terful and odious to weaklings, who think they know
themselves because they indulge in copious soliloquy (which is the
discourse of brutes and madmen), but who really know nothing of their
own capacity, situation, or fate.

If Rousseau, for instance, after writing those Confessions in which
candour and ignorance of self are equally conspicuous, had heard some
intelligent friend, like Hume, draw up in a few words an account of
their author's true and contemptible character, he would have been loud
in protestations that no such ignoble characteristics existed in his
eloquent consciousness; and they might not have existed there, because
his consciousness was a histrionic thing, and as imperfect an expression
of his own nature as of man's. When the mind is irrational no practical
purpose is served by stopping to understand it, because such a mind is
irrelevant to practice, and the principles that guide the man's practice
can be as well understood by eliminating his mind altogether. So a wise
governor ignores his subjects' religion or concerns himself only with
its economic and temperamental aspects; if the real forces that control
life are understood, the symbols that represent those forces in the mind
may be disregarded. But such a government, like that of the British in
India, is more practical than sympathetic. While wise men may endure it
for the sake of their material interests, they will never love it for
itself. There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathised with, while
nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see
one's equation written out.

[Sidenote: Consciousness untrustworthy.]

Nevertheless this same algebraic sense for character plays a large part
in human friendship. A chief element in friendship is trust, and trust
is not to be acquired by reproducing consciousness but only by
penetrating to the constitutional instincts which, in determining action
and habit, determine consciousness as well. Fidelity is not a property
of ideas. It is a virtue possessed pre-eminently by nature, from the
animals to the seasons and the stars. But fidelity gives friendship its
deepest sanctity, and the respect we have for a man, for his force,
ability, constancy, and dignity, is no sentiment evoked by his floating
thoughts but an assurance founded on our own observation that his
conduct and character are to be counted upon. Smartness and vivacity,
much emotion and many conceits, are obstacles both to