Truth

Impartiality and objectivity are as rare as justice, of which they are but two special forms.

Self−interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is

extraordinarily small. What governs men is the fear of truth, unless truth is useful to them, which is as much

as to say that self−interest is the principle of the common philosophy or that truth is made for us but not we

for truth. As this fact is humiliating, the majority of people will neither recognize nor admit it. And thus a

prejudice of self−love protects all the prejudices of the understanding, which are themselves the result of a

stratagem of the ego. Humanity has always slain or persecuted those who have disturbed this selfish repose of

hers. She only improves in spite of herself. The only progress which she desires is an increase of enjoyments.

All advances in justice, in morality, in holiness, have been imposed upon or forced from her by some noble

violence. Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies. It is too often by

employing one vice against another—for example, vanity against cupidity, greed against idleness—that the

great agitators have broken through routine. In a word, the human world is almost entirely directed by the law

of nature, and the law of the spirit, which is the leaven of its coarse paste, has but rarely succeeded in raising it

into generous expansion.

Amiel

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