There is in every effort a necessary limit that it is not wise to exceed.

"Never force your talents," says a very pithy proverb. Never undertake to do a thing that is beyond your powers.

Never allow yourself to be drawn into a discussion on a subject which is beyond your intellectual depth. To do so is to take the risk of making mistakes that will render you ridiculous.

But if you are quite convinced that you can come out victorious, never hesitate to enter a trial of wits that may serve as an occasion for demonstrating the fact that you are sure of your subject.

The man who cultivates poise will never let pa.s.s such opportunities as this for exhibiting himself in a favorable light.

Conscious of the soundness of his own judgment, and filled with a real sincerity toward himself, he will not allow himself to be carried away by a possible chance of success. Rather will he gather himself together, collect his forces, and wait until he can achieve a real effect upon the minds of those whom he wishes to impress.

Similarly the result of unsuccess in such a venture is obvious. It has the effect of developing a distrust of oneself and of destroying the superb a.s.surance of those people of whom it is often said: "Oh, he! He is sailing with the wind at his back!"

People generally fail to add in these cases that such persons have left nothing undone to accomplish this result and are more than careful not to weigh anchor when the wind is not favorable.

It is true enough that there can be no actual shelter from a storm, but the mariner who is prepared is able to ride it out without appreciable damage, while those who are not prepared generally founder on account of their poor seamanship.

Disregard of calumny is always the index of a n.o.ble spirit.

The man who wastes time over such indignities and who allows himself to be affected by them is not of the stature that insures victory in the struggle.

Minds of large caliber disdain these manifestations of futile jealousy.

People of obscurity are never vilified. Only those whose merits have placed them in the limelight are the targets for the attacks of envy and for the slanders of falsehood.

A precept that has often been enunciated, and can not be too often repeated, which should, indeed, be inscribed in letters of gold over the doors of every inst.i.tution where men meet together, runs as follows: "Envy and malice are nothing more than homage rendered to superiority."

Only those who occupy an enviable position can become objects of calumny.

Such calumny is always the work of the unworthy, who think to advertise their own merits by denying those of better men.

Men of resolution under such circ.u.mstances simply shrug their shoulders and pa.s.s by.

The rest, those who are enslaved by timidity, become confused.

Their ego, which they cultivated in a fashion at once obscure and absolute, becomes so profoundly affected that they lack all courage to openly defend it.

Moreover, that instinctive need of sympathy, which is so marked a characteristic of the timid, is deeply wounded, while their chronic fear of disapprobation is strengthened by the criticisms spread abroad.

The illogicality of these sentiments is obvious. The man who is timid shuns society, yet nevertheless the judgments of this same society are for him a question of absorbing interest. Timidity is, in effect, a disease of many forms, every one of which is founded upon illogicality.

It is always a mental weakness. It is sometimes vanity, but never pride, that reasonable pride that a philosophy now abandoned once numbered as one of the princ.i.p.al vices, and which, if rightly estimated, can be considered as the motive power of every n.o.ble action.

Pride is a force. It is therefore a virtue which must of necessity be one of the components of poise, so long as it contains within it no seeds of vanity. Under such circ.u.mstances it is a primal condition of success in the achievement of poise. Pride must, however, be free from vanity, otherwise it ceases to be a force and becomes a cause of deterioration.

As a matter of fact, those who are conceited are always the dupes of their own desire to bulk largely in the minds of others, and at the mere thought that they will not shine as they have hoped to do the majority of them are put entirely out of countenance and are quite at a loss for means of expression.

The inevitable result of this tendency is to drive them into a.s.sociation with mediocrity. In such a society alone will the vain find themselves at their ease. But the very moment that they find themselves in the presence of those who are their superiors, the fear of not being able to occupy the front rank throws them into such a state of mental disarray that they entirely lose their a.s.surance and that appearance of poise by whose aid they are often able to deceive others.

Finally, one of the most solid elements of poise is, without doubt, a well-defined ambition, that is to say, one that is divested of the drawbacks of frivolity and directly winged toward the goal of one's hopes.

The man who possesses ambition of this kind is certainly destined to acquire, if he has not already acquired it, that poise which is absolutely necessary to him in order to make his way in the world.

He will neither be pretentious nor timorous, exaggerated nor fearful. He will go forward without hesitation toward the goal which he knows to be before him, and will make, without any apologies, those detours which seem to him necessary to the success of his undertaking, without paying any attention to the fruitless distractions that make victims of the rash.

He will not have to put up with the affront of being refused, for he will ask aid only of those persons who, for various reasons, he is practically sure will be of a.s.sistance to him. The knowledge of his own deserts, while keeping him in the position he has attained, will prevent him from being satisfied in commonplace surroundings, and his will-power will always maintain him at the level he has reached, permitting him no lat.i.tude save that of exceeding it.

Such is true poise, not that whose spirit one violates by merely a.s.sociating it with the incapable, the pretentious, or the extravagant, but that which is at once the motive power and the inspiration of all the actions of those who, in their determination to force their way through the great modern struggle for existence, perseveringly follow a line of conduct that they have worked out for themselves in advance.

Ignoring such enterprises as they know to be unworthy of their powers, those who are possest of real poise (and not of that foolish temerity colloquially known as _bluff_) will devote themselves solely to such tasks as a well-ordered judgment and an accurate knowledge of their own potentialities indicate to them to be fitting.

Does this mean that they will succeed in every case?

Unfortunately, no! But such of them as have met with temporary failure, if they are able to a.s.sure themselves that their lack of success has been due neither to a failure of will-power nor a fear of ridicule, will return to the charge, once more prepared to make headway against circ.u.mstances which they have the poise to foresee, and which they will at least render incapable of harming them, even if they lack the necessary force to dominate them completely to their own advantage.

CHAPTER II

THE ENEMIES OF POISE

The enemies of poise are many and of different origins, both of feeling and of impulse.

They all tend, however, toward the same result, the cessation of effort under pretexts more or less specious.

It is of no use deceiving ourselves. Lack of poise has its roots deep in all the faults which are caused by apathy and purposeless variety.

We have learned in the previous chapter how greatly the vice of lack of confidence in oneself can r.e.t.a.r.d the development of the quality we are considering.

Balanced between the desire to succeed and the fear of failure, the timid man leads a miserable existence, tortured by unavailing regrets and by no less useless aspirations, which torment him like the worm that dieth not.

Little by little the habit of physical inaction engenders a moral inertia and the victim learns to fly from every opportunity of escaping from his bondage.

Very soon an habitual state of idleness takes possession of him and causes him to avoid everything that tends to make action necessary.

The dread of responsibility that might devolve upon him turns him aside from every sort of endeavor, and he pa.s.ses his life in a hopeless and sluggish inaction, from a fear of drawing down upon himself reproaches to which he might have to make answer or of being compelled to take part in discussions which would involve the disturbing of his indolent repose.

Are we to suppose then that he finds real happiness in such a state of things?

Certainly not, for this negative existence weighs upon him with all the burden of a monotony that he feels powerless to throw off. His own mediocrity enrages him while the success of others fills him with dismay.

Nevertheless his weakness of character allows the hate of action to speak more loudly to him than legitimate ambition, and keeps him in a state of obvious inferiority that of itself gives birth to numberless new enemies, who end by destroying him utterly.

He is first attacked by slowness of comprehension, the inevitable consequence of that idleness that causes the cowardly to shun the battle.