cannot be explained by the appetites that arise from
the representation of good and evil, and that they compel us to have
recourse to that transcendent power which transforms good into evil, and
evil into good, and the indifferent into good or into evil. But we do not
need to go so far, and the causes of our errors are only too visible.
Indeed, we can make these transformations, but it is not as with the
Fairies, by a mere act of this magic power, but by obscuring and
suppressing in one's mind the representations of good or bad qualities
which are naturally attached to certain objects, and by contemplating only
such representations as conform to our taste or our prejudices; or [435]
again, because one attaches to the objects, by dint of thinking of them,
certain qualities which are connected with them only accidentally or
through our habitual contemplation of them. For example, all my life long I
detest a certain kind of good food, because in my childhood I found in it
something distasteful, which made a strong impression upon me. On the other
hand, a certain natural defect will be pleasing to me, because it will
revive within me to some extent the thought of a person I used to esteem or
love. A young man will have been delighted by the applause which has been
showered upon him after some successful public action; the impression of
this great pleasure will have made him remarkably sensitive to reputation;
he will think day and night of nothing save what nourishes this passion,
and that will cause him to scorn death itself in order to attain his end.
For although he may know very well that he will not feel what is said of
him after his death, the representation he makes of it for himself
beforehand creates a strong impression on his mind. And there are always
motives of the same kind in actions which appear most useless and absurd to
those who do not enter into these motives. In a word, a strong or
oft-repeated impression may alter considerably our organs, our imagination,
our memory, and even our reasoning. It happens that a man, by dint of
having often related something untrue, which he has perhaps invented,
finally comes to believe in it himself. And as one often represents to
oneself something pleasing, one makes it easy to imagine, and one thinks it
also easy to put into effect, whence it comes that one persuades oneself
easily of what one wishes.

_Et qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt._

25. Errors are theref