The Golampians all believe, singularly enough, that truth possesses some
inherent vitality and power that give it an assured prevalence over
falsehood; that a good name cannot be permanently defiled and irreparably
ruined by detraction, but, like a star, shines all the brighter for the
shadow through which it is seen; that justice cannot be stayed by
injustice; that vice is powerless against virtue. I could quote from their
great writers hundreds of utterances affirmative of these propositions.
One of their poets, for example, has some striking and original lines, of
which the following is a literal but unmetrical translation:
A man who is in the right has three arms,
But he whose conscience is rotten with wrong
Is stripped and confined in a metal cell.
Imbued with these beliefs, the Golampis think it hardly worth while to be
truthful, to abstain from slander, to do justice and to avoid vicious
actions. "The practice," they say, "of deceit, calumniation, oppression
and immorality cannot have any sensible and lasting injurious effect, and
it is most agreeable to the mind and heart. Why should there be personal
self-denial without commensurate general advantage?"
In consequence of these false views, affirmed by those whom they regard as
great and wise, the people of Mogon-Zwair are, as far as I have observed
them, the most conscienceless liars, cheats, thieves, rakes and all-round,
many-sided sinners that ever were created to be damned. It was, therefore,
with inexpressible joy that I received one day legal notification that I
had been tried in the High Court of Conviction and sentenced to banishment
to Lalugnan. My offense was that I had said that I regarded consistency as
the most detestable of all vices.