A molluscous man too, suddenly ejected from his long-accustomed groove, where, like a toad embedded in the rock, he had made his niche exactly fitting to his own shape, presents just as wretched a picture of helplessness and unshiftiness. In vain his friends suggest this or that independent endeavour; he shakes his head, and says he can't--it won't do. What he wants is a place where he is not obliged to depend on himself; where he has to do a fixed amount of work for a fixed amount of salary; and where his fibreless plasticity may find a mould ready formed, into which it may run without the necessity of forging shapes for itself. Many a man of respectable intellectual powers has gone down into ruin, and died miserably, because of this limpness which made it impossible for him to break new ground or to work at anything whatsoever with the stimulus of hope only. He must be bolstered up by certainty, supported by the walls of his groove, else he can do nothing; and if he cannot get into this friendly groove, he lets himself drift into destruction. In no manner are limp people to be depended on; their very central quality being fluidity, which is a bad thing to rest on. Take them in their family quarrels--and they are always quarrelling among themselves--you think they must have broken with each other for ever; that surely they can never forget or forgive all the insolent expressions, the hard words, the full-flavoured epithets which they have flung at one another; but the next time you meet them they are quite good friends again, and going on in the old fluid way as if no fiery storms had lately troubled the domestic horizon. Perhaps they have induced you to take sides; if so, you may look out, for you are certain to be thrown over and to have the enmity of both parties instead of only one. They are much given to this kind of thing, and fond of making pellets for you to shoot; when, after the shot, they disclaim and disown you. They speak against each other furiously, tell you all the family secrets and make them worse and greater than they really are. If you are credulous for your own part you take them literally; and if highly moral, you probably act on their accusations in a spirit of rhadamanthine justice, and the absolute need of rewarding sin according to its sinfulness. Beware; their accusations are baseless as the wind, and acting on them will lead to your certain discomfiture. The only safe way with limp people is never to believe what they say; or, if you are forced to believe, never to translate your faith into deeds nor even words; never to commit yourself to partizanship in any form whatever. They do not intend it, in all probability, but by very force of their weakness limp people are almost invariably untruthful and treacherous. By the force too, of this same weakness, they are incapable of anything like true friendship, and in fact make the most dangerous friends to be found.