As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it evil and base not to dare to own them.  Every one is wary and discreet in confession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing ill is in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing it.  Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do nothing that he must be forced to conceal.  I wish that this excessive licence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing virtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my immoderation I may reduce them to reason.  A man must see and study his vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see it:  they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences: 

     “Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur?  Quia etiam nunc in
     illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est.”

     ["Why does no man confess his vices? because he is yet in them;
     ’tis for a waking man to tell his dream.”—­Seneca, Ep., 53.]

The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find that to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of the soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure; the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with an unrelenting hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened, and torn from the hollow of the heart.  As in doing well, so in doing ill, the mere confession is sometimes satisfaction.  Is there any deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?  It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of another’s secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge.  I can keep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violence to myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, not by obligation.  ’Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be secret, if a man be not a liar to boot.  If he who asked Thales the Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he ought not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other.  Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield the greater fault by the less;

     [Montaigne’s memory here serves him ill, for the question being put
     to Thales, his answer was:  “But is not perjury worse than
     adultery?”—­Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36.]