approves them: so much so, that once he has understood them, he would
not believe the contrary for being told it. You would not persuade a
child that it was right to pull mother's hair; or that half an orange
was literally, as Hesiod says, "more than the whole." He would answer
that it could not be, that he knew better.

10. On one ground there is greater need of education for the
conscience than for any other intellectual formation: that is because
of the power of evil to fascinate and blind on practical issues of
duty. Cicero well puts it:

"We are amazed and perplexed by variety of opinions and strife of
authorities; and because there is not the same divergence upon matters
of sense, we fancy that the senses afford natural certainty, while,
for moral matters, because some men take one view, some another, and
the same men different views at different times, we consider that any
settlement that can be arrived at is merely conventional, which is a
huge mistake. The fact is, there is no parent, nor nurse, nor
schoolmaster, nor poet, nor stage play, to corrupt the judgments of
sense, nor consent of the multitude to wrench them away from the
truth. It is for minds and consciences that all the snares are set, as
well by the agency of those whom I have just mentioned, who take us in
our tender and inexperienced age, and ingrain and fashion us as they
will, as also by that counterfeit presentment of good, which lurks in
the folds of every sense, the mother of all evil, pleasure, under
whose seductive blandishments men fail to recognise the moral good
that nature offers, because it is unaccompanied by this itching desire
and satisfaction." (Cicero, _De Legibus_, i, 17.)

_Readings_.--St. Thos., 1a, q. 79, art. 11-13; Plato, _Protagoras_,