(58.) Who can doubt but that children conceive, judge, and reason consistently? If only in small things consider they are children, and without much experience; if they make use of an indifferent phraseology it is less their fault than their parentsʼ and mastersʼ. (59.) It destroys all confidence in the minds of children, and alienates them as well, to punish them for faults they have not committed, or even to be severe with them for trifling offences; they know exactly, and better than any one, what they deserve, and seldom deserve more than they dread; when they are chastised, they know if it is justly or unjustly, whilst unjust punishments do them more harm than not to be punished at all. (60.) Man does not live long enough to be benefited by his faults; he is committing them during the whole course of his life, and it is as much as he can do, if, after many errors, he dies at last improved. Nothing revives more a man than the knowledge that he has avoided doing some foolish action. (61.) Men are loath to particularise their faults; they conceal them or blame some other person for them, and this gives the “spiritual director”[554] an advantage over the father-confessor. (62.) The faults of blockheads are sometimes so great and so difficult to foresee, that wise men are puzzled by them; they are only of use to those who commit them. (63.) A party spirit betrays the greatest men to act as meanly as the vulgar herd. (64.) Vanity and propriety lead us to act in the same way and in the same manner as we should do through inclination or a feeling of duty; a man died lately in Paris of a fever which he got by sitting up at night with his wife, for whom he did not care.[555] (65.) All men in their hearts covet esteem, but are loath any one should discover their anxiety to be esteemed; for men wish to be considered virtuous; and men would no longer be thought virtuous, but fond of esteem and praises, and vain, were they to derive any other advantages from virtue than virtue itself. Men are very vain, and of all things hate to be thought so. (66.) A vain man finds it to his advantage to speak well or ill of himself; a modest man never talks of himself. We cannot better understand how ridiculous vanity is, and what a disgraceful vice it is, than by observing how careful it is not to be seen, and how often it hides itself underneath a semblance of modesty. False modesty is the highest affectation of vanity; it never shows a vain man in his true colours, but, on the contrary, enhances his reputation, through the very virtue which is the opposite of the vice constituting his real character; it is a falsehood. False glory is the rock on which vanity splits; it induces a desire in men to be esteemed for things they indeed possess, but which are frivolous and unworthy of being noticed; it is an error.