more modern one is by C. Kegan
Paul, the London publisher, who was also a man of letters. Early
translations from the older French, Italian and other Continental
writers have frequently come down to us without mention of
translators' names on title-pages or in the prefatory matter.]

In one word, Self has two qualities: it is unjust in its essence,
because it makes itself the center 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 can not
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 t