Though Hardy's major characters obey principles of action assigned to them at the outset, and respond to what Hardy considers to be regulations of nature in the fluctuations of their moods and in long-term physiological and psychological changes, their careers are not simply vectors determined by known forces. Their minds are sufficiently complex, and the demands made upon them sufficiently unpredictable, that the exact course of a given life cannot be anticipated. Hardy sees a potential opposition among the elements in a personality: and the actual working out of these oppositions remains in doubt until the reader sees exactly what the character is confronted by. It is the situation including, for instance, historical location that determines what is a conflict in a person's makeup. Jude's susceptibility to women is not in itself inconsistent with his desire to educate himself; nor is his willingness to accept new facts necessarily incompatible with a religious vocation. Neither Jude's actions nor their consequences are presented as inevitable effects of his character, considered abstractly; (in another world, there might be no conflict). But Jude's milieu forces him to make ruinous choices, and these choices define him.