Yet it is not wrong to love oneself; that is the first law of nature.  One, and one only being, the Maker, are we bound to love more than ourselves.  The neighbor is to be loved as ourselves.  And if our just interests conflict with his, if our rights and his are opposed to each other, there is no legitimate means but we may employ to obtain or secure what is rightly ours.  The evil of self-love lies in its abuse and excess, in that it goes beyond the limits set by God and nature, that it puts unjustly our interests before God’s and the neighbor’s, and that to self it sacrifices them and all that pertains to them.  Self, the “ego,” is the idol before which all must bow.

Self-love, on an evil day, in the garden of Eden, wedded sin, Satan himself officiating under the disguise of a serpent; and she gave birth to seven daughters like unto herself, who in turn became fruitful mothers of iniquity.  Haughty Pride, first-born and queen among her sisters, is inordinate love of one’s worth and excellence, talents and beauty; sordid Avarice or Covetousness is excessive love of riches; loathsome Lust is the third, and loves carnal pleasures without regard for the law; fiery Anger, a counterpart of pride, is love rejected but seeking blindly to remedy the loss; bestial Gluttony worships the stomach; green-eyed Envy is hate for wealth and happiness denied; finally Sloth loves bodily ease and comfort to excess.  The infamous brood!  These parents of all iniquity are called the seven capital sins.  They assume the leadership of evil in the world and are the seven arms of Satan.

As it becomes their dignity, these vices never walk alone or go unattended, and that is the desperate feature of their malice.  Each has a cortege of passions, a whole train of inferior minions, that accompany or follow.  Once entrance gained and a free hand given, there is no telling the result.  Once seated and secure, the passion seeks to satisfy itself; that is its business.  Certain means are required to this end, and these means can be procured only by sinning.  Obstacles often stand in the way and new sins furnish steps to vault over, or implements to batter them down.  Intricate and difficult conditions frequently arise as the result of self-indulgence, out of which there is no exit but by fresh sins.  Hence the long train of crimes led by one capital sin towards the goal of its satisfaction, and hence the havoc wrought by its untrammeled working in a human soul.

This may seem exaggerated to some; others it may mislead as to the true nature of the capital sins, unless it be dearly put forth in what their malice consists.  Capital sins are not, in the first place, in themselves, sins; they are vices, passions, inclinations or tendencies to sin, and we know that a vice is not necessarily sinful.  Our first parents bequeathed to us as an inheritance these germs of misery and sin.  We are all in a greater or lesser degree prone to excess and to desire unlawful pleasures.  Yet, for all that, we do not of necessity sin.  We sin when we yield to these tendencies and do what they suggest.  The simple proneness to evil, devoid of all wilful yielding is therefore not wrong.  Why?  Because we cannot help it; that is a good and sufficient reason.