Duty to kings, piety to parents, gratitude to benefactors, and
fidelity to friends, are different and particular ties. But the
name of rival cuts 'em all asunder, and is a general acquittance.
Rival is equal, and love like death an universal leveller of
mankind. Ha! But is there not such a thing as honesty? Yes, and
whosoever has it about him, bears an enemy in his breast. For your
honest man, as I take it, is that nice, scrupulous, conscientious
person, who will cheat nobody but himself; such another coxcomb as
your wise man, who is too hard for all the world, and will be made a
fool of by nobody but himself; ha, ha, ha. Well, for wisdom and
honesty give me cunning and hypocrisy; oh, 'tis such a pleasure to
angle for fair-faced fools! Then that hungry gudgeon credulity will
bite at anything. Why, let me see, I have the same face, the same
words and accents when I speak what I do think, and when I speak
what I do not think, the very same; and dear dissimulation is the
only art not to be known from nature.


Why will mankind be fools, and be deceived,
And why are friends' and lovers' oaths believed,
When each, who searches strictly his own mind,
May so much fraud and power of baseness find?



ACT III.--SCENE I.