CHAPTER XXXI. The Regard for Truth and Good Faith (_concluded_)

THE REGARD FOR TRUTH AND GOOD FAITH (concluded)

THE condemnation of untruthfulness and bad faith springs from a variety of sources. In the first place, he who tells a lie, or who breaks a promise, generally commits an injury against another person. His act consequently calls forth sympathetic resentment, and becomes an object of moral censure.

Men have a natural disposition to believe what they are told. This disposition is particularly obvious in young children; it is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and, as Adam Smith observes, they very seldom teach it enough. Even people who are themselves pre-eminent liars are often deceived by the falsehoods of others. When detected a deception always implies a conflict between two irreconcilable ideas; and such a conflict gives rise to a feeling of pain, which may call forth resentment against its volitional cause, the deceiver.

But men are not only ready to believe what they are told, they also like to know the truth. Curiosity, or the love of truth, is coeval with the first operations of the intellect; it seems to be an ultimate fact in the human {110} frame. In our endeavour to learn the truth we are frustrated by him who deceives us, and he becomes an object of our resentment.

Nor are we injured by a deception merely because we like to know the truth, but, chiefly, because it is of much importance for us that we should know it. Our conduct is based upon our ideas; hence the erroneous notion as regards some fact in the past, present, or future, which is produced by a lie or false promise, may lead to unforeseen events detrimental to our interests. Moreover, on discovering that we have been deceived, we have the humiliating feeling that another person has impertinently made our conduct subject to his will. This is a wound on our pride, a blot on our honour. Francis I. of France laid down as a principle, "that the lie was never to be put up with without satisfaction, but by a base-born fellow." "The lie," says Sainte-Palaye, "has always been considered the most fatal and irreparable affront that a man of honour could receive."

How largely the condemnation of falsehood and bad faith is due to the harm suffered by the victim appears from the fact that a lie or breach of faith is held more condemnable in proportion to the magnitude of the harm caused by it. But even in apparently trifling cases the reflective mind strongly insists upon the necessity of truthfulness and fidelity to a given word. Every lie and every unfulfilled promise has a tendency to lessen mutual confidence, to predispose the perpetrator to commit a similar offence in the future, and to serve as a bad example for others. "The importance of truth," says Bentham, "is so great, that the least violation of its laws, even in frivolous matters, is always attended with a certain degree of danger. The slightest deviation from it is an attack upon the respect we owe to it. It is a first transgression which facilitates a second, and familiarises the odious ideal {111} of falsehood." Contrariwise, as Aristotle observes, he who is truthful in unimportant matters will be all the more so in important ones. Similar considerations, however, require a certain amount of reflection and farsightedness; hence intellectual development tends to increase the emphasis laid on the duties of sincerity and good faith. At the earlier stages of civilisation it is frequently considered good form to tell an untruth to a person in order to please him, and ill-mannered to contradict him, however much he be mistaken, for the reason that farther consequences are left out of account. The utilitarian basis of the duty of truthfulness also accounts for those extreme cases in which a deception is held permissible or even a duty, when promoting the true interests of the person subject to it.

The detestation of falsehood is in a very large measure due to the motive which commonly is at the bottom of a lie. It is doubtful whether a lie ever is told simply from love of falsehood. The intention to produce a wrong belief has a deeper motive than the mere desire to produce such a belief; and in most cases this motive is the deceiver's hope of benefiting himself at the expense of the person deceived. A better motive makes the act less detestable, or may even serve as a justification. But the broad doctrine that the end sanctifies the means is generally rejected; and the principle which sometimes allows {112} deceit from a benevolent motive has been restricted within very narrow limits by a higher conception of individual freedom and individual rights. Thus the emancipation of morality from theology has brought discredit on the old theory that religious deception is permissible when it serves the object of saving human souls from eternal perdition. The opinion that no motive whatsoever can justify an act of falsehood has been advocated not only by intuitional moralists, but on utilitarian grounds. But it certainly seems absurd to the common sense of mankind that we should be allowed to save our own life or the life of a fellow-man by killing the person who wants to take it, but not by deceiving him.

It is easy to see why falsehood is so frequently held permissible, praiseworthy, or even obligatory, when directed against a stranger. In early society an injury inflicted on a stranger calls forth no sympathetic resentment. On the contrary, being looked upon with suspicion or hated as an enemy, he is considered a proper object of deception. Among the Bushmans "no one dare give any information in the absence of the chief or father of the clan." "A Bedouin," says Burckhardt, "who does not know the person interrogating him, will seldom answer with truth to questions concerning his family or tribe. The children are taught never to answer similar questions, lest the interrogator may be a secret enemy and come for purposes of revenge." Among the Beni Amer a stranger can never trust a man's word on account of "their contempt for everything foreign." That even civilised nations allow stratagem in warfare is the natural consequence of war itself being allowed; and if good faith is to be preserved between enemies, that is because only thereby useless cruelty can be avoided and an end be put to hostilities.

However, deceit is not condemned merely because it is {113} an injury to the party deceived and as such apt to arouse sympathetic resentment, but it is an object of disinterested, moral resentment also because it is intrinsically antipathetic. Lying is a cheap and cowardly method of gaining an undue advantage, and is consequently despised where courage is respected. It is the weapon of the weak, the woman, and the slave. Fraud, says Cicero, is the property of a fox, force that of a lion; "both are utterly repugnant to society, but fraud is the more detestable." "To lie is servile," says Plutarch, "and most hateful in all men, hardly to be pardoned even in poor slaves." On account of its cowardliness, lying was incompatible with Teutonic and knightly notions of manly honour; and among ourselves the epithets "liar" and "coward" are equally disgraceful to a man. "All . . . in the rank and station of gentlemen," Sir Walter Scott observes, "are forcibly called upon to remember that they must resent the imputation of a voluntary falsehood as the most gross injury." Fichte asks, "Whence comes that internal shame for one's self which manifests itself even stronger in the case of a lie than in the case of any other violation of conscience?" And his answer is, that the lie is accompanied by cowardice, and that nothing so much dishonours us in our own eyes as want of courage. According to Kant, "a lie is the abandonment, and, as it were, the annihilation, of the dignity of a man."

{114} But a lie may also be judged of from a very different point of view. It may be not only a sign of cowardice, but a sign of cleverness. Hence a successful lie may excite admiration, a disinterested kindly feeling towards the liar, genuine moral approval; whereas to be detected in a lie is considered shameful. And not only is the clever liar an object of admiration, but the person whom he deceives is an object of ridicule. To the mind of a West African native, Miss Kingsley observes, there is no intrinsic harm in lying, "because a man is a fool who believes another man on an important matter unless he puts on the oath." A Syrian proverb says, "Lying is the salt (goodness) of men, and shameful only to one who believes."

The duties of sincerity and good faith are also to some extent, and in certain cases principally, founded on prudential considerations. Although, as the Märchen tells us, it happens every day in the world that the fraudulent is successful, there is a widespread notion that, after all, "honesty is the best policy." "Nothing that is false can be lasting," says Cicero. "The liar is short-lived" (that is, soon detected), say the Arabs. According to a Wolof proverb, "lies, however numerous, will be caught by truth when it rises up." The Basutos have a saying that "cunning devours its master." It has been remarked that "if there were no such thing as honesty, it would be a good speculation to invent it, as a means of making one's fortune."

Moreover, lying is attended not only with social disadvantages, but with supernatural danger. The West African Fjort have a tale about a fisherman who every day used to catch and smuggle into his house great quantities of fish, {115} but denied to his brother and relatives that he had caught anything. All this time the fetish Sunga was watching, and was grieved to hear him lie thus. The fetish punished him by depriving him of the power of speech, that he might lie no more, and so for the future he could only make his wants known by signs. In another instance, the Fjort tell us, the earth-spirit turned into a pillar of clay a woman who said that she had no peas for sale, when she had her basket full of them. The Nandi of the Uganda Protectorate believe that "God punishes lying by striking the untruthful person with lightning." The Dyaks of Borneo think that the lightning god is made angry even by the most nonsensical untruth, such as the statement that a man has a cat for his mother or that vermin can dance. In Aneiteum, of the New Hebrides, the belief prevailed that liars would be punished in the life to come; according to the Banks Islanders, they were excluded from the true Panoi or Paradise after death. We have already noticed the emphasis which some of the higher religions lay on veracity and good faith, and other statements maybe added testifying the interest which gods of a more civilised type take in the fulfilment of these duties. In ancient Egypt Amon Ra, "the chief of all the gods," was invoked as "Lord of Truth"; and Ma[=a], or Maat, represented as his daughter, was the goddess of truth and righteousness. In a Babylonian hymn the moon god is appealed to as the guardian of truth. The Vedic gods are described as "true" and "not deceitful," as friends of honesty and righteousness; and Agni was the lord of vows. The {116} Zoroastrian Mithra was a protector of truth, fidelity, and covenants; and Rashnu Razista, "the truest true," was the genius of truth. According to the Iliad, Zeus is "no abettor of falsehoods"; according to Plato, a lie is hateful not only to men but to gods. Among the Romans Jupiter and Dius Fidius were gods of treaties, and Fides was worshipped as the deity of faithfulness. How shall we explain this connection between religious beliefs and the duties of veracity and fidelity to promises?

Apart from the circumstances which in some cases make gods vindicators of the moral law in general, as conceived of by their worshippers, there are quite special reasons for their disapproval of insincerity and bad faith. Here again we notice the influence of magic beliefs on the religious sanction of morality.

There is something uncanny in the untrue word itself. As Professor Stanley Hall points out, children not in frequently regard every deviation from the most painfully literal truth as alike heinous, with no perspective or degrees of difference between the most barefaced intended and unintended lies. In some children this fear of telling an untruth becomes so neurotic that to every statement, even to yes or no, a "perhaps" or "I think" is added mentally, whispered, or aloud. One boy had a long period of fear that, like Ananias and Sapphira, he might some moment drop down dead for a chance and perhaps unconscious lie. On the other hand, an acted lie is felt to be much less harmful than a spoken one; to point the wrong way when asked where some one is gone is less objectionable than to speak wrongly, to nod is less sinful than to say yes. Indeed, acted lies are for the most {117} part easily gotten away with, whereas some mysterious baneful energy seems to be attributed to the spoken untruth. That its evil influence is looked upon as quite mechanical appears from the palliatives used for it. Many American children are of opinion that a lie may be reversed by putting the left hand on the right shoulder and that even an oath may be neutralised or taken in an opposite sense by raising the left instead of the right hand. Among children in New York "it was sufficient to cross the fingers, elbows, or legs, though the act might not be noticed by the companion accosted, and under such circumstances no blame attached to a falsehood." To think "I do not mean it," or to attach to a statement a meaning quite different from the current one, is a form of reservation which is repeatedly found in children. Nor are feelings and ideas of this kind restricted to the young; they are fairly common among grown-up people, and have even found expression in ethical doctrines. They lie at the root of the Jesuit theory of mental reservations. According to Thomas Aquinas, again, though it is wrong to tell a lie for the purpose of delivering another from any danger whatever, it is lawful "to hide the truth prudently under some dissimulation, as Augustine says." It is not uncommonly argued that in defence of a secret we may not "lie," that is, produce directly beliefs contrary to facts; but that we may "turn a question aside," that is, produce indirectly, by natural inference from our answer, a negatively false belief; or that we may "throw the inquirer on a wrong scent," that is, produce similarly a positively false belief. This extreme formalism may no doubt to some extent be traced to the influence of early training. From the day we learned to speak, the duty of telling the truth has been strenuously enjoined upon us, and the word "lie" has been associated with sin of the {118} blackest hue; whereas other forms of falsehood, being less frequent, less obvious, and less easy to define, have also been less emphasised. But after full allowance is made for this influence, the fact still remains that a mystic efficacy is very commonly ascribed to the spoken word. Even among ourselves many persons would not dare to praise their health or fortune for fear lest some evil should result from their speech; and among less civilised peoples much greater significance is given to a word than among us. Herodotus, after mentioning the extreme importance which the ancient Persians attached to the duty of speaking the truth, adds that they held it unlawful even "to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do." I think, then, we may assume that, if for some reason or other, falsehood is stigmatised, the mysterious tendency inherent in the word easily develops into an avenging power which, as often happens in similar cases, is associated with the activity of a god.

The punishing power of a word is particularly conspicuous in the case of an oath. But the evil attending perjury does not come from the lie as such: it is in the first place a result of the curse which constitutes the oath. An oath is essentially a conditional self-imprecation, a curse by which a person calls down upon himself some evil in the event of what he says not being true. The efficacy of the oath is originally entirely magical, it is due to the magic power inherent in the cursing words. In order to charge them with supernatural energy various methods are adopted. Sometimes the person who takes the oath puts himself in contact with some object which represents the state referred to in the oath, so that the oath may absorb, as it were, its quality and communicate it to the perjurer. Thus the Kandhs swear upon the lizard's skin, "whose scaliness they pray may be their lot if forsworn," or upon the earth of an ant-hill, "like which they desire that, if false, they may be reduced to powder." The Tunguses regard it as the most dreadful {119} of all their oaths when an accused person is compelled to drink some of the blood of a dog which, after its throat has been cut, is impaled near a fire and burnt, or has its flesh scattered about piece-meal, and to swear:--"I speak the truth, and that is as true as it is that I drink this blood. If I lie, let me perish, burn, or be dried up like this dog." In other cases the person who is to swear takes hold of a certain object and calls it to inflict on him some injury if he perjure himself. The Kandhs frequently take oath upon the skin of a tiger, "from which animal destruction to the perjured is invoked." The Angami Nagas, when they swear to keep the peace, or to perform any promise, "place the barrel of a gun, or a spear, between their teeth, signifying by this ceremony that, if they do not act up to their agreement, they are prepared to fall by either of the two weapons." The Chuvashes, again, put a piece of bread and a little salt in the mouth and swear, "May I be in want of these, if I say not true!" or "if I do not keep my word!" Another method of charging an oath with supernatural energy is to touch, or to establish some kind of contact with, a holy object on the occasion when the oath is taken. The Iowa have a mysterious iron or stone, wrapped in seven skins, by which they make men swear to speak the truth. The people of Kesam, in the highlands of Palembang, swear by an old sacred knife, the Bataks of South Tóba on their village idols, the Ostyaks on the nose of a bear, which is regarded by them as an animal endowed with supernatural power. Among the Tunguses a criminal may be compelled to climb one {120} of their sacred mountains, repeating as he mounts, "May I die if I am guilty," or, "May I lose my children and my cattle," or, "I renounce for ever all success in hunting and fishing if I am guilty." In Tibetan law-courts, when the great oath is taken, "it is done by the person placing a holy scripture on his head, and sitting on the reeking hide of an ox and eating part of the ox's heart." Hindus swear on a copy of the Sanskrit haribans, or with Ganges water in their hands, or touch the legs of a Brâhmana in taking an oath. Muhammedans swear on the Koran, as Christians do on the Bible. In Morocco an oath derives efficacy from contact with, or the presence of, any lifeless object, animal, or person endowed with baraka, or holiness, such as a saint-house or a mosque, corn or wool, a flock of sheep or a horse, or a shereef. In mediæval Christendom sacred relics were generally adopted as the most effective means of adding security to oaths, and "so little respect was felt for the simple oath that, ere long, the adjuncts came to be looked upon as the essential feature, and the imprecation itself to be divested of binding force without them."

Finally, as an ordinary curse, so an oath is made efficacious by bringing in the name of a supernatural being, to whom an appeal is made. When the Comanches of Texas make a sacred pledge or promise, "they call upon the great spirit as their father, and the earth as their mother, to testify to the truth of their asseverations." Of the Chukchi we are told that "as often as they would certify the truth of any thing by oath or solemn protestations they take the sun for their guarantee and security." Among the Tunguses an accused person takes a knife in his hand, brandishes it towards the sun, and says, "If I {121} am guilty, may the sun send diseases into my bowels as mortal as a stab with this knife would be!" An Arab from the province of Dukkâla in Morocco presses a dagger against his chest, saying, "By this poison, may God thrust it into my heart if I did so or so!" If a Masai is accused of having done something wrong, he drinks some blood, which is given him by the spokesman, and says, "If I have done this deed may God kill me"; and it is believed that if he has committed the crime he dies, whereas no harm befalls him if he is innocent. Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, "to make an oath binding on the person who takes it, it is usual to give him something to eat or to drink which in some way appertains to a deity, who is then invoked to visit a breach of faith with punishment." Among the Shekani and Bakele people of Southern Guinea, when a covenant between different tribes is about to be formed, their great spirit, Mwetyi, "is always invoked as a witness, and is commissioned with the duty of visiting vengeance upon the party who shall violate the engagement." It seems to be a common practice in certain parts of Africa to swear by some fetish. The Efatese, of the New Hebrides, invoked punishment from the gods in their oaths. In Florida, of the Solomon Group, a man will deny an accusation by some tindalo (that is, the disembodied spirit of some man who already in his lifetime was supposed to be endowed with supernatural power), or by the ghostly frigate-bird, or by the ghostly shark. When an ancient Egyptian wished to give assurance of his honesty and good faith, he called Thoth to witness, the advocate in the heavenly court of justice, without whose justification no soul could stand in the day of judgment. The Eranians swore by Mithra, the Greeks by Zeus, the {122} Romans by Jupiter and Dius Fidius. A god is more able than ordinary mortals to master the processes of nature, and he may also better know whether the sworn word be true or false. It is undoubtedly on account of their superior knowledge that sun or moon or light gods are so frequently appealed to in oaths. The Egyptian god Ra is a solar, and Thoth a lunar deity. The Zoroastrian Mithra, who "has a thousand senses, and sees every man that tells a lie," is closely connected with the sun; and Rashnu Razista, according to M. Darmesteter, is an offshoot either of Mithra or Ahura Mazda himself. Dius Fidius seems originally to have been a spirit of the heaven, and a wielder of the lightning, closely allied to the great Jupiter. Zeus is all-seeing, the infallible spy of both gods and men. Now, even though the oath has the form of an appeal to a god, it may nevertheless be of a chiefly magic character, being an imprecation rather than a prayer. The oaths which the Moors swear by Allah are otherwise exactly similar in nature to those in which he is not mentioned at all. But the more the belief in magic was shaken, the more the spoken word was divested of that mysterious power which had been attributed to it by minds too apt to confound words with facts, the more prominent became the religious element in the oath. The fulfilment of the self-imprecation was made dependent upon the free will of the deity appealed to, and was regarded as the punishment for an offence committed by the perjurer against the god himself.

{123} Owing to its invocation of supernatural sanction, perjury is considered the most heinous of all acts of falsehood. But it has a tendency to make even the ordinary lie or breach of faith a matter of religious concern. If a god is frequently appealed to in oaths, a general hatred of lying and unfaithfulness may become one of his attributes, as is suggested by various facts quoted above. There is every reason to believe that a god is not, in the first place, appealed to because he is looked upon as a guardian of veracity and good faith, but that he has come to be looked upon as a guardian of these duties because he has been frequently appealed to in connection with them.

It seems that sometimes the habit of oath-taking has, in another respect also, made it prudential for men to speak the simple truth in all circumstances. Sir W. H. Sleeman {124} observes that among the woods and hills of India the cotton and other trees are supposed by the natives to be occupied by deities who are vested with a local superintendence over the affairs of a district, or perhaps of a single village. "These," he says, "are always in the view of the people, and every man knows that he is every moment liable to be taken to their court, and to be made to invoke their vengeance upon himself or those dear to him, if he has told a falsehood in what he has stated, or tells one in what he is about to state. Men so situated adhere habitually, and I may say religiously, to the truth; and I have had before me hundreds of cases in which a man's property, liberty, or life, has depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it to save either." On the other hand, there are peoples among whom a person's word can hardly be trusted unless confirmed by an oath. And one of the arguments adduced by the Quakers against the taking of oaths is that, if on any particular occasion a man swear in addition to his yea or nay, in order to make it more obligatory or convincing, its force becomes comparatively weak at other times when it receives no such confirmation.

Modes of conduct which are recommended by prudence tend on that account in various ways to be regarded as morally compulsory or praiseworthy. This subject will be discussed in connection with duties and virtues which are called "self-regarding," but in the present place it is necessary to remind ourselves of the share which early education has in making prudence a matter of moral consideration. Few duties owe so much to the training of parents and teachers as does veracity. Children easily resort to falsehood, in self-defence or otherwise, and truthfulness is therefore enjoined on them with particular emphasis.

{125} The moral ideas referring to truthfulness are, finally, much influenced by the force of habit. Where lying is frequent it is, other things being equal, less strenuously condemned, if condemned at all, than in communities which are strictly truthful. It is natural to speak the truth. Von Jhering's suggestion that man was originally a liar, and that veracity is the result of human progress, is not consistent with facts. Language was not invented to disguise the truth, but to express it. As Hutcheson remarked long ago, "truth is the natural production of the mind when it gets the capacity of communicating it, dissimulation and disguise are plainly artificial effects of design and reflection." It may be doubted whether there are any other mendacious creatures in the world than men. It is said that "lies are told, if not in speech yet in acts, by dogs"; but the instances reported of canine deceitfulness are hardly conclusive. As a cautious writer observes, the question is not whether there may be "objective deceitfulness" in the dog's conduct, but whether the motive is deceit: and "the deceitful intent is a piece, not of the observed fact, but of the observer's inference." Nor is the child, strictly speaking, a born liar. M. Compayré even goes so far as to say that, if the child has not been subjected to bad influences, or if a discipline of repression and constraint has not driven him to seek a refuge in dissimulation, he is usually frankness and sincerity itself. Montaigne remarked that the falsehood of a child grows with its growth. According to M. Perez, useful dissimulations are practised by children already at the age of two years, but generally it is only after they are three or four years old that fear of being scolded or punished will lead {126} them into falsehood. We are even told that certain savages are too stupid or too ignorant to tell lies. A Hindu gentleman of the plains, in the valley of the Nerbudda, when asked what made the uncultured people of the woods to the north and south so truthful, replied, "They have not yet learned the value of a lie." But as we know how readily truthful savages become liars when their social conditions change, we may conclude that their veracity was due rather to absence of temptation than to lack of intelligence. In a small community of savages living by themselves, there is no need for lying, nor much opportunity to practise it. There is little scope for those motives which most commonly induce people to practise falsehood--fear and love of gain, combined with a hope of success. Harmony and sympathy generally prevail between the members of the group, and deception is hardly possible since secrets do not exist.

The case is different when savages come into frequent contact with foreigners. To deceive a stranger is easy, and no scruple is made of doing so. On the contrary, as we have seen, he is regarded as a proper object of deception, and this opinion is only too often justified by his own behaviour. But when commonly practised in relation to strangers, falsehood easily becomes a habit which affects the general conduct of the man. Hamzé, the teacher of the Druses, said, "When a man once gets into the way of speaking falsely, it is to be apprehended that, in spite of himself, and by the mere force of habit, he will get to speak falsely towards the brethren"; hence it is advisable to speak the truth at all times and before all men. There is indeed abundant evidence that intercourse with strangers, and especially with people of a different race, has had a destructive influence on savage veracity.

This has been noticed among many of the uncivilised tribes of India. "Formerly," says Mr. Man, "a Sonthal, as a rule, {127} disdained to tell a falsehood, but the influences of civilisation, transfused through the contagious ethics of his Bengali neighbours, have somewhat impaired his truthfulness. In the last four or five years a great change for the worse has become evident, although even now, as a people, they are glorious exceptions to the prevailing idiosyncrasy of the lower class of natives in Bengal. With the latter, speaking the truth has been always an accident; with the Sonthal it was a characteristic principle." Indeed, the Santals in Singbhúm, who live much to themselves, are still described by Colonel Dalton as "a very simple-minded people, almost incapable of deception." The Tipperah, "where he is brought into contact with, or under the influence of the Bengallee, easily acquires their worst vices and superstitions, losing at the same time the leading characteristic of the primitive man--the love of truth." Other tribes, like the Garos and Bhúmij, have likewise been partly contaminated by their intercourse with Bengalis, and acquired from them a propensity to lie, which, in former days, was altogether foreign to them. The Kakhyens are at the present time lazy, thievish, and untrustworthy, "whether their character has been deteriorated by knavish injustice on the part of Chinese traders, or high-handed extortion and wrong on the part of Burmese." The Ladakhis are, in general, "frank, honest, and moral when not corrupted by communication with the dissolute Kashmiris." Of the Pahárias, who according to an earlier authority would sooner die than lie, it is now reported that "those who have most to do with them say they cannot rely on their word, and that they not only lie without scruple, but are scarcely annoyed at being detected." The Todas, whilst they call falsehood one of the worst vices and have a temple dedicated to Truth, seem nowadays only too often to forget both the temple and its object; and we are told that the dissimulation they practise in their dealings with Europeans has been brought about by the habit of paying them for every insignificant item of information. According to an {128} Indian civil servant quoted by Mr. Spencer, various other hill tribes, originally distinguished by their veracity, have afterwards been rendered less veracious by contact with the whites.

Of the Andaman Islanders Mr. Man observes:--"It has been remarked with regret by all interested in the race, that intercourse with the alien population has, generally speaking, prejudicially affected their morals; and that the candour, veracity, and self-reliance they manifest in their savage and untutored state are, when they become associated with foreigners, to a great extent lost, and habits of untruthfulness, dependence, and sloth engendered." Riedel makes a similar remark with reference to the natives of Ambon and Uliase. Mr. Sommerville believes that the natives of New Georgia, in the Solomon Islands, learned their practice of cheating from European traders.

Among the Ostyaks increasing civilisation has proved injurious to their ancient honesty, and those who live in the neighbourhood of towns or large villages have become even more deceitful than the colonists. A similar change has taken place with other tribes belonging to the Russian Empire, for instance the Tunguses and Kamchadales.

We hear the same story from America. Among the Omahas "formerly only two or three were notorious liars; but now, there are about twenty who do not lie." The old men of the Ojibwas all agree in saying that before the white man came and resided among them there was less lying than there is now. The Indians of Mexico, Lumholtz writes, "do not tell the truth unless it suits them." But with reference to some of them, the Tarahumares, he adds that, where they have had little or nothing to do with the whites, they are trustworthy, and profit is no inducement to them, as they believe {129} that their gods would be angry with them for charging an undue price.

The deceitfulness of many African peoples is undoubtedly in some degree a result of their intercourse with foreigners. In Sierra Leone, says Winterbottom, the natives on the sea coast, who are chiefly engaged in commerce, "are in general shrewd and artful, sometimes malevolent and perfidious. Their long connection with European slave traders has tutored them in the arts of deceit." The Yorubas, according to Burton, are eminently dishonest only "in and around the cities." Among the Kalunda those who live near the great caravan roads and have had much to do with foreign traders are suspicious and false. And the Hottentots, of whose truthfulness earlier writers spoke very highly, are nowadays said to be addicted to lying.

It has also been noticed that mendacity is favoured among children by much intercourse with strangers, when "first impressions" are consciously made, as also by frequent change of environment, or of school or residence, as such changes give rise to a feeling that "new leaves" can be easily turned.

When a social unit is composed of loosely connected sub-groups, the intercourse between members of different sub-groups resembles in many respects that between foreigners. Social incoherence is thus apt to lead to deceitful habits, as was the case in the Middle Ages. The same phenomenon is to be observed in the East; perhaps also among the Desert Arabs and the Fuegians, who live in small parties which only occasionally meet and soon again separate.

Another factor which has favoured deception is social differentiation. The different classes of society have often little sympathy for each other, their interests are not infrequently conflicting, deceit is a means of procuring advantages, and, for the inferior classes especially, a means of self-protection. As Euripides observes, slaves are in {130} the habit of concealing the truth. In Eastern Africa, says Livingstone, falsehood is a vice prevailing among the free, but still more among the slaves; "one can scarcely induce a slave to translate anything truly: he is so intent on thinking of what will please."

Hardly anything has been a greater inducement to falsehood than oppression. Whilst the old Makololo were truthful, this is not the case with their sons, "who, having been brought up among the subjected tribes, have acquired some of the vices peculiar to a menial and degraded race." The Wanyoro, who are described as "splendid liars," exercised deception chiefly to evade the intolerable exactions of their own chiefs, whereas they are fairly truthful in contact with Europeans who attempt to treat them justly. The duplicity and cunning of the Malagasy are "the natural result of centuries of superstition, ignorance, and submission to the rule of tyrannical despots, with whom the spy system has always been a necessity." In Morocco the independent Jbâla, or mountaineers of the North, are more to be trusted than the Arabs of the plains, who have long been suffering from the extortions of rapacious officials. The duplicity of Orientals is very largely due to their despotic form of government. In India, Mr. Percival observes, "despotism in one form or other that has so long prevailed, and the consequent oppression attendant thereon, must have rendered it difficult to make way without fraud. Deception and arts of cunning, under such circumstances, being the only means at the command of the inferior portions of the community for gaining their ends, and securing the plainest rights, they would resort to them as the only way of avoiding certain ruin." The Chinese habit of lying has {131} been attributed partly to the truckling fear of officers. In China and many other parts of the East, says Sir J. Bowring, "there is a fear of truth as truth, lest its discovery should lead to consequences of which the inquirer never dreams, but which are present to the mind of the person under interrogation."

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The regard for truth displays itself not only in the condemnation of falsehood, but in the idea that, under certain circumstances, it is a person's duty to inform others of the truth, although there is no deception in withholding it. This duty is limited by utilitarian considerations, and it is less insisted on than the duty of refraining from falsehood; positive commandments, as we have seen, are generally less stringent than the corresponding negative commandments. But to disclose the truth for the benefit of others, when it is attended with injurious consequences for the person who discloses it, can hardly fail to evoke moral approval, and may be deemed a merit of the highest order.

The regard for truth goes a step further still. It may be obligatory or praiseworthy not only to spread the knowledge of truth, but to seek for it. The possession of knowledge, of some kind or other, is universally respected. A Wolof proverb says, "Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse." In the moral and religious systems of the East knowledge is one of the chief pursuits of man. Confucius described virtue as consisting of knowledge, magnanimity, and valour. The ancients, he says, "wishing to rectify their hearts, . . . first desired to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things." Knowledge is to be pursued not for theoretical, but for {132} moral purposes; the Master said, "It is not easy to find a man who has learned for three years without coming to be good." The Hindus maintain that ignorance is the greatest of evils, and that the sole and ultimate object of life should be to give and receive instruction. It is said in the Laws of Manu, "A man is not therefore considered venerable because his head is gray; him who, though young, has learned the Veda, the gods consider to be venerable." According to the Mahabharata, it is by knowledge that a creature is liberated, by knowledge that he becomes the Eternal, Imperceptible, and Undecaying. Buddhism regards sin as folly and delusion as the cause of crime; "the unwise man cannot discover the difference between that which is evil and that which is good, as a child knows not the value of a coin that is placed before him." And the highest of all gifts, the source of abiding salvation, is the knowledge of the identity between the individual and God, in whom and by whom the individual lives, and moves, and has his being. According to one of the Pahlavi texts, wisdom is better than wealth of any kind; through the power of wisdom it is possible to do every duty and good work; the religion of the Mazda-worshippers is apprehended more fully by means of the most perfect wisdom, and "even the struggle and warfare of Irân with foreigners, and the smiting of Aharman and the demons it is possible to effect through the power of wisdom." A strong dash of intellectualism is a prominent feature in the Rabbinic religion. The highest virtue lies not only in the fulfilment but in the study of the law. There is a special merit bound up in it that will assist man both in this world and in the world to come; and it is said that even a bastard who is learned in {133} the law is more honoured than a high-priest who is not. Among Muhammedans, also, great respect is shown to men of learning. Knowledge, the Prophet said, "lights the way to Heaven"--"He dies not who gives life to learning"--"With knowledge the servant of God rises to the heights of goodness and to a noble position"--"The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr."

In Christianity the knowledge of truth became a necessary requirement of salvation. But here, as in the East, the truth which alone was valued was religious truth. All knowledge that was not useful to salvation was, indeed, despised, and science was regarded not only as valueless, but as sinful. "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." If it happened that any one gave himself to letters, or lifted up his mind to the contemplation of the heavenly bodies, he passed instantly for a magician or a heretic. So also every mental disposition which is essential to scientific research was for centuries stigmatised as offensive to the Almighty; it was a sin to doubt the opinions which had been instilled in childhood before they had been examined, to notice any objection to those opinions, to resolve to follow the light of evidence wherever it might lead. Yet we are told, even by highly respectable writers, that the modern world owes its scientific spirit to the extreme importance which Christianity {134} assigned to the possession of truth, of the truth. According to M. Réville, "it was the orthodox intolerance of the Church in the Middle Ages which impressed on Christian society this disposition to seek truth at any price, of which the modern scientific spirit is only the application. The more importance the Church attached to the profession of the truth--to the extent even of considering involuntary error as in the highest degree a damnable crime--so much the more the sentiment of the immense value of this truth arose in the general persuasion, along with a resolve to conquer it wherever it was felt not to be possessed. How otherwise," M. Réville asks, "can we explain that science was not developed and has not been pursued with constancy, except in the midst of Christian societies?" This statement is characteristic of the common tendency to attribute to the influence of the Christian religion almost anything good which may be found among Christian nations. But, surely, the patient and impartial search after hidden truth, for the sake of truth, which constitutes the essence of scientific research, is not congenial to, but the very opposite of, that ready acceptance of a revealed truth for the sake of eternal salvation, which was insisted upon by the Church. And what about that singular love of abstract knowledge which flourished in ancient Athens, where Aristotle declared it a sacred duty to prefer truth to everything else, and Socrates sacrificed his life on its altar? It seems that the modern scientific spirit is only a revival and development of a mental disposition which was for ages suppressed by the persecuting tendencies of the Church and the extreme contempt for learning displayed by the barbarian invaders and their descendants. Even when they had settled in the countries which they had conquered, the {135} Teutons would not permit their children to be instructed in any science, for fear lest they should become effeminate and averse from war; and long afterwards it was held that a nobleman ought not to know letters, and that to write and read was a shame to gentry.

The regard for knowledge springs in the first instance from the love of it. As Aristotle said, "all men are by nature desirous of knowledge." But this feeling is not equally strong, nor equally deep, in all. The curiosity of savages, however great it often may be, has chiefly reference to objects or events which immediately concern their welfare or appear to them alarming, or to trifles which attract attention on account of their novelty. If their curiosity were more penetrating, they would no longer remain savages; an extended desire of knowledge leads to civilisation. But curiosity or love of knowledge, whether in savage or civilised men, is not resolvable merely into views of utility; as Dr. Brown observed, we feel it without reflecting on the pleasure which we are to enjoy or the pain which we are to suffer. When highly developed, it drives men to scientific investigations even though no practical benefits are expected from the results. This devotion to truth for its own sake, pure and disinterested as it is, has a singular tendency to excite regard and admiration in everyone who has come under its influence. From the utilitarian point of view it has been defended on {136} the ground that, on the whole, every truth is in the long run useful and every error harmful, and that we can never exactly tell in advance what benefits may accrue even from a knowledge which is apparently fruitless. But it seems that our love of truth is somewhat apt to mislead our moral judgment. When duly reflecting on the matter, we cannot help making a moral distinction between him who pursues his studies merely from an instinctive craving for knowledge, and him who devotes his life to the search of truth from a conviction that he may thereby promote human welfare.