fitful efforts of will only heighten, alienating from them the sympathy which might be of assistance to them.

They take refuge in a species of mischievous and fruitless activity, leaving the field open to the development of all sorts of imaginary ills that argument does not serve to combat.

Their ego, whose importance is in no way counterbalanced by their appreciation of the friends they keep at a distance, fills their entire existence to such an extent that they have no doubt whatever that, when they are in public, every eye is, of necessity, fixt upon them.

Their negative will leaves them at the mercy of every sort of emotion, which, in arousing in them the necessity of a reaction they feel themselves powerless to realize, reduces them to a state of inferiority that, when it becomes known, is the source of grave embarrassment to them.

The power of will which sustains those who wish to acquire the habit of poise is, then, the capacity to accomplish acts solely because one has the ardent desire to achieve them.

We are now speaking, understand, neither of extreme heroism or of impossibilities.

Another point presents itself here. Willpower, in order to preserve its energy, must be sustained and fixt. At this price alone can we achieve poise. We must, therefore, thoroughly saturate ourselves with this principle: Reasoning-power is an essential element in the upbuilding of poise.

It is reasoning-power which teaches us to distinguish between those things that we must be careful to avoid and those which are part and parcel of the domain of exaggeration and fantasy.

It is also by means of reasoning that we arrive at the proper appreciation of the just mean that we must observe. It is by its aid that we are enabled to disentangle those impulses that will prove profitable from a chaos of useless risks.

It is always by virtue of deductions depending upon reason that we are able to adopt a resolution or to maintain an attitude that we believe to be correct, while preserving our self-possession under circumstances in which persons of a timorous disposition would certainly lose their heads.

Those who know how to reason never expose themselves to the possibility of being unhorsed by fate for lack of good reasons for strengthening themselves in their chosen course.

They adhere, in the very heat of discussion and in spite of the onslaughts of destiny, to the line of conduct that sage reflection has taught them to adopt and are more than careful never to abandon it except for the most valid reasons.

They never stray into the byways in which the timid and the shrinking constantly wander without sufficient thought of the goal toward which they are journeying.

They know where they are going, and if, now and again, they ask for information about the road that remains to be traveled, it is with no intention of changing their course, but simply so as not to miss the short cuts and to lose nothing of the pleasures of the scenes through which they may pass.

Reasoning-power is the trade-mark of superior minds. Mediocre natures take no interest in it and, as we have seen, the timid are incapable of it, except in so far as it follows the beaten path.

True poise never is guided by anything but reason. Certain risks can never be undertaken save after ripe deliberation.

Confusion is never the fate of those who are resolved on a definite line of conduct.

Such people are careful to plumb the questions with which they have to grapple and to weigh the inconveniences and the advantages of the acts they have the desire to accomplish.

When their decision is once made, however, nothing will prevent the completion of the work they have begun. Such people are ripe for success.

The knowledge of one's real worth is a quality doubly precious when contrasted with the fact that the majority of people are more than indulgent to their own failings. Of many of them it may be said, in the words of the Arab proverb, couched in the language of imagery: "This man has no money, but in his pocket everything turns to gold."

This saying, divested of the language of hyperbole, means simply that the man in question is so obsessed with the greatness of his own personal value that he exaggerates the importance of everything that concerns him.

This condition is a much more common one than one might at first believe. Many an occurrence which, when it happens to some one else, seems to us quite devoid of interest, becomes, when it directly affects us, a matter to compel the attention of others, to the extent that we find ourselves chilled and disappointed when we discover that we are the victims of that indifference which we were prepared to exhibit toward other people under similar circumstances.

The consciousness of our own worth must not be confounded with that adoration of self which transforms poise into egotism.

It is a good thing to know one's own powers sufficiently well to undertake only such tasks as are certainly within the scope of one's abilities.

To believe oneself more capable than one really is, is a fault that is far too common. It is, nevertheless, less harmful in the long run than the failing which is its exact antithesis. Lack of confidence in one's own powers is the source of every kind of feebleness and of all unsuccess.

It is for this reason that poise never can exist without another quality, that correctness of judgment which, in giving us the breadth of mind to know exactly how much we are capable of, permits us to undertake our tasks without boasting and without hesitation.

Soundness of judgment is the faculty of being able to appreciate the merits of our neighbors without cherishing any illusions as to our own, and of being able to do this so exactly that we can with assurance carry out to its end any undertaking, knowing that the result must be, barring accidents, precisely what we have foreseen.

This being the case, what possible reason can we have for depreciating ourselves or for lacking poise?

Timid people suffer without recognizing their own defects in the matter of insight.

They torture themselves by building their judgments upon indications and not upon facts.

If the perception of a man of resolution causes him to understand at once the emptiness of criticisms based on envy or spleen, the timid man, always ready to seize upon anything that can be possibly construed into an appearance of ridicule directed against himself, will give up a project that he hears criticized without stopping to weigh the value of the arguments advanced.

Far from arguing the question out, or attempting a rebuttal, he never even dreams of it. The very thought of a contest, however courteously it may be conducted, frightening him to such an extent that he loses all his ideas.

The unfortunate shrinking which characterizes him makes him an easy prey for people of exaggerated enthusiasms as well as to quick disillusionment.

A token of apparent sympathy touches him so profoundly that he does not wait to estimate its value and to decide whether it be sincere or not.

He passes in a moment from careless gaiety to the blackest despair if he imagines that he has observed even the appearance of an unsympathetic gesture.

He does not need to be sure, to be miserable. It is enough for him if the circumstances that he thought favorable become seemingly hostile and antagonistic.

How utterly different is the attitude of the man who is endowed with poise!

His firmness of soul saves him from unconsidered enthusiasms and he jealously