But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and
innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they
may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert
is false, they want it to seem the contrary. The interest in truth,
which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated
the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of
vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false,
and what is false must seem true.

However, this very dishonesty, this persistence in a proposition which
seems false even to ourselves, has something to be said for it. It
often happens that we begin with the firm conviction of the truth
of our statement; but our opponent's argument appears to refute it.
Should we abandon our position at once, we may discover later on
that we were right after all; the proof we offered was false, but
nevertheless there was a proof for our statement which was true. The
argument which would have been our salvation did not occur to us at
the moment. Hence we make it a rule to attack a counter-argument, even
though to all appearances it is true and forcible, in the belief that
its truth is only superficial, and that in the course of the dispute
another argument will occur to us by which we may upset it, or succeed
in confirming the truth of our statement. In this way we are almost
compelled to become dishonest; or, at any rate, the temptation to do
so is very great. Thus it is that the weakness of our intellect and
the perversity of our will lend each other mutual support; and that,
generally, a disputant fights not for truth, but for his proposition,
as though it were a battle _pro aris et focis_. He sets to work _per
fas et nefas_; nay, as we have seen, he cannot easily do otherwise.
As a rule, then, every man will insist on maintaining whatever he
has said, even though for the moment he may consider it false or