more than a screen behind which conscious ineptitude conceals
itself.

It is a very easy thing to strike a disdainful attitude and to exclaim:
"I didn't care to compete!"

Do not forget that a defeat after a sanguinary combat is infinitely more
honorable than a retreat in which not a blow is struck.

Moreover, the combats of the mind temper the soul, just as those of the
body fortify the flesh, by making both fit for the victory that is to
be.

It is then against the enemies of poise that we must go forth to war.

Cowardice must be hunted down, wherever we encounter it, because its
victims are thrown into the struggle of life burdened with an undeniable
inferiority.

Even if they are worth while no one will be found to observe it, since
their lack of poise always turns them back upon themselves, and very few
people have the wit to discover what is so sedulously concealed.

Deception is the necessary corollary of this, and one that very soon
becomes changed into spite. The disappointment of being misunderstood
must inevitably lead us to condemn those who do not comprehend us. Our
shyness will be increased at this and we shall end by disbelieving
ourselves in the qualities that we find other people ignoring in us.

From this condition of discouragement to that of mental inertia it is
but a step, and many worthy people who lack poise have rapidly traveled
this road to plunge themselves into the obscurity of renunciation.

They are like paralytics. Like these poor creatures they have limbs
which are of no service to them and which from habitual lack of
functioning end by becoming permanently useless.

If their nature is a bad one they will have still more reason to
complain of this lack of poise, with its train of inconveniences of
which we have been treating, that will leave them weakened and a prey to
all sorts of mental excesses which will be the more serious in their
effects for the fact that their existence is known to no one but the
victims.

Instead of admitting that their lack of poise-due to the various faults
of character we have been discussing--is the sole cause of the apparent
ostracism from which they suffer, they indulge in accusations against
fate, against the world, against circumstances, and grow to hate all
those who have succeeded, without being willing to acknowledge that they
have never seriously made the attempt themselves.

Only those return home with the spoils who have taken part in t