We have learned in the previous chapter how greatly the vice of lack of
confidence in oneself can retard the development of the quality we are
considering.

Balanced between the desire to succeed and the fear of failure, the
timid man leads a miserable existence, tortured by unavailing regrets
and by no less useless aspirations, which torment him like the worm that
dieth not.

Little by little the habit of physical inaction engenders a moral
inertia and the victim learns to fly from every opportunity of escaping
from his bondage.

Very soon an habitual state of idleness takes possession of him and
causes him to avoid everything that tends to make action necessary.

The dread of responsibility that might devolve upon him turns him aside
from every sort of endeavor, and he passes his life in a hopeless and
sluggish inaction, from a fear of drawing down upon himself reproaches
to which he might have to make answer or of being compelled to take part
in discussions which would involve the disturbing of his indolent
repose.

Are we to suppose then that he finds real happiness in such a state of
things?

Certainly not, for this negative existence weighs upon him with all the
burden of a monotony that he feels powerless to throw off. His own
mediocrity enrages him while the success of others fills him with
dismay.