simply wrong choice persevering, but also a disposition to persevere therein, which is due to some good supposed to be inherent in the choice, or some evil imagined as arising from a change.  The first choice has perchance been made in mere levity, but the intention to abide by it springs from certain stronger reasons or impressions.  There are even some writers on ethics who lay it down that one ought to abide by one’s choice so as not to be inconstant or appear so.  Yet perseverance is wrong when one despises the warnings of reason, especially when the subject is important enough to be examined carefully; but when the thought of change is unpleasant, one readily averts one’s attention from it, and that is the way which most frequently leads one to stubbornness.  The author wished to connect stubbornness with his so-called pure indifference.  He might then have taken into account that to make us cling to a choice there would be need of more than the mere choice itself or a pure indifference, especially if this choice has been made lightly, and all the more lightly in proportion to the indifference shown.  In such a case we shall be readily inclined to reverse the choice, unless vanity, habit, interest or some other motive makes us persevere therein.  It must not be supposed either that vengeance pleases without cause.  Persons of intense feeling ponder upon it day and night, and it is hard for them to efface the impression of the wrong or the affront they have sustained.  They picture for themselves a very great pleasure in being freed from the thought of scorn which comes upon them every moment, and which causes some to find vengeance sweeter than life itself.

  Quis vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa.

The author would wish to persuade us that usually, when our desire or our aversion is for some object which does not sufficiently deserve it, we have given to it the surplus of good or evil which has affected us, through the alleged power of choice which makes things appear good or evil as we wish.  One has had two degrees of natural evil, one gives oneself six degrees of artificial good through the power that can choose without cause.  Thus one will have four degrees of net good (ch. 5, sect. 2, Sec. 7).  If that could be carried out it would take us far, as I have already said here.  The [437] author even thinks that ambition, avarice, the gambling mania and other frivolous passions derive all their force from this power (ch. 5, sect. 5, sub-sect. 6).  But there are besides so many false appearances in things, so many imaginations capable of enlarging or diminishing objects, so many unjustified connexions in our arguments, that there is no need of this little Fairy, that is, of this inward power operating as it were by enchantment, to whom the author attributes all these disorders.  Indeed, I have already said repeatedly that when we resolve upon some course contrary to acknowledged reason, we are prompted to it by another