The man who essays to dig a piece of ground or to wheel a barrow, will find himself making irregular ditches and traveling in zigzags, and all this at the expense of a hundred times the energy put forth by the workman who is accustomed to these particular forms of labor.

The person of timidity who boasts of his remarkable exploits is actuated, as a general rule, by sheer lack of experience.

His peculiar fault keeps him always in the background and prevents him from accomplishing any public action, and for this reason those efforts appear easy to him that he has never thought of attempting.

Further than this, aided by his false pride, he considers that his merits are easily greater than those of the people who are not able to understand him, and he is acting in perfect good faith when he professes to be able to accomplish what they can not.

Is it necessary to add that the ironical reception given to such exhibitions of boastfulness rouse in him a feeling of irritation which is all the greater for the fact that he does not openly show it?

The man of resolve will never experience these unpleasant emotions.

He knows exactly what he wants and what he can do.  So we see him marching ahead steadily, his eyes fixt upon the goal he has worked out for himself, paying no heed whatever to misleading suggestions, which cripple his breadth of soul and would in the end deprive him of that essential energy which is vital to him if he would preserve his even poise, the foundation of mental balance and the source of every real success in life.

CHAPTER III

WAR ON TIMIDITY

One can not be too insistent in asserting how harmful the lack of poise can be, and when once this weakness has reached the stage of timidity it may produce the most tragic consequences not only so far as the daily routine of our lives is concerned, but also with reference to our moral and physical equilibrium.

So, when the nervous system is constantly set on edge by the emotions to which this fault gives rise, it necessarily follows that all the faculties suffer in their turn.

This is particularly true of those who are constantly haunted by the fear of finding themselves in a condition of mental unpreparedness, to the extent that they prefer to remain in solitude and silence rather than to mingle in a world which really has too many other things to think of to concern itself with their acts or their opinions.

This morbid dread of becoming the subject of ridicule ends by creating a peculiar condition of mind of which, as we have already pointed out, egoism is the pivot.

In this way it is a common occurrence to see people of timidity paying exaggerated attention to the slightest changes in the condition of their health.

Such people by shutting themselves out from the world have reduced it to the circumference of their own personalities and everything which touches them necessarily assumes gigantic importance in their eyes.