Fatigue is inevitable. The body and the mind have limits, and those limits are reached in the ordinary course of work, training, and the demands of the day. The differentiated individual does not treat fatigue as an exemption from the permanent measure. He treats it as the condition under which the measure is most clearly tested. When energy is abundant, almost any standard can be maintained. When energy is low, only the standard that has been made automatic continues to operate.
The age trains the young man to interpret fatigue as a signal to stop, to indulge, or to seek immediate recovery through stimulus. That interpretation is useful for the mass. It is lethal for the type that is being formed. Fatigue is the moment when the small decisions of the previous days either hold or collapse. The man who has ordered the morning, the body, and the speech under favorable conditions discovers under fatigue whether those orders were real or merely temporary.
Young men often confuse the refusal to yield under fatigue with a theatrical hardness. The distinction is simple. Theatrical hardness is performed for an audience or for the self-image. Real continuity under fatigue is quiet and does not require an audience. It simply continues the same actions that were established when the conditions were easier. The body may move more slowly. The mind may be less sharp. The measure itself remains in force.
When fatigue arrives, do not negotiate. Apply the same standard that was applied when energy was present. The work of intensification is completed only when the standard survives the periods of reduced capacity. That survival is what distinguishes a formed type from a sequence of successful days that have not yet been tested.