(Speech on the law of Prairial 22.)] [Footnote 31161: Mirabeau said of Robespierre: "Whatever that man has said, he believes in it .-- Robespierre, Duplay's guest, dined every day with Duplay, a juryman in the revolutionary tribunal and co-operator for the guillotine, at eighteen francs a day.

The talk at the table probably turned on the current abstractions; but there must have been frequent allusions to the condemnations of the day, and, even when not mentioned, they were in their minds.

Only Robert Browning, at the present day, could imagine and revive what was spoken and thought in those evening conversations before the mother and daughters."] [Footnote 31162: Today, more than 100 years later, where are we?
Is it possible that man can thus lie to himself and hence to others?
Robert Wright, in his book "The Moral Animal", describing "The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology", writes (page 280): "The proposition here is that the human brain is, in large part, a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing others that its owner is in the right--and thus a machine for convincing its owner of the same thing.

The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, its sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either.

Like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue." (SR).] [Footnote 31163: Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 151 .-- Cf..