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2 vast number of loves and hates. Some of these it forms so monstrous, that when brought to light it is unable to recognize them, or cannot resolve to own them. From this darkness, which conceals it, spring the ridiculous ideas it has of itself; hence come its errors, its ignorances, its grossness, and its follies with respect to itself. Hence it comes that it fancies its sentiments dead when they are only asleep, it thinks that it has no desire to arise from its repose, and believes that it has lost the appetite which it has satiated. But this thick darkness which conceals it from itself does not prevent its seeing perfectly every external object—in this, resembling our eyes, which see every thing and are only blind to themselves; in fact, in its greatest interests and in its most important affairs, where the violence of its desires call for all its attention, it sees, it perceives, it understands, it imagines, it suspects, it penetrates, it divines every thing; so much so, that one is tempted to believe that each of our passions has a magic peculiar to itself. Nothing is so close and so firm as its attachments, which it vainly endeavors to break off at the appearance of the extreme evils which menace it. Sometimes however, it accomplishes in a short time, and without effort, what it had not been able to