Re: M-I,5`Persecut ion ` bu gging and co unter-surveillance

452. To pity the unfortunate is not contrary to lust. On the contrary, we
can quite well give such evidence of friendship, and acquire the reputation
of kindly feeling, without giving anything.

453. From lust men have found and extracted excellent rules of policy,
morality, and justice; but in reality this vile root of man, this figmentum
malum, is only covered, it is not taken away.

454. Injustice.--They have not found any other means of satisfying lust
without doing injury to others.

455. Self is hateful. You, Milton, conceal it; you do not for that reason
destroy it; you are, then, always hateful.

No; for in acting as we do to oblige everybody, we give no more occasion for
hatred of us. That is true, if we only hated in Self the vexation which
comes to us from it. But if I hate it because it is unjust and because it
makes itself the centre of everything, I shall always hate it.

In a word, the Self has two qualities: it is unjust in itself since it makes
itself the centre of everything; it is inconvenient to others since it would
enslave them; for each Self is the enemy, and would like to be the tyrant of
all others. You take away its inconvenience, but not its injustice, and so
you do not render it lovable to those who hate injustice; you render it
lovable only to the unjust, who do not any longer find in it an enemy. And
thus you remain unjust and can please only the unjust.

456. It is a perverted judgement that makes every one place himself above
the rest of the world, and