essary to dread and avoid. One can generally establish a _modus
vivendi_, and unless the man is untrustworthy as well, one may hope to
live peacefully with him. The worst point about our friend is that he
is frankly jealous, and woe betide you if you gain any species of
reputation on lines that he does not approve. Then indeed nothing can
save you, because he resents your success as a personal injury done to
his own.

The truth is that anyone who has any pronounced views at all, any
definite strain of temperament, is sure to encounter people who are
entirely uncongenial. What one is bound to do is to realise that there
is abundant room for all kinds of personalities in the world, and it is
much better not to protest and censure unless one is absolutely certain
that the temperament one dislikes is a mischievous one. It is not
necessarily mischievous to be quarrelsome, though a peaceable person
may dislike it. There is no reason whatever why two quarrelsome people,
if they enjoy it, should not have a good set-to. What is mischievous is
if a man is brutal and tyrannical, and prefers a tussle with an
inoffensive person who is no match for him. That is a piece of
cowardice, and protest is more than justifiable. There is a fine true
story of a famous head-master, who disliked a weakling, putting on a
stupid, shy, and ungainly boy to construe, and making deliberate fun of
him. There was a boy present, of the stuff of which heroes are made,
who got up suddenly in his place and said, "You are not teaching that
boy, sir; you are bullying him." The head-master had the generosity to
bear his censurer no grudge for his outspokenness. But even if one is
sure that one's indignation is justified and that one's contempt is
deserved, it is a very dangerous thing to assume the disapproving
attitude. One may know enough of a man to withstand him to the face, if
one is sure that his action is base or cruel; one can hardly ever know
enough of a man's temperament and antecedents to condemn him
unreservedly. It is scarcely possible to be sure that a man is worse
than he need have been, or that one would have done better if one had
been in his place; and thus one must try to resist any expression of
personal disapproval, because such an expression implies a
consciousness of moral superiority, and the moment that one is
conscious of that, as in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican,
the position of the condemner and the condemned is insta