We must do our best, in fine, to develop the power of our gaze, while studying to fortify ourselves against the influence brought to bear upon us in this direction by others.
One frequently notices, especially in the case of people who are timid, a propensity to lose their powers of resistance with those who are able to fix them with a steady stare.
One has often seen people who lack will-power emerging completely upset from the grueling of an interview in which they have admitted everything that they had most fervently resolved never to disclose.
A superior force has dominated them to such an extent that they have found it impossible to conduct the discussion in the way they had planned to do it.
The man who is in earnest about acquiring poise must, then, be on his guard against betraying himself under the magnetism of some one else's gaze.
At the same time he must cultivate his own powers of the eye, so that he, too, can possess that ability against which, in others, he must be careful to protect himself, and can utilize it for his own ends.
The first principle is to avoid looking directly into the pupils of one's interlocutor.
This is the only way in which a beginner can avoid being affected by the magnetism of the gaze.
By this word magnetism we have in mind nothing verging in the least upon the supernatural.
We have reference only to the well-known physical discomfort experienced by those who have not yet become masters of poise when meeting a steady stare.