despised in our childhood, for we naturally love truth and hate folly.
These words move us; the only error is in their application. So
great is the force of custom that, out of those whom nature has only
made men, are created all conditions of men. For some districts are
full of masons, others of soldiers, etc. Certainly nature is not so
uniform. It is custom then which does this, for it constrains
nature. But sometimes nature gains the ascendancy and preserves
man's instinct, in spite of all custom, good or bad.

    98. Bias leading to error.- It is a deplorable thing to see all
men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end. Each thinks how
he will acquit himself in his condition; but as for the choice of
condition, or of country, chance gives them to us.

    It is a pitiable thing to see so many Turks, heretics, and
infidels follow the way of their fathers for the sole reason that each
has been imbued with the prejudice that it is the best. And that fixes
for each man his condition of locksmith, soldier, etc.

    Hence savages care nothing for Providence.

    99. There is an universal and essential difference between the
actions of the will and all other actions.

    The will is one of the chief factors in belief, not that it
creates belief, but because things are true or false according to
the aspect in which we look at them. The will, which prefers one
aspect to another, turns away the mind from considering the
qualities of all that it does not like to see; and thus the mind,
moving in accord with the will, stops to consider the aspect which
it likes and so judges by what it sees.

    100. Self-love. The nature of self-love and of this human Ego is
to love self only and consider self only. But what will man do? He
cannot prevent this object that he loves from being full of faults and
wants. He wants to be great, and he sees himself small. He wants to be
happy, and he sees himself miserable. He wants to be perfect, and he
sees himself full of imperfections. He wants to be the object of
love and esteem among men, and he sees that his faults merit only
their hatred and contempt. This embarrassment in which he finds
himself produces in him the most unrighteous and criminal passion that
can be imagined; for he conceives a mortal enmity against that truth
which reproves him and which convinces him of his faults. He would
annihilate it, but, unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys
it as far as possible in his own knowledge and in that of others; that
is to say, he devotes all his attention to hiding his faults both from
others and from himself, and he cannot endure either that others
should point them out to him, or that they should see them.

    Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still
greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognise them,
since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We
do not like others to deceive us; we do not think it fair that they
should be held in higher esteem by us than they deserve; it is not,
then, fair that we should deceive them and should wish them to
esteem us more highly than we deserve.

    Thus, when they discover only the imperfections and vices which we
really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who
cause them; they rather do us good, since they help us to free
ourselves from an evil, namely, the ignorance of these
imperfections. We ought not to be angry at their knowing our faults
and despising us; it is but right that they should know us for what we
are and should despise us, if we are contemptible.

    Such are the feelings that would arise in a heart full of equity
and justice. What must we say then of our own heart, when we see it in
a wholly different disposition? For is it not true that we hate
truth and those who tell it us, and that we like them to be deceived
in our favour, and prefer to be esteemed by them as being other than
what we are in fact? One proof of this makes me shudder. The
Catholic religion does not bind us to confess our sins
indiscriminately to everybody; it allows them to remain hidden from
all other men save one, to whom she bids us reveal the innermost
recesses of our heart and show ourselves as we are. There is only this
one man in the world whom she orders us to undeceive, and she binds
him to an inviolable secrecy, which makes this knowledge to him as
if it were not. Can we imagine anything more charitable and
pleasant? And yet the corruption of man is such that he finds even
this law harsh; and it is one of the main reasons which has caused a
great part of Europe to rebel against the Church.

    How unjust and unreasonable is the heart of man, which feels it
disagreeable to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some
measure it were right to do to all men! For is it right that we should
deceive men?

    There are different degrees in this aversion to truth; but all may
perhaps be said to have it in some degree, because it is inseparable
from self-love. It is this false delicacy which makes those who are
under the necessity of reproving others choose so many windings and
middle courses to avoid offence. They must lessen our faults, appear
to excuse them, intersperse praises and evidence of love and esteem.
Despite all this, the medicine does not cease to be bitter to
self-love. It takes as little as it can, always with disgust, and
often with a secret spite against those who administer it.

    Hence it happens that, if any have some interest in being loved by
us, they are averse to render us a service which they know to be
disagreeable. They treat us as we wish to be treated. We hate the