Judgments and ideas

Self-love is loving oneself, and loving everything for the sake of the self. It makes people obsessed with themselves, and it can make them tyrants over others if luck enables them to have the means to do so. It never puts itself outside of itself and does not stop at other selves except like bees on flowers, that is, to extract what it personally wants from them. Nothing is more reckless than its desires, nothing is more hidden than its intentions, nothing is more skillful than its behaviors. Its deeply flexible penetrations cannot manifest; its transformations surpass those of monsters, and its subtleties surpass those of chemistry. Its depths cannot be fathomed, nor can the darkness of its abysses be penetrated. There, it is safe from the most penetrating eyes, and it often moves in imperceptible back-and-forth motions. There, it is mostly non-physical to itself, carrying, nourishing, and raising, without its knowledge, a large number of feelings of affection and hatred, and forming from some of them monsters to which it returns but does not recognize or admits to recognizing. From that darkness it covers, foolish convictions about itself are born; and from there come its mistakes, ignorance, rudeness, and foolishness regarding itself; from there comes its belief that its feelings have died when in fact they are only dormant…