And yet popular psychology, the subtlest of all, because it is formed in the presence of real facts, and under the true teachings of experience (whilst scientific psychology is always more or less artificial), this natural psychology, which sums up the experience of the whole of humanity, has always affirmed that man could voluntarily deceive himself, consequently lie to himself. The most ordinary case of inward falsehood is when man employs sophisms--that is to say, seeks reasons wherewith to smother the cry of his conscience; or when he tries to persuade himself that he has no other motive in view than moral good, whilst, in fact, he only acts from fear of punishment, or from any other interested motive. "To take, through love of self, an intention for a fact, because it has for its object a good end in itself, is again," says Kant, "a defect of another kind. It is a weakness similar to that of the lover who, desirous to see nothing but good qualities in the woman he loves,[120] shuts his eyes to the most obvious defects." The inward lie is then an unpardonable weakness, if not a real baseness, and we must conclude from this that it is the same with the outward lie--the lie, namely, which expresses itself in words. Here it may be objected that speech is not an integrant part of the mind, that it is only an accident, that whatever use we may make of speech we do not destroy thereby the principle of intelligence, for I may use my mind to discover and possess myself of truth, even though I should not make known the same to others, or make them believe otherwise than I think. From this standpoint falsehood would still remain a sin as a violation of the duty toward others, though not as a shortcoming in regard to one's self. But this would be a very false analysis of the psychological fact called communication of thought. Speech is never wholly independent of thought. The very fact that I speak, implies that I think my speech: there is an inner affirmation required. I cannot make sophisms to deceive men without having first inwardly combined these sophisms through the faculty of thinking which is in me. I think then of one thing and another at the same time; I think at the same time of both the true and the false, and I am conscious of this contradiction. I employ then knowingly my mind in destroying itself, and I fall, consequently, into the vice pointed out above. Kant gives another deduction than ours to prove that falsehood is a violation of duty toward one's self. But his deduction is, perhaps, not sufficiently severe: "A man who does not himself believe what he tells another, is of less worth than is a simple _thing_; for one may put the usefulness of a simple thing to some account, whilst the liar is not so much a real man as a deceiving appearance of a man.... Once the major principle of veracity shaken, dissimulation soon runs into all our relations with others."