III The first form confused cowardly passivity, reserve, and parsimony with courageous resignation, while this militant egotism confuses strength with its display. The only true energy is that which is ordered and disciplined. We are born in a state of dependence. We depend on all kinds of particular conditions; conditions of country, race, family, environment, education, health, brains, fortune; for there are no men that are free, and herein lies our great equality. Besides, in the course of our life, we shall depend on circumstances which we shall be able neither to foresee nor to avoid. We must resolutely accept this dependence. It is the chief of all heroisms. Not the heroism with the plumes and the flourish of trumpets, which individualism is willing to extol so as to raise the song of life to the major key; but an obscure heroism--the most difficult, for publicity is a great comfort--which must be sustained and manifested in the smallest things. That haughty individual, capable of heroic acts, shows himself, on coming down from his pedestal, perfectly unbearable and cowardly in the life which (let us not forget) is our daily life; while of another, apparently insignificant, we learn one day, often too late, that he has always been doing wonders. No life is devoid of opportunities to display merit; the thing is to seize these opportunities. But if we are, in one part of our life, dependent, another part of our life, on the contrary, depends on us. There, our will and our energy can and must come into play. It is their task to increase in wealth, importance, and value the inheritance of our life, as cultivation increases the natural fruitfulness of the land.