As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep
the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary
points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you
would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh,
it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism
of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods.
The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him
a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be
his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself
to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial
in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks
around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff
in the blast.
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