flatter. Nor again is the great-minded man much given to wonder; for to him there is nothing great. As little is he apt to store up a grudge; for a great-minded man will not remember trifles, especially petty offences, but will rather overlook them. Nor will he indulge in personal remarks of any kind, speaking little either about himself or others; for neither is he careful to be praised, nor pleased that others should be blamed; as little is he given to laud other people, or, on the other hand, to speak evil of others, even when they are his enemies, except perhaps occasionally, when insolence requires to be chastised. Further, about necessary evils, or vexatious trifles, he is not the man to make many bewailings and beseechings, for to behave in this manner a man must take these things much to heart, which he never can. And oftentimes he will be found preferring what is noble and brings no profit, to what is useful and gainful, {180} for his self-dependence stands out the more thereby. Finally, as to his appearance and manner, it will be noted that the great-minded man is slow in his movements, that his voice is deep, and his discourse weighty, for it is not natural that one who is not anxious about small matters should be in a hurry, or that a person should be very much excited on common occasions, to whom common matters are unimportant. Such then is the great-minded man. The two extremes between which he represents the mean, are, as we have said, the man of low self-estimate and the man of large pretensions and conceit. Now these two are manifestly not bad men, for they are not evil-doers; they only miss the ideal of what is true and noble in character. For the man who thinks meanly of himself, depriving himself of what he might justly claim as his due, though not a vicious man, suffers under a great vice of character, the defect of not knowing himself; for had he known himself, he would certainly have desired to possess the good things to which he has a natural right. At the same time such a person is not to be called foolish; he is only backward. But such a misprision of one’s self, however removed from flagrant viciousness, has unquestionably a tendency to deteriorate the character; for the imagination of their own unworthiness, by which these persons are possessed, not only cheats them of valuable external good which might naturally have fallen to their lot, but it causes them also to retire from many noble and excellent spheres of usefulness, and to shrink from the performance of most excellent actions. A conceited man, on the other hand, is both foolish and self-ignorant, and exhibits himself in a more {181} ridiculous fashion to the general eye; for deeming himself fit for some honourable office, the moment he appears in public his inefficiency is exposed, and he parades himself in showy dress, and puts himself into attitudes, and wishes that the whole world should take notice of his good fortune, and claims honour as