Every unfortunate speech should be recalled. One should formulate fresh replies, that lack of poise did not permit us to make at the time, so that under similar circumstances we may not be again caught at a disadvantage.
The witty name of "doorstep repartee" has been given to these answers which one makes as afterthoughts, with the idea of expressing the embarrassment of the man who can find no arguments until he finds himself beyond the reach of his opponents. It is after one has gone out, when one is on the doorstep, that one suddenly recognizes what one ought to have said, and finds the phrases that one should have used, the exact retort that one might have hurled at one's antagonist.
The man who has acquired poise should still accustom himself to practise this force of mental gymnastics when making his daily self-examination.
It will strengthen him for future contests by teaching him just how to conduct himself.
He must be always on his guard against one of the obsessions that too often afflict the timid--the mania for extremes.
The nature of a timid person is essentially artificial. His character is unequal.
He yearns for perfection, yet it is painful for him to meet it in others. He suffers also because he has failed to acquire it himself.
Sometimes he is his own most severe judge and then on other occasions he is grossly indulgent to his faults.
His isolation causes him to construct ideals that can not possibly be realized in ordinary life. But he is more than ready to blame those who fall short of them, while making no effort to duplicate their struggles.
He makes the sad mistake, as we have seen in the chapter on effrontery, of taking all his chimeras for realities and is angry at his inability to make other people see them in the same light.
He is, moreover, of a very trustful disposition and prone to the making of confidences. But when he attempts them his infirmity prevents him and he suffers under the inhibition.
All his mental processes, as we have seen, tend toward hypochondria, unless his sense of truth can be called into play.
One can easily see then that this daily self-examination can be made quite a difficult affair by all these conflicting tendencies.
It is for this very reason that it is so necessary that this examination should be rigorously undertaken every day and with all the good faith of which we are possest.