Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.  If they reach the point, they either crush it, or lean all round, more on the false than on the true.

[Man is so happily formed that he has no ... good of the true, and several excellent of the false.  Let us now see how much....  But the most powerful cause of error is the war existing between the senses and reason.]

83

We must thus begin the chapter on the deceptive powers. Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace.  Nothing shows him the truth.  Everything deceives him.  These two sources of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in sincerity, deceive each other in turn.  The senses mislead the reason with false appearances, and receive from reason in their turn the same trickery which they apply to her; reason has her revenge.  The passions of the soul trouble the senses, and make false impressions upon them.  They rival each other in falsehood and deception.[53]

But besides those errors which arise accidentally and through lack of intelligence, with these heterogeneous faculties ...

84

The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.

85

Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing.  It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain.  Another turn of the imagination would make us discover this without difficulty.

86

[My fancy makes me hate a croaker, and one who pants when eating.  Fancy has great weight.  Shall we profit by it?  Shall we yield to this weight because it is natural?  No, but by resisting it ...]

87

Nae iste magno conatu magnas nugas dixerit.[54]

Quasi quidquam infelicius sit homini cui sua figmenta dominantur._[55]
(Plin.)

88

Children who are frightened at the face they have blackened are but children.  But how shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older?  We only change our fancies.  All that is made perfect by progress perishes also by progress.  All that has been weak can never become absolutely strong.  We say in vain, “He has grown, he has changed”; he is also the same.

89

Custom is our nature.  He who is accustomed to the faith believes in it, can no longer fear hell, and believes in nothing else.  He who is accustomed to believe that the king is terrible ... etc.  Who doubts then that our soul, being accustomed to see number, space, motion, believes that and nothing else?

90

Quod crebro videt non miratur, etiamsi cur fiat nescit; quod ante non viderit, id si evenerit, ostentum esse censet.[56] (Cic. 583.)