despair. But a right-minded person always wants to know the truth. If he is deficient, he strives to improve; if he is proficient, he goes on to still better things.
Many years ago the Greeks put forward a wise word which we yet may do well to heed. It was, in fact, two words. They were: “Know Thyself!”