Knowledge.
What food is to the body, that knowledge is to the mind. It is the bread
of intellectual life. Without knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic
arts we should be unable to provide ourselves with food and clothing and
houses and ships and roads and bridges. Without knowledge of natural
science we should be strangers in the world in which we live, the
victims of the grossest superstitions. Without knowledge of history and
political science we could have no permanent tranquility and peace, but
should pass a precarious existence, exposed to war and violence, rapine
and revolution. Knowledge unlocks for us the mysteries of nature;
unfolds for us the treasured wisdom of the world's great men; interprets
to us the longings and aspirations of our hearts.
Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
THE DUTY.
+The severity of truth.+--Things exist in precise and definite
relations. Events take place according to fixed and immutable laws.
Truth is the perception of things just as they are. Between truth and
falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact is so, or it is not.
"Truth," says Ruskin, "is the one virtue of which there are no degrees.
There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in
the estimation of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no
stain." Truth does not always lie upon the surface of things. It
requires hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the superficial crust of
appearance to the solid rock of fact on which truth rests. To discover
and declare truth as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of
the scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what other people will be
pleased to hear, not what will be popular or profitable; but what as the
result of careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged
reflection he has learned to be the fact;--this, nothing less and
nothing more, the scholar must proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact; it
plants itself upon reality; and hence it speaks with authority. The
truthful man is one whom we can depend upon. His word is as good as his
bond. "He sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." The truthful man
brings truth and man together.
THE VIRTUE.
+Veracity has two foundations: one reverence for truth; the other regard
for one's fellow-men.+--Ordinarily these two motives coincide and
re-enforce each other. The right of truth to be spoken, and the benefit
to men from hearing it, are two sides of the same obligation. Only in
the most rare and exceptional cases can these two motives conflict. To a
healthy, right-minded man the knowledge of the truth is always a good.
+Apparent exceptions to the duty of truthfulness.+--We owe truth to all
normal people, and under all normal circumstances. We do not necessarily
owe it to the abnormal. In sickness, when the patient cannot bear the
shock of distressing news; in insanity, when the maniac cannot give to
facts their right interpretation; in criminal perversity, when knowledge
would be used in furtherance of crime, the abnormal condition of the
person with whom we have to deal may justify us in withholding from him
facts which he would use to the injury of himself or others. These are
very rare and extreme cases, and are apparent rather than real
exceptions to the universal rule of absolute truthfulness in human
speech. For in these cases it is not from a desire to deceive or mislead
the person, that we withhold the truth. We feel sure that the sick
person, when he recovers; the insane person when he is restored to
reason; the criminal, if he is ever converted to uprightness, will
appreciate the kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed. To the
person of sound body, sound mind, and sound moral intent, no conceivable
combination of circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict
requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie anything but base,
cowardly, and contemptible.
THE REWARD.
+Society is founded on trust.+--Without confidence in one another, we
could not live in social relations a single day. We should relapse into
barbarism, strife, and mutual destruction. Since society rests on
confidence, and confidence rests on tried veracity, the rewards of
veracity are all those mutual advantages which a civilized society
confers upon its members.
THE TEMPTATION.
+The costliness of strict truthfulness.+--Truth is not only hard to
discover, but frequently it is costly to speak. Truth is often opposed
to sacred traditions, inherited prejudices, popular beliefs, and vested
interests. To proclaim truth in the face of these opponents in early
times has cost many a man his life; and to-day it often exposes one to
calumny and abuse. Hence comes the temptation to conceal our real
opinions; to cover up what we know to be true under some phrase which we
believe will be popular; to sacrifice our convictions to what we suppose
to be our interests.
Especially when we have done wrong the temptation to cover it up with a
lie is very great. Deception seems so easy; it promises to smooth over
our difficulties so neatly; that it is one of the hardest temptations to
resist. Little do we dream,
What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+The forms of falsehood are numberless.+--We may lie by our faces; by
our general bearing; by our silence, as well as by our lips. There is
"the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the
patriotic lie of the historian; the provident lie of the politician; the
zealous lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend; the
careless lie of each man to himself." The mind of man was made for
truth: truth is the only atmosphere in which the mind of man can breathe
without contamination. No passing benefit which I can secure for myself
or others can compensate for the injury which a falsehood inflicts on
the mind of him who tells it and on the mind of him to whom it is told.
For benefits and advantages, however great and important, are what we
have, and they perish with the using. The mind is what we are; and an
insult to our intelligence, a scar upon ourselves, a blow at that human
confidence which binds us all together, is irremediable.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+The mischievousness of gossip and scandal.+--We are not called upon to
know everything that is going on; nor to tell everything that we cannot
help knowing. Idle curiosity and mischievous gossip result from the
direction of our thirst for knowledge toward trifling and unworthy
objects. There is great virtue in minding one's own business. The
tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developed moral sensibility.
The gossip, the busybody, the scandalmonger is the worst pest that
infests the average town and village. These mischief-makers take a grain
of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a bushel of fancies, suspicions,
surmises, and inuendoes, and then go from house to house peddling the
product for undoubted fact. The scandalmonger is the murderer of
reputations, the destroyer of domestic peace, the insuperable obstacle
to the mutual friendliness of neighborhoods. This "rejoicing in
iniquity" is the besetting sin of idle people. The man or woman who
delights in this gratuitous and uncalled-for criticism of neighbors
thereby puts himself below the moral level of the ones whose faults he
criticises. Martineau, in his scale of the springs of action, rightly
ranks censoriousness, with vindictiveness and suspiciousness, at the
very bottom of the list. Unless there is some positive good to be gained
by bringing wrong to light and offenders to justice we should know as
little as possible of the failings of our fellow-men, and keep that
little strictly to ourselves.
THE PENALTY.
+Falsehood undermines the foundations of social order.+--Universal
falsehood would bring social chaos. The liar takes advantage of the
opportunity which his position as a member of society gives him to
strike a deadly blow at the heart of the social order on which he
depends for his existence, and without whose aid his arm would be
powerless to strike.
+The liar likewise loses confidence in himself.+--He cannot distinguish
truth from falsehood, he has so frequently confounded them. He is caught
in his own meshes. A good liar must have a long memory. Having no
recognized standard to go by, he cannot remember whether he said one
thing or another about a given fact; and so he hangs himself by the rope
of his own contradictions. Worse than these outward consequences is the
loss of confidence in his own integrity and manhood. In Kant's words, "A
lie is the abandonment, or, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity
of man."