There is besides another reason for allowing subordinate or indifferent people to see one’s weaknesses. The reason is that we hate those who are witnesses of a great weakness. Partly it is shame, partly vexation at oneself, partly pure egoism, but it is a fact that one’s anger turns instinctively upon those who have observed one’s degradation through one’s own weakness. This is so frequently the case that the witness is to be the more relied on the more the accused would seem to have preferred that the witness had not seen him. Insignificant people are not taken as real witnesses; they were there but they haven’t perceived anything; and by the time it comes to light that they see at least as well as anybody else, it is too late. One will not go far wrong in explaining the situation with the much varied epigram of Tacitus: “Figulus odit figulum.” It is, at least, through business-jealousy that one porter hates another, and the reason for it lies in the fact that two of a trade know each other’s weaknesses, that one always knows how the other tries to hide his lack of knowledge, how deceitful fundamentally every human activity is, and how much trouble everybody takes to make his own trade appear to the other as fine as possible. If you know, however, that your neighbor is as wise as you are, the latter becomes a troublesome witness in any disagreeable matter, and if he is often thought of in this way, he comes to be hated. Hence you must never be more cautious than when one “figulus” gives evidence about another. Esprit de corps and jealousy pull the truth with frightful force, this way and that, and the picture becomes the more distorted because so-called esprit de corps is nothing more than generalized selfishness. Kant[86] is not saying enough when he says that the egoist is a person who always tries to push his own _I_ forward and to make it the chief object of his own and of everybody else’s attention. For the person who merely seeks attention is only conceited; the egoist, however, seeks his own advantage alone, even at the cost of other people, and when he shows esprit de corps he desires the advantage of his corps because he also has a share in that. In this sense one of a trade has much to say about his fellow craftsmen, but because of jealousy, says too little--in what direction, however, he is most likely to turn depends on the nature of the case and the character of the witness.