Note 334 — Chapter XXII

“There are passionate natures gifted with a strong imagination, who gradually, and sometimes even rapidly, come to take in good faith that for true, which their own spirit of contradiction, or the desire to vindicate themselves and to gain the day, suggests. Such a one was Luther.... It was possible for him to persuade himself of things which he had once regarded in quite a different light.” Thus Alb. M. Weiss, “Luther,” 1², p. 424. Ad. Hausrath rightly characterises much of what Luther says that he had learnt of Rome on his trip thither, as the “product of a self-deception which is readily understood” (“Luthers Leben,” 1, p. 79). “During a quarrel,” aptly remarks Fénelon, “the imagination becomes heated and a man deceives himself.”