Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: VIDEO: WORLD CONTACT WITH EXTRATERRESTRIALS (JUNE 6th)

and Salomon de Tultie wrote is the
most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftenest
quoted, because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common
talk of life. As when we speak of the common error which exists among men
that the moon is the cause of everything, we never fail to say that Salomon
de Tultie says that, when we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of
advantage that there should exist a common error, etc.; which is the thought
above.
19. The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in
first.
20. Order.--Why should I undertake to divide my virtues into four rather
than into six? Why should I rather establish virtue in four, in two, in one?
Why into Abstine et sustine[1] rather than into "Follow Nature," or,
"Conduct your private affairs without injustice," as Plato, or anything
else? But there, you will say, everything is contained in one word. Yes, but
it is useless without explanation, and when we come to explain it, as soon
as we unfold this maxim which contains all the rest, they emerge in that
first confusion which you desired to avoid. So, when they are all included
in one, they are hidden and useless, as in a chest, and never appear save in
their natural confusion. Nature has established them all without including
one in the other.
21. Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes
one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own
place.
22. Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the
subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but
one of us places it better.
I had as soon it said that I used words employed before. And in the same way
if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different
discourse, no more do the same words in their different arrangement form
different thoughts!
23. Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings
differently arranged 

makes those who are under the necessity of
reproving others choose so many windings and middle courses to avoid
offence. They must lessen our faults, appear to excuse them, intersperse
praises and evidence of love and esteem. Despite all this, the medicine does
not cease to be bitter to self-love. It takes as little as it can, always
with disgust, and often with a secret spite against those who administer it.
Hence it happens that, if any have some interest in being loved by us, they
are averse to render us a service which they know to be disagreeable. They
treat us as we wish to be treated. We hate the truth, and they hide it from
us. We desire flattery, and they flatter us. We like to be deceived, and
they deceive us.
So each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us
farther from truth, because we are most afraid of wounding those whose
affection is most useful and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may
be the byword of all Europe, and he alone will know nothing of it. I am not
astonished. To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is spoken, but
disadvantageous to those who tell it, because it makes them disliked. Now
those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the
prince whom they serve; and so they take care not to confer on him a benefit
so as to injure themselves.
This evil is no doubt greater and more common among the higher classes; but
the lower are not exempt from it, since there is always some advantage in
making men love us. Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men
deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he
does of us in our abse