To allow man to choose his course and be rewarded or punished, HASHEM put a component in man: imagination. Imagination is the creative ability to form a mental picture and feel it as vividly as if it were real. Armed with an imagination, man can create fanciful worlds at his will and actually believe them. If man wishes to turn to evil, he can create rationales to make these ways sound noble and proper — and fool himself, at least. Now man has free will.

This Shmuz deals with one of the most beguiling of human traits: our creative ways of justifying whatever it is that we do.