Against whom, then, are we to be on our guard? Against the man who is not confessedly or apparently a toady; one who is not to be found hanging about the kitchen, nor to be caught watching the dial with a dinner in prospect; one who is not to be made tipsy and then pitched into any corner; but one who for the most part keeps sober and bustling, thinking it his business to take part in all your doings, and to be privy to your confidential talk—the man, in short, who acts the rôle of friend, not in the satyric[49] or comic style, but in the high tragic. According to Plato, ‘the extreme of dishonesty is to appear honest when you are not.’ So with time-serving. It is [Sidenote: F] to be regarded as dangerous, not when confessed, but when undetected; when it wears a serious, not an amusing, air. In this form, unless we are careful, it casts a slur of discredit even upon genuine friendship, the points of coincidence being numerous. When the Mage was trying to escape and Gobryes had plunged with him into a dark room and was grappling with him, Darius stood at a loss what to do. ‘Stab,’ said Gobryes, ‘though you stab both.’ With us it is not so easy, inasmuch as we can by no means give any sanction to the maxim: ‘_Perish friend, if so perish foe._’ There are so many points of similarity to complicate the fawner with the friend that we must find it a most parlous business to tear the one from the other. We may either be casting out the good thing along with the bad, [Sidenote: 51] or, in trying to spare the right thing, we may let the wrong one bring us to grief. There are wild plants of which the seeds are similar in shape and size to those of wheat. When the two are mixed it is difficult to sift these out; they will not fall through smaller holes, and, if the holes are wider, one falls through as much as the other. No less difficult is it to separate time-serving from friendship, when it blends itself with every feeling, every movement, need, and habit. Friendship being the most pleasant and delightful thing in the world, it follows that the toady also uses pleasure for his [Sidenote: B] bait. To give pleasure is his main concern. And since agreeableness and usefulness are concomitants of friendship—whence the saying that ‘_a friend is more indispensable than fire and water_‘—it follows that the toady insists on rendering services, and is all eagerness to show unfaltering promptitude and zeal. But the surest foundation of friendship is similarity of pursuits and character. The foremost agent in mutual attraction is similarity of temperament—the liking and disliking of the same things. This the time-server perceives, and therefore he adapts himself [Sidenote: C] like wax to the proper shape and form, endeavouring by imitation to mould himself so as exactly to fit his victim. His supple versatility, his genius for mimicry, is so great that it is a case of