The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: Lucien smiled incredulously.
"Yes," said the priest, in answer to the smile, "you interest me as
much as if you had been my son; and I am strong enough to afford to
talk to you as openly as you have just done to me. Do you know what it
is that I like about you?--This: you have made a sort of tabula rasa
within yourself, and are ready to hear a sermon on morality that you
will hear nowhere else; for mankind in the mass are even more
consummate hypocrites than any one individual can be when his
interests demand a piece of acting. Most of us spend a good part of
our lives in clearing our minds of the notions that sprang up
unchecked during our nonage. This is called 'getting our
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