exert ourselves for this miserable purpose and thus persevere in injustice, merely be|cause we once were unjust, and because we are ashamed and afraid to see that we were so.
So partial are the views of mankind with regard to the propriety of their own con|duct, both at the time of action and after it; and so difficult is it for them to view it in the light in which any indifferent spec|tator would consider it. But if it was by a peculiar faculty, such as the moral sense is supposed to be, that they judged of their own conduct, if they were endued with a par|ticular power of perception, which distin|guished the beauty or deformity of passi|ons and affections; as their own passions would be more immediately exposed to the view of this faculty, it would judge with more accuracy concerning them, than con|cerning those of other men, of which it had only a more distant prospect.
This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disor|ders of human life. If we saw ourselves in the light in which others see us, or in which they would see us if they knew all,
