The Texas Legislature once considered a bill that was of some
importance to liars. It provided that if a man called another a liar
and the latter disclosed his sense of the situation by “putting a
head on” the former, the State would hold him guiltless of offense.
Texan public opinion naturally viewed it with alarm as an attempt
to introduce alien and doubtful customs by substitution of the fist
for the bowie-knife. It appears, though, that several States of the
Union have laws against calling one a liar. In Virginia, Kentucky and
Arkansas, it is a misdemeanor punishable by fine. In Mississippi, South
Carolina and West Virginia it is ground for civil action for damages.
Georgia makes it a felony if it is untrue. In none of these states,
apparently, and nowhere else, is it either a misdemeanor or a felony to
_be_ a liar. That seems rather queer, does it not? I wonder why it
is so.
Now that I think of it, I seem always to have observed (and possibly
the phenomenon has not been overlooked by all others) that the man whom
the word “liar” maddens to crime is commonly not maddened to anything
in particular by the consciousness of being one.
The philosophy of the matter is that truthfulness, like all the other
virtues, takes rank as such because in the long run, and in the greater
number of instances, it is expedient. Whatever is, generally speaking,
expedient, that is to say, conducive to the welfare of the race, comes
to be considered a virtue; whatever, with only the same limitations,
does not promote, but obstructs, the welfare of the race is held to be
a sin. Morality has, and can have, no other basis than expediency. A
virtue is not an end; it is a means; the end is that only conceivable
welfare, happiness. To increase the sum of happiness—that is the only
worthy ambition, the only creditable motive. Whatever does that is
right; whatever does the contrary is wrong. An act that does neither
the one nor the other has no moral character at all. That an act can
be right or wrong without regard to its consequences is to a sane
understanding an unthinkable proposition. It is difficult to imagine a
world in which happiness would commonly be promoted by falsehood, but
in such a world falsehood would indubitably be considered, and rightly
considered, a virtue, and to be called a truth-teller would be resented
as an insult, especially by those most irreclaimably addicted to the
habit.
During a recent trial of a postal-service “grafter” a witness confessed
with candor that one of his commercial habits was that of saying “the
thing that is not.” “You can’t help telling lies in business,” he
explained. But you can; you can tell the truth for the good of your
soul and make an assignment for the benefit of your creditors.
To be serious, no man of sense really believes that falsehood is
necessary to success in business. The practices and customs of every
trade and profession are those which commend themselves to approval
of small men, men with an impediment in their thought. It is they who
virtually conduct the affairs of the world, for there are too few of
the other sort to count for much. These little fellows, therefore,
“set the fashion,” determine the ethics and traditions in business, in
law, in medicine, in politics, in religion, in journalism. The most
conspicuous characteristic of this pigmy band is a predisposition to
small deceits. The first word that rises to their lips is a lie; the
last word that leaves them is a lie. Go into the first shop you find
and ask for something not kept there, but which you know all about.
Observe the salesman’s, or, alas, saleswoman’s, alacrity in telling you
a lie to induce you to abandon your preference in favor of something
that is kept there. Do you fancy it is different in dealing with those
higher in the scale of commercial being? A wealthy and most respectable
business man once told me that among the two or three scores of similar
men with whom he daily dealt there was not one that he could believe;
he had to try to discern their secret wishes and intentions through the
fog of falsehood in which they sought to conceal them. He had himself a
method quite as misleading; he deceived them by telling the truth. They
couldn’t imagine a man doing a thing like that, so they disbelieved him
and he got the better of them.
That is his account of the matter. Perhaps it is true—he may have
wanted me to think him a liar. Anyhow, the method of deceit that he
professed has sometimes been successfully followed in large affairs,
notably by the late Prince Bismarck. When he entered the field of
diplomacy he found it such a nest of liars that for centuries no man
in it had believed another. He could deceive only by being truthful,
and for many years he fooled all the diplomats by his amazing and
confusing candor in disclosing his desires and intentions. If he had
lived a thousand years he would have revolutionized diplomacy and would
then have reverted, with a special advantage to himself, to the senior
practices of the trade. But he died and his method died with him.
If truth is so valuable why do not all truthful men succeed? Because
not all truthful men have brains. Not all men of truth and brains have
energy. Not all men of truth and brains and energy have opportunity.
Not all men of truth and brains and energy and opportunity are lucky.
And finally, not all men of truth and brains and energy and opportunity
and luck particularly care to succeed; some of us like to ignore the
gifts of nature and dawdle through life in something of the peace that
we expect after death. Moreover, there is a difference of opinion as
to what is success. I know an abandoned wretch who considers himself
prosperous when happy; do you know any one who considers himself happy
when prosperous?
In the sweat of their consciences most men eat bread. I doubt if they
find it particularly sweet, even when, having a whole loaf, they see
a neighbor with none. They are tormented with a craving for pillicum.
(There is no such dish as pillicum—that is why they crave it.) Go to,
all ye that pursue shadows, or fly from them. Learn to be content with
what you have. True, if all were that way there would be an end to
civilization, which is the daughter of discontent and worthy of its
mother; but that is not your affair. You are custodians of your own
happiness and have a right to peace, health and sweet sleep o’ nights.
You are not bound to take account of hypothetical perils; it will be
time to consider the extinction of civilization when you observe that
all are becoming content. Contentment is a virtue which at present
seems to be confined mainly to the wise and the infamous.
1903.