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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 truth, and they hide it from
us. We desire flattery, and they flatter us. We like to be deceived, and
they deceive us.

So each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us
farther from truth, because we are most afraid of wounding those whose
affection is most useful and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may
be the byword of all Europe, and he alone will know nothing of it. I am not
astonished. To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is spoken, but
disadvantageous to those who tell it, because it makes them disliked. Now
those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the
prince whom they serve; and so they take care not to confer on h