a satisfaction which must be left to itself

Fear of the truth may lead consciousness to hide, from itself and others, behind the pretension that its burning zeal for truth makes it difficult or even impossible to find any other truth but the unique truth of vanity – that of being at any rate cleverer than any thoughts that one gets by oneself or from others. This sort of conceit, which understands how to belittle every truth and turn away from it back into itself, and gloats over this, its own private understanding, which always knows how to dissipate every possible thought, and to find, instead of all the content, merely the barren Ego – this is a satisfaction which must be left to itself; for it flees from the universal and seeks only an isolated existence on its own account.

Hegel, Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirt (¶80)