Chapter XXXV: Section 35: Our trust in other people often consists in great measure

of pure laziness, selfishness and vanity on our own part: I say _laziness_, because, instead of making inquiries ourselves, and exercising an active care, we prefer to trust others; _selfishness_, because we are led to confide in people by the pressure of our own affairs; and _vanity_, when we ask confidence for a matter on which we rather pride ourselves. And yet, for all that, we expect people to be true to the trust we repose in them.

But we ought not to become angry if people put no trust in us: because that really means that they pay honesty the sincere compliment of regarding it as a very rare thing,--so rare, indeed, as to leave us in doubt whether its existence is not merely fabulous.