he straw, prefers to work patiently at building a fire whose
moderate heat will afford him a durable and useful warmth.

Let us then beware of sudden unreasoning enthusiasms. After the
ephemeral flame of their first ardor has burned itself out we shall but
find ourselves seated by the mass of ashes formed of our mistakes and
our dead energies.

The rock on which so many abortive attempts are wrecked in the effort to
achieve poise is a type of sentimentality peculiar to certain natures.

This state of mind is characterized by a craving for expansion, which is
all the more irritating since the timidity of the person concerned
prevents it from being satisfied.

In place of relying upon themselves, feeling their disabilities and the
lack of poise which prevents them from proper expression, such people
try to make themselves understood by those who do not appreciate their
feelings, without stopping to think that they have done nothing to make
clear what they really need.

Such a chaotic state of mind, based on errors of judgment, is a very
serious obstacle to the acquisition of poise.

This anxiety to communicate their feelings, always rendered ineffective
by the difficulty of making the effort involved, gives rise in the long
run to a species of misanthropy.

It is a matter of common knowledge that misanthropy urges those who
suffer from it to fall back upon themselves, and from this state to that
of active hostility toward others the road is short, and timid people
are rarely able to pull up before they have traversed it.

There comes to them from this intellectual solitude an unhappiness so
profound that they are glad to be able to attribute to the mental
inferiority of others the condition of moral isolation in which they
live.

To insist that they are misunderstood, and to pride themselves upon the
fact, is the inevitable fate of those who never can summon up courage to
undertake a battle against themselves.

It seems to them a thousand times easier to say: "These minds are too
gross to comprehend mine," than to seek for a means of establishing an
understanding with those whom they tax with ignorance and insensibility.

They might, perhaps, be convinced of the utility to them of divulging
their feelings, could they be forced into a position where they had to
defend their ideas or were compelled to put up a fight on behalf of
their convictions.

In the ranks of the enemies of poise sullenness most certainly