Which of us has not been profoundly astonished at the enormous difficulty experienced in accomplishing some simple act of manual toil that we see performed without the least effort by a workman trained to this particular task?
What looks easier, for instance, than to plane a piece of wood or to dig up the ground?
Is it possible that the laborer, wheeling a barrow, really has to be possest of skill or strength?
It hardly seems so. And yet the man who takes a plane in his hands for the first time will be astounded at the difficulty he experiences in approximating to the regularity and lightness of stroke that comes naturally to the carpenter.
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.