we neglect small traits of character,
we have only ourselves to blame if we afterwards learn to our
disadvantage what this character is in the great affairs of life. On
the same principle, we ought to break with so-called friends even in
matters of trifling moment, if they show a character that is malicious
or bad or vulgar, so that we may avoid the bad turn which only waits
for an opportunity of being done us. The same thing applies to
servants. Let it always be our maxim: Better alone than amongst
traitors.

[Footnote 1: _Ep_., 52.]

Of a truth the first and foremost step in all knowledge of mankind is
the conviction that a man's conduct, taken as a whole, and in all its
essential particulars, is not governed by his reason or by any of the
resolutions which he may make in virtue of it. No man becomes this or
that by wishing to be it, however earnestly. His acts proceed from his
innate and unalterable character, and they are more immediately and
particularly determined by motives. A man's conduct, therefore, is the
necessary product of both character and motive. It may be illustrated
by the course of a planet, which is the result of the combined effect
of the tangential energy with which it is endowed, and the centripetal
energy which operates from the sun. In this simile the former energy
represents character, and the latter the influence of motive. It is
almost more than a mere simile. The tangential energy which properly
speaking is the source of the planet's motion, whilst on the
other hand the motion is kept in check by gravitation, is, from a
metaphysical point of view, the will manifesting itself in that body.

To grasp this fact is to see that we really never form anything more
than a conjecture of what we shall do under circumstances which are
still to happen; although we often take our conjecture for a resolve.
When, for instance, in pursuance of a proposal, a man with the
greatest sincerity, and even eagerness, accepts an engagement to do
this or that on the occurrence of a certain future event, it is by
no means certain that he will fulfil the engagement; unless he is so
constituted that the promise which he gives, in itself and as such, is
always and everywhere a motive sufficient for him, by acting upon him,
through considerations of honour, like some external compulsion. But
above and beyond this, what he will do on the occurrence of that event
may be foretold from true and accurate knowledge of his c