Examples of Some Errors

Examples of some errors of morality that depend on the same principle

This facility that the mind finds in imagining and supposing resemblances wherever it does not visibly recognize differences, also throws most men into very dangerous errors in moral matters. Here are some examples.

A Frenchman meets an Englishman or an Italian; this foreigner has his particular humors: he has delicacy of mind, or if you wish, he is proud and disagreeable. This will first lead this Frenchman to judge that all Englishmen or all Italians have the same character of mind as the one he has frequented. He will praise or blame them all in general; and if he meets someone, he will first be preoccupied that he is similar to the one he has already seen, and he will let himself go to some affection or some secret aversion. In a word, he will judge all the individuals of these nations by this fine proof that he has seen one or several who had certain qualities of mind, because, not knowing otherwise if the others differ, he supposes them all alike.

A religious of some order falls into a fault; this suffices so that most of those who know of it condemn indiscriminately all the individuals of the same order. They all wear the same habit and the same name, they resemble each other in that: this is enough so that the common run of men imagine that they resemble each other in everything. One supposes that they are alike, because not penetrating the depths of their hearts, one cannot see positively whether they differ.

Calumniators who study means to tarnish the reputation of their enemies ordinarily use this one, and experience teaches us that it almost always succeeds. In effect it is very proportioned to the reach of the common run of men, and it is not difficult to find in numerous communities, however holy they may be, some persons who are not well regulated, or who are in bad sentiments, since in the company of the apostles, of which Jesus Christ himself was the head, there was found a thief, a traitor, a hypocrite—in a word, a Judas.

The Jews would without doubt have been greatly wrong if they had formed disadvantageous judgments against the holiest company that ever was, because of the avarice and disorder of Judas; and if they had condemned them all in their hearts, because they suffered with them this wicked man, and that Jesus Christ himself did not punish him although he knew his crimes.

It is therefore manifestly against reason and against charity to pretend that a community is in some error, because there are found some individuals who have fallen into it, even if the leaders concealed it or were themselves supporters of it. It is true that when all the individuals wish to sustain the error or fault of their brother, one must judge that the whole community is guilty. But one can say that this almost never happens, for it appears morally impossible that all the individuals of an order are of the same sentiments.

Men should therefore never conclude in this way from the particular to the general; but they cannot judge simply of what they see, they always go to excess. A religious of such an order is a great man, a good man: they conclude that the whole order is filled with great men and good men. Likewise a religious of an order is in bad sentiments: therefore this whole order is corrupted and in bad sentiments. But these latter judgments are much more dangerous than the first, because one must always judge well of one’s neighbor, and the malignity of man makes that bad judgments and speeches made against the reputation of others please much more and impress themselves more strongly in the mind than advantageous judgments and speeches made about them.

When a worldly man who follows his passions attaches himself strongly to his opinion, and pretends in the movements of his passion that he is right to follow it, one judges with reason that he is obstinate, and he recognizes it himself as soon as his passion has passed. Likewise when a pious person, who is penetrated by what he says, and who has recognized the truth of religion and the vanity of worldly things, wishes on his lights to resist the disorders of others, and reproves them with some zeal; worldly people also judge that he is obstinate, and thus they conclude that devout people are obstinate. They even judge that good people are much more obstinate than the disorderly and the wicked, because the latter, defending their opinions only according to the different agitations of the blood and passions, cannot remain long in their sentiments: they come back from them. Whereas pious persons remain firm in theirs, because they lean only on immovable foundations that do not depend on a thing as inconstant as the circulation of humors and blood.

Here then is why the common run of men judges that pious persons are obstinate as well as vicious persons. It is that good people are passionate for truth and virtue, as the wicked are for vice and falsehood. The one and the other speak almost in the same manner to sustain their sentiments; they are alike in this although they differ at bottom. That is enough so that the world, which does not penetrate the difference of reasons, judges that they are alike in everything because they are alike in the manner in which everyone is capable of judging.

Devout people are therefore not obstinate, they are only firm as they ought to be, and the vicious and libertines are always obstinate, even if they remain only an hour in their sentiment: because one is only obstinate when one defends a false opinion, even if one defends it only for a short time.

It is the same with certain philosophers, who have sustained chimerical opinions from which they come back. They wish that others who defend constant truths and whose certainty they see with evidence should abandon them like simple opinions, as they have done with those of which they had been wrongfully infatuated. And because it is not easy to have deference for them to the prejudice of truth, and that the love one naturally has for it leads one to defend it with ardor, they judge that one is obstinate.

These persons were wrong to defend their chimeras with obstinacy, but the others are right to sustain truth with strength and firmness of mind. The manner of the one and the other is the same, but the sentiments are different; and it is this difference of sentiments that makes some firm and the others obstinate.