If it were not absolutely essential to the purpose of a book like this that there should be a more or less detailed analysis of the character of the Yezdi, I should certainly shirk making such an analysis. The Yezdi’s faults are numerous, glaring, and interesting. His virtues are not only fewer, but there is much less to be said about them. In the concrete man, these virtues show fairly prominently, the vices have their peculiar humour, and the whole is not unlovable. On paper, while discussing the different points of the Yezdi’s character one by one, it will be almost impossible to convey the general effect made by the entire human being. When one first becomes acquainted with the Yezdi, one is inclined to regard him as so inconsistent in matters of morals as to be utterly devoid of all principle, bad or good. There is the same uncertainty about his actions that there is about the fall of an unloaded die. But just as the fall of the die is regulated by the law of averages, so the actions of the Yezdi are more or less consciously decided by what can only be termed systematised inconsistency, a kind of law of balance which seems to him to possess the merit of a principle. When he has done a certain number of good actions, which it must be confessed is frequently the case, then it is time for him to do some bad ones; and _vice versâ_, when he has done enough bad ones, he comes back for a time to good ones. This is partially the result of the theory of _savabs_; and the painful thing about it is that it makes moral trustworthiness impossible. If a man holds this pernicious theory as it was sketched in a previous chapter, then the more he has done right in the past the more he will feel justified in doing wrong in the future; and this in Yezd is no mere nightmare, but the literal fact. A good many of the Yezdis are frequently fair and straight in their dealings, but I do not know a single Mussulman among them, with regard to whom it would be fairly safe to depend on his doing the right thing on any particular occasion simply because he knew it to be right. There are men whose ordinary habits are fairly good, but to a man who considers that derelictions of duty can be absolutely paid for by past or future acts of merit not necessarily involving very much trouble, the temptation to yield to slightly increased pressure is very strong, and is likely to frequently overcome the bias of habit.