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Self-control also gives ability for promptness and the observance of order; the first, though formed as a habit, can soon become a principle, and so ennoble the wearisomeness of details. It is the clock-work guiding life, while unpunctuality is a robbery of one's own, and a sure robbery of others' time. The principle clinches the purpose by carrying it into action at once. It sees that if a thing is right to do now it is wrong to do it by and by. It wastes not its powers for work, and never loses energy or freshness of feeling; it accepts no excuse of carelessness or absent-mindedness, for excuse in itself implies that the reason offered as excuse was not necessity. It leads to the great law of Order, which allows no minor derelictions in personal lives.

We are governed by this principle while yet governing its details. Many persons become slaves to a fixed recurrence of action, considering that recurrence alone as order; but self-sacrifice often demands the neglect of little