ted with success.

37. To the lie of commerce, and the lie of malice, the motive is so
apparent, that they are seldom negligently or implicitly received:
suspicion is always watchful over the practices of interest; and
whatever the hope of gain, or desire of mischief, can prompt one man to
assert, another is, by reasons equally cogent, incited to refute. But
vanity pleases herself with such slight gratifications, and looks
forward to pleasure so remotely consequential, that her practices raise
no alarm, and her stratagems are not easily discovered.

38. Vanity is, indeed, often suffered to pass unpursued by suspicion;
because he that would watch her motions, can never be at rest; fraud and
malice are bounded in their influence; some opportunity of time and
place is necessary to their agency; but scarce any man is abstracted one
moment from his vanity; and he, to whom truth affords no gratifications,
is generally inclined to seek them in falsehoods.

39. It is remarked by Sir _Kenelm Digby_, "that every man has a desire
to appear superior to others, though it were only in having seen what
they have not seen."

Such an accidental advantage, since it neither implies merit, nor
confers dignity, one would think should not be desired so much as to be
counterfeited; yet even this vanity, trifling as it is, produces
innumerable narratives, all equally false, but more or less credible, in
proportion to the skill or confidence of the relater.

40. How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his
acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes;
who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the
country without more adventures than befel the knight-errants of ancient
times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know,
to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom
nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to
supply them with subjects of conversation!

41. Others there are who amuse themselves with the dissemination of
falsehood, at greater hazard of detection and disgrace; men marked out
by some lucky planet for universal confidence and friendship, who have,
been consulted in every difficulty, entrusted with every secret, and
summoned to every transaction: it is the supreme felicity of these men,
to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and
overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or a