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.[61]

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,