Among sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly false upon
the face of them for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject
which is accidentally combined with error, one of the grossest and
broadest conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the
truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth
is one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered.
Even with instruments specially contrived for such a purpose--with a
foot rule, a level, or a theodolite--it is not easy to be exact; it is
easier, alas! to be inexact. From those who mark the divisions on a
scale to those who measure the boundaries of empires or the distance of
the heavenly stars, it is by careful method and minute, unwearying
attention that men rise even to material exactness or to sure knowledge
even of external and constant things. But it is easier to draw the
outline of a mountain than the changing appearance of a face; and truth
in human relations is of this more intangible and dubious order: hard
to seize, harder to communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose,
colloquial sense--not to say that I have been in Malabar when as a
matter of fact I was never out of England, not to say that I have read
Cervantes in the original when as a matter of fact I know not one
syllable of Spanish--this, indeed, is easy and to the same degree
unimportant in itself. Lies of this sort, according to circumstances,
may or may not be important; in a certain sense even they may or may
not be false. The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live
truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a
formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie--heart and
face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons
intimacy. And, _vice versâ_, veracity to sentiment, truth in a
relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or
falsify emotion--that is the truth which makes love possible and
mankind happy.
_L'art de bien dire_ is but a drawing-room accomplishment unless it be
pressed into the service of the truth. The difficulty of literature is
not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader,
but to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood
in the case of books or set orations; even in making your will, or
writing an explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the world.
But one thing you can never make Philistine natures understand; one
thing, which yet lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to their
wits as a high flight of metaphysics--namely, that the business of life
is mainly carried on by means of this difficult art of literature, and
according to a man's proficiency in that art shall be the freedom and
the fulness of his intercourse with other men. Anybody, it is
supposed, can say what he means; and, in spite of their notorious
experience to the contrary, people so continue to suppose. Now, I
simply open the last book I have been reading--Mr. Leland's captivating
_English Gipsies_. "It is said," I find on p. 7, "that those who can
converse with Irish peasants in their own native tongue form far higher
opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful, and of _the elements
of humour and pathos in their hearts_, than to those who know their
thoughts only through the medium of English. I know from my own
observations that this is quite the case with the Indians of North
America, and it is unquestionably so with the gipsy." In short, where
a man has not a full possession of the language, the most important,
because the most amiable, qualities of his nature have to lie buried
and fallow; for the pleasure of comradeship, and the intellectual part
of love, rest upon these very "elements of humour and pathos." Here is
man opulent in both, and for lack of a medium he can put none of it out
to interest in the market of affection! But what is thus made plain to
our apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true
even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak
different dialects; one shall be copious and exact, another loose and
meagre; but the speech of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit
upon the truth of fact--not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a
mantle, but cleanly adhering, like an athlete's skin. And what is the
result? That the one can open himself more clearly to his friends, and
can enjoy more of what makes life truly valuable--intimacy with those
he loves. An orator makes a false step; he employs some trivial, some
absurd, some vulgar phrase; in the turn of a sentence he insults by a
side wind, those whom he is labouring to charm; in speaking to one
sentiment he unconsciously ruffles another in parenthesis; and you are
not surprised, for you know his task to be delicate and filled with
perils. "O frivolous mind of man, light ignorance!" As if yourself,
when you seek to explain some misunderstanding or excuse some apparent
fault, speaking swiftly and addressing a mind still recently incensed,
were not harnessing for a more perilous adventure; as if yourself
required less tact and eloquence; as if an angry friend or a suspicious
lover were not more easy to offend than a meeting of indifferent
politicians! Nay, and the orator treads in a beaten round; the matters
he discusses have been discussed a thousand times before; language is
ready-shaped to his purpose; he speaks out of a cut and dry vocabulary.
But you--may it not be that your defence reposes on some subtlety of
feeling, not so much as touched upon in Shakespeare, to express which,
like a pioneer, you must venture forth into zones of thought still
unsurveyed, and become yourself a literary innovator? For even in love
there are unlovely humours; ambiguous acts, unpardonable words, may yet
have sprung from a kind sentiment. If the injured one could read your
heart, you may be sure that he would understand and pardon; but, alas!
the heart cannot be shown--it has to be demonstrated in words. Do you
think it is a hard thing to write poetry? Why, that is to write
poetry, and of a high, if not the highest, order.
I should even more admire "the lifelong and heroic literary labours" of
my fellow-men, patiently clearing up in words their loves and their
contentions, and speaking their autobiography daily to their wives,
were it not for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my
admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is not entirely
carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and
contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by unconscious
and winning inflections; we have legible countenances, like an open
book; things that cannot be said look eloquently through the eye; and
the soul, not locked into the body as a dungeon, dwells ever on the
threshold with appealing signals. Groans and tears, looks and
gestures, a flush or a paleness, are often the most clear reporters of
the heart, and speak more directly to the hearts of others. The
message flies by these interpreters in the least space of time, and the
misunderstanding is averted in the moment of its birth. To explain in
words takes time and a just and patient hearing; and in the critical
epochs of a close relation, patience and justice are not qualities on
which we can rely. But the look or the gesture explains things in a
breath; they tell their message without ambiguity; unlike speech, they
cannot stumble, by the way, on a reproach or an allusion that should
steel your friend against the truth; and then they have a higher
authority, for they are the direct expression of the heart, not yet
transmitted through the unfaithful and sophisticating brain. Not long
ago I wrote a letter to a friend which came near involving us in
quarrel; but we met, and in personal talk I repeated the worst of what
I had written, and added worse to that; and with the commentary of the
body it seemed not unfriendly either to hear or say. Indeed, letters
are in vain for the purposes of intimacy; an absence is a dead break in
the relation; yet two who know each other fully and are bent on
perpetuity in love, may so preserve the attitude of their affections
that they may meet on the same terms as they had parted.
Pitiful is the case of the blind, who cannot read the face; pitiful
that of the deaf, who cannot follow the changes of the voice. And
there are others also to be pitied; for there are some of an inert,
uneloquent nature, who have been denied all the symbols of
communication, who have neither a lively play of facial expression, nor
speaking gestures, nor a responsive voice, nor yet the gift of frank,
explanatory speech: people truly made of clay, people tied for life
into a bag which no one can undo. They are poorer than the gipsy, for
their heart can speak no language under heaven. Such people we must
learn slowly by the tenor of their acts, or through yea and nay
communications; or we take them on trust on the strength of a general
air, and now and again, when we see the spirit breaking through in a
flash, correct or change our estimate. But these will be uphill
intimacies, without charm or freedom, to the end; and freedom is the
chief ingredient in confidence. Some minds, romantically dull, despise
physical endowments. That is a doctrine for a misanthrope; to those
who like their fellow-creatures it must always be meaningless; and, for
my part, I can see few things more desirable, after the possession of
such radical qualities as honour and humour and pathos, than to have a
lively and not a stolid countenance; to have looks to correspond with
every feeling; to be elegant and delightful in person, so that we shall
please even in the intervals of active pleasing, and may never
discredit speech with uncouth manners or become unconsciously our own
burlesques. But of all unfortunates there is one creature (for I will
not call him man) conspicuous in misfortune. This is he who has
forfeited his birthright of expression, who has cultivated artful
intonations, who has taught his face tricks, like a pet monkey, and on
every side perverted or cut off his means of communication with his
fellow-men. The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit,
showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
But this fellow has filled his windows with opaque glass, elegantly
coloured. His house may be admired for its design, the crowd may pause
before the stained windows, but meanwhile the poor proprietor must lie
languishing within, uncomforted, unchangeably alone.
Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from
open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the
truth. It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the
truth by yea and nay communications implies a questioner with a share
of inspiration such as is often found in mutual love. _Yea_ and _nay_
mean nothing; the meaning must have been related in the question. Many
words are often necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in
this sort of exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope
is by many arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to
indicate, in the course of time, for what target we are aiming, and
after an hour's talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a
single principle or a single thought. And yet while the curt, pithy
speaker misses the point entirely, a wordy, prolegomenous babbler will
often add three new offences in the process of excusing one. It is
really a most delicate affair. The world was made before the English
language, and seemingly upon a different design. Suppose we held our
converse, not in words, but in music; those who have a bad ear would
find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no better than
foreigners in this big world. But we do not consider how many have "a
bad ear" for words, nor how often the most eloquent find nothing to
reply. I hate questioners and questions; there are so few that can be
spoken to without a lie. "_Do you forgive me?_" Madam and sweetheart,
so far as I have gone in life I have never yet been able to discover
what forgiveness means. "_Is it still the same between us?_" Why, how
can it be? It is eternally different; and yet you are still the friend
of my heart. "Do you understand me?" God knows; I should think it
highly improbable.
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a
room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room
a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have
perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly
shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at
the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his
tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed
through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and
part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the
foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the
law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole
tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate
statement; the beginning and the end define and travesty the
intermediate conversation. You never speak to God; you address a
fellow-man, full of his own tempers; and to tell truth, rightly
understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true
impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity.
To reconcile averted friends a Jesuitical discretion is often needful,
not so much to gain a kind hearing as to communicate sober truth.
Women have an ill name in this connection; yet they live in as true
relations; the lie of a good woman is the true index of her heart.
"It takes," says Thoreau, in the noblest and most useful passage I
remember to have read in any modern author[1] "two to speak truth--one
to speak and another to hear." He must be very little experienced, or
have no great zeal for truth, who does not recognise the fact. A grain
of anger or a grain of suspicion produces strange acoustical effects,
and makes the ear greedy to remark offence. Hence we find those who
have once quarrelled carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready to
break the truce. To speak truth there must be moral equality or else
no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to
degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become
ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins
with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early
years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres,
noting only the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a
person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up
the effort to speak truth. With our chosen friends, on the other hand,
and still more between lovers (for mutual understanding is love's
essence), the truth is easily indicated by the one and aptly
comprehended by the other. A hint taken, a look understood, conveys
the gist of long and delicate explanations; and where the life is known
even _yea_ and _nay_ become luminous. In the closest of all
relations--that of a love well founded and equally shared--speech is
half discarded, like a roundabout, infantile process or a ceremony of
formal etiquette; and the two communicate directly by their presences,
and with few looks and fewer words contrive to share their good and
evil and uphold each other's hearts in joy. For love rests upon a
physical basis; it is a familiarity of nature's making and apart from
voluntary choice. Understanding has in some sort outrun knowledge, for
the affection perhaps began with the acquaintance; and as it was not
made like other relations, so it is not, like them, to be perturbed or
clouded. Each knows more than can be uttered; each lives by faith, and
believes by a natural compulsion; and between man and wife the language
of the body is largely developed and grown strangely eloquent. The
thought that prompted and was conveyed in a caress would only lose to
be set down in words--ay, although Shakespeare himself should be the
scribe.
Yet it is in these dear intimacies, beyond all others, that we must
strive and do battle for the truth. Let but a doubt arise, and alas!
all the previous intimacy and confidence is but another charge against
the person doubted. "_What a monstrous dishonesty is this if I have
been deceived so long and so completely!_" Let but that thought gain
entrance, and you plead before a deaf tribunal. Appeal to the past;
why, that is your crime! Make all clear, convince the reason; alas!
speciousness is but a proof against you. "_If you can abuse me now,
the more likely that you have abused me from the first._"
For a strong affection such moments are worth supporting, and they will
end well; for your advocate is in your lover's heart and speaks her own
language; it is not you but she herself who can defend and clear you of
the charge. But in slighter intimacies, and for a less stringent
union? Indeed, is it worth while? We are all _incompris_, only more
or less concerned for the mischance: all trying wrongly to do right;
all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap-dogs.
Sometimes we catch an eye--this is our opportunity in the ages--and we
wag our tail with a poor smile. "_Is that all?_" All? If you only
knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we
to squander life on the indifferent.
But the morality of the thing, you will be glad to hear, is excellent;
for it is only by trying to understand others that we can get our own
hearts understood; and in matters of human feeling the clement judge is
the most successful pleader.
[1] "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," Wednesday, p. 283.