From “Thoughts.” Translation of C. Keegan Paul.

SELF is hateful. You Milton, conceal self, but do not thereby destroy it; therefore you are still hateful.

  Not so, for in acting as we do, to oblige everybody, we give no reason for hating us.—True, if we only hated in self the vexation which it causes us.

  But if I hate it because it is unjust, and because it makes itself the centre of all, I shall always hate it.

  In one word Self has two qualities: it is unjust in its essence because it makes itself the centre of all; it is inconvenient to others, in that it would bring them into subjection, for each “I” is the enemy, and would fain be the tyrant of all others. You take away the inconvenience, but not the injustice, and thus you do not render it lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it lovable only to the unjust, who find in it an enemy no longer. Thus you remain unjust and can please none but the unjust.

  OF SELF-LOVE.—The nature of self-love and of this human “I” is to love self only, and consider self only. But what can it do? It cannot prevent the object it loves from being full of faults and miseries; man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy, and sees that he is miserable; would fain be perfect, and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of the love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passion imaginable. For he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults. Desiring to annihilate it, yet unable to destroy it in its essence, he destroys it as much as he can in his own knowledge, and in that of others; that is to say, he devotes all his care to the concealment of his faults, both from others and from himself, and he can neither bear that others should show them to him, nor that they should see them.

  It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a greater evil to be full of them, yet unwilling to recognize them, because that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like others to deceive us, we do not think it just in them to require more esteem from us than they deserve; it is therefore unjust that we should deceive them, desiring more esteem from them than we deserve.

  Thus if they discover no more imperfections and vices in us than we really have, it is plain they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them; but rather they who do us a service, since they help us to deliver ourselves from an evil, the ignorance of these imperfections. We ought not to be troubled that they know our faults and despise us, since it is but just they should know us as we are, and despise us if we are despicable.

  Such are the sentiments which would arise in a heart full of equity and justice. What should we say then of our own heart, finding in it a wholly contrary disposition? For is it not true that we hate truth, and those who tell it us, and that we would wish them to have an erroneously favorable opinion of us, and to esteem us other than indeed we are?

  One proof of this fills me with dismay. The Catholic religion does not oblige us to tell out our sins indiscriminately to all; it allows us to remain hidden from men in general; but she excepts one alone, to whom she commands us to open the very depths of our hearts, and to show ourselves to him as we are. There is but this one man in the world whom she orders us to undeceive; she binds him to an inviolable secrecy, so that this knowledge is to him as though it were not. We can imagine nothing more charitable and more tender. Yet such is the corruption of man, that he finds even this law harsh, and it is one of the main reasons which has set a large portion of Europe in revolt against the Church.

  How unjust and unreasonable is the human heart which finds it hard to be obliged to do in regard to one man what in some degree it were just to do to all men. For is it just that we should deceive them?

  There are different degrees in this dislike to the truth, but it may be said that all have it in some degree, for it is inseparable from self-love. This false delicacy causes those who must needs reprove others to choose so many windings and modifications in order to avoid shocking them. They must needs lessen our faults, seem to excuse them, mix praises with their blame, give evidences of affection and esteem. Yet this medicine is always bitter to self-love, which takes as little as it can, always with disgust, often with a secret anger against those who administer it.

  Hence it happens that if any desire our love, they avoid doing us a service which they know to be disagreeable; they treat us as we would wish to be treated: we hate the truth, and they hide it from us; we wish to be flattered, they flatter us; we love to be deceived, they deceive us.

  Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us further from truth, because we fear most to wound those whose affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may be the byword of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing of it. I am not surprised; to speak the truth is useful to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes them hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not to benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice.

  This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on this universal deceit; few friendships would last if every man knew what his friend said of him behind his back, though he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

  Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and with regard to others. He will not be told the truth; he avoids telling it to others; and all these tendencies, so far removed from justice and reason, have their natural roots in his heart.