of it, and at last make it fully known.  Every portion of the good news loses its efficacy, because it is anticipated by a demand, and room is left for an increase in it.  In view of all this, it may be said that our stomach for good fortune is bottomless, but the entrance to it is narrow.  These remarks are not applicable to great misfortunes in the same way.  They are more seldom fatal, because hope always sets itself against them.  That an analogous part is not played by fear in the case of happiness results from the fact that we are instinctively more inclined to hope than to fear; just as our eyes turn of themselves towards light rather than darkness.

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Hope is the result of confusing the desire that something should take place with the probability that it will.  Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the heart, which deranges the intellect’s correct appreciation of probability to such an extent that, if the chances are a thousand to one against it, yet the event is thought a likely one.  Still in spite of this, a sudden misfortune is like a death stroke, whilst a hope that is always disappointed and still never dies, is like death by prolonged torture.

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; this is the meaning of the expression “desperate.”  It is natural to a man to believe what he wishes to be true, and to believe it because he wishes it, If this characteristic of our nature, at once beneficial and assuaging, is rooted out by many hard blows of fate, and a man comes, conversely, to a condition in which he believes a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and what he wishes to happen can never be, just because he wishes it, this is in reality the state described as “desperation.”

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That we are so often deceived in others is not because our judgment is at fault, but because in general, as Bacon says, intellectus luminis sicci non est, sed recipit infusionem a voluntate et affectibus:  that is to say, trifles unconsciously bias us for or against a person from the very beginning.  It may also be explained by our not abiding by the qualities which we really discover; we go on to conclude the presence of others which we think inseparable from them, or the absence of those which we consider incompatible.  For instance, when we perceive generosity, we infer justice; from piety, we infer honesty; from lying, deception; from deception, stealing, etc.; a procedure which opens the door to many false views, partly because human nature is so strange, partly because our standpoint is so one-sided.  It is true, indeed, that character always forms a consistent and connected whole; but the roots of all its qualities lie too deep to allow of our concluding from particular data in a given case whether certain qualities can or cannot exist together.

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We often happen to say things that may in some way or other be prejudicial to us; but we keep silent about things that might make us look ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.