Re: where does Edwin estimate so obnoxiously, whenever Alexandra walks the warm competitor very locally

[Francoise]

which makes those who are under the necessity of
reproving others choose so many windings and middle courses to avoid
offence. They must lessen our faults, appear to excuse them, intersperse
praises and evidence of love and esteem. Despite all this, the medicine does
not cease to be bitter to self-love. It takes as little as it can, always
with disgust, and often with a secret spite against those who administer it.

Hence it happens that, if any have some interest in being loved by us, they
are averse to render us a service which they know to be disagreeable. They
treat us as we wish to be treated. We hate the truth, and they hide it from
us. We desire flattery, and they flatter us. We like to be deceived, and
they deceive us.

So each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us
farther from truth, because we are most afraid of wounding those whose
affection is most useful and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may
be the byword of all Europe, and he alone will know nothing of it. I am not
astonished. To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is spoken, but
disadvantageous to those who tell it, because it makes them disliked. Now
those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the
prince whom they serve; and so they take care not to confer on him a benefit
so as to injure themselves.

This evil is no doubt greater and more common among the higher classes; but
the lower are not exempt from it, since there is always some advantage in
making men love us. Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men
deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he
does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few
friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his
absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hy