Poise: How to Attain It Part 7

Boasting is not courage. Still less is it poise.

Poise is a power derived from the mastery of self. It inhibits all outward manifestations that are likely to result in giving information to strangers with regard to our real feelings.

Braggarts can not avoid this stumbling-block. They know nothing of the delights of contemplation, from which arise ripe resolutions that will be steadfastly followed.

With the noise of their boastings, with the shouting of their own braggart inept.i.tudes, they hypnotize themselves so thoroughly that they are quite unable to hear the counsel that sane wisdom whispers in their ears.

They are like the man in the eastern fable who was quite unable to follow a beaten path and was constantly wandering across the fields of his neighbors.

These detours were in general much longer than the direct road would have been, and he received a constant stream of abuse, to say nothing of blows, from the people whose crops he was ruining.

But he seemed quite insensible to a.s.saults and insisted upon following, across lots, a road which led nowhere.

It would be difficult to paint a more faithful portrait. Like the peasant in the story, the man of effrontery is always wandering far from the common road, the tranquil peace of which he despises.

He delights in crossing land that he knows to be forbidden to him, seeks to force open gates that are closed at his approach, and, if he can not overcome the opposition of the porter, watches for the moment when an open window will permit him entrance into a house where he will be coldly, if not angrily, received.

What is the result of this?

Nothing favorable to his plans, one may be sure. People point him out.

They fly from him, and were he the bearer of the most advantageous proposition, refuse to put any faith in his a.s.sertions as soon as they get to know him in the least.

Effrontery may sometimes impose upon the innocent. But it is only a momentary deception, quickly dissipated the moment that time is given to estimate the emptiness of its claims.

There is another variety of effrontery that is comparable to the form of courage exhibited by the timorous who sing in a loud voice in order to lessen their terror and imagine that by so doing they give the illusion of bravery.

People of this sort talk very loudly, often contradicting themselves, and pa.s.s judgment upon everything, dismissing the most difficult questions with only a pa.s.sing thought, but remain silent and are put completely out of countenance as soon as one insists upon their listening to reason, or when--in familiar language--they "meet their match."

The man of effrontery is a pa.s.sionate devotee of bluff, and not only of that variety of which Jonathan d.i.c.k has said:

"It is a security discounted in advance."

A little further on he adds:

"Bluffers of the right sort are only so when the occasion demands it, in order to give the impression that the wished-for result has already been achieved.

"As soon as their credit is a.s.sured and appearances have become realities that allow them to establish themselves in positions of security they at once cease the effort to deceive."

Our author concludes:

"Bluff, to be successful, must never be founded upon puerility or brag."

Now these two qualities are always to be met with in the doings of the man of effrontery, who only achieves by accident the goal he aims at, and then only in the most insecure way.

Drawbacks differing as to their causes, but equally unlucky as to their results, are born of the opposite fault--modesty.

It is high time to destroy the leniency shown toward this defect that old-fashioned educators once decorated with the t.i.tle of virtue.

Time has forged ahead, taking with it in its rapid course all forms of progress, which, in its turn, has made giant strides.

Ideas have changed materially. Modern life has to face emergencies formerly undreamed of, and those who still believe in the virtue of modesty are their own enemies, as well as those of the people whom they advise to cultivate it.

The case of this man is similar to that of many others, whose meaning has been undergoing a gradual change due to the erroneous interpretation that has deliberately been placed upon it.

Modesty is very frequently nothing more than an evidence of incompetence.

It has rise in sentiments that the man who would be up to date must avoid at all hazards--distrust of self and hatred of exertion.

One rarely finds it in the man who is active and who knows his own worth. To revenge itself, it flourishes among the lazy, who try to save their pride and to conceal their secret irritation at the successes of others by a.s.suming an humble att.i.tude and exclaiming:

"Oh! I didn't care to do it!"

Or still more frequently:

"No, I haven't entered the lists. I am absolutely without ambition!"

Under similar circ.u.mstances people who are unknown cry out, and with reason:

"Oh! I have a horror of publicity!"

This is simply a roundabout way of informing us that were it not for their retiring modesty, the hundred mouths of rumor would be shouting their praise.

Modesty is very rarely what it appears to be. As soon as it exhibits the form of a wise reserve it must be called by another name: prudence and self-justification.

The att.i.tude of trying to keep one's actions from becoming known is not a laudable one, and can only be adopted as the result of a philosophy of inaction.

What treasures of knowledge would have remained unknown to us if all the scientists and all the men of genius had made a practise of modesty!

If our forefathers had been modest, when it was the fashion to be proud of this quality, our museums would be empty and only a few of the initiated would know that men of exceptional merit, which they had sedulously concealed, had written ma.n.u.scripts which had never been published. The humility of the writers in such cases could be made to pay too severe a penalty.

No! Men who have merits are not modest! This false virtue is the appanage of none but weak and irresolute hearts.

We should congratulate ourselves, while admitting these facts, that our forefathers were not so const.i.tuted, and that their faith in themselves, by giving them confidence in their own work, made it possible for them to hand these on to their descendants.

Of what use to us would it be to know that a poem of finer quality and more splendid fire than any we have ever read had once been written, if the modesty of its author had led him to keep it always in his pocket and it had finally vanished into the limbo of ignored and forgotten things?

It is then actually wrong to sing the praises of modesty, which is no more than distrust of oneself, egoism, and laziness.

The man who boasts of his modesty will feel no shame at producing nothing. He hides his inept.i.tude behind this convenient veil whose thickness allows him to hint of the existence of things which are nothing but figments of his imagination.

We might add that the man who proclaims his modesty enters the struggle with a decided handicap against him. The moment he begins to have doubts about his own powers he will be sure to find himself the prey of an unfortunate indecision, and that at the very moment when he is called upon to perform some decisive action.

"One day," says an old writer, "three men, in the course of a climb up a mountain, found themselves confronted by a creva.s.se that they must cross.

"One of these was a timid man, another a boaster, and the third was possest of a reasoned poise.

"The boaster made a jump without stopping to think and without taking the trouble to measure the gap. He plunged into it.