Group None

And I sought to understand this: Why is it that this negative commandment has become insignificant in the eyes of so many men? And I reflected that this must be so for several reasons, [affecting] the common people on one hand and the [Torah] scholars on the other. The common people do not even know that the prohibition of lashon hara applies to what is true [as well as to what is untrue]; and the Torah scholars, even though they know for a certainty that it applies to what is true as well — some of them are misled by the yetzer hara [the evil inclination] in a variety of ways. One of these: The yetzer hara puts it immediately into his head that the one he is speaking of is a flatterer, and says to him: "It is a mitzvah to expose the flatterers and the evil-doers." At other times it says to him: "Isn't that man [you are speaking of] a stirrer-up of strife, about whom it is permitted to speak lashon hara?" And sometimes it tempts him with the [halachic] permit of apei telata [lashon hara spoken in the presence of three], and, sometimes, of apei mara [convincing him that he would speak thus even to his (the victim's) face]. And the yetzer hara provides him with the relevant citations (see below, Principles II, III, and VIII). And sometimes he appeals to the nature of what is being said, i.e., that it is not in the category of lashon hara (e.g., what many, in our many sins, are prone to do), publicizing one as not being wise (as will be explained in Principle III).