What is truth? said jesting Pilate;[42] and would not stay for an
answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness; and count it
a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking as well as
in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone,
yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins,
though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the
ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in
finding out of truth: nor again, that, when it is found, it imposeth
upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural
though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools[43] of
the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what
should be in it that men should love lies; where neither they make
for pleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant,
but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth is a naked
and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and
triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights.
Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by
day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle,
that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add
pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s
minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations
as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number
of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and
unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers,[44] in great severity,
called poesy “vinum dæmonum,”[45] because it filleth the imagination,
and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that
passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth
in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever
these things are thus in men’s depraved judgments and affections, yet
truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of
truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of
truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which
is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The
first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the
sense;[46] the last was the light of reason;[47] and his sabbath work,
ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light
upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into
the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the
face of his chosen. The poet[48] that beautified the sect,[49] that
was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: “It
is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon
the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a
battle, and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable
to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth” (a hill not to be
commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), “and to
see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale
below;”[50] so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with
swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s
mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of
truth.
To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil
business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not,
that clear and round dealing is the honor of man’s nature, and that
mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which
may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these
winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth
basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that
doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious;
and therefore Montaigne[51] saith prettily, when he inquired the
reason why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an
odious charge: saith he, “If it be well weighed, to say that a man
lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave towards God and a coward
towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man;” surely, the
wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so
highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the
judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that,
when “Christ cometh,” he shall not “find faith upon the earth.”[52]