437. A SPECIES OF VASTATION BY THE INDUCTION OF A PROBITY, AS IT WERE INFANTILE This mild species of vastation is also assigned to some, that they are reduced to a kind of probity, as it were, infantile. They are such as those to whom clemency is shown. But in that probity there is also present from their phantasy the cupidity of excelling others in understanding; this is held captive and restrained because either they love their own things and thus take it ill that others should say things truer and better than themselves, or they are unwilling that honor should be detracted from those connected with them, and thus from themselves. In this way also [they act] from [the thought] of their own excellence above others. In the induced state of that probity they are tormented by the hidden cupidity that they ardently desire to be released therefrom and return to their former state, even though that state is to others such that a man can be happy in it, for he is then outside that state which disquiets. 1747, Dec. 31.