A Lie Never Justifiable: A Study in Ethics. H. Clay Trumbull

Books of the East, XXIII., 119 f., 124 f., 128, 139. See reference to Jackson's paper on "the ancient Persians' abhorrence of falsehood, illustrated from the Avesta," in Journal of Am. Oriental Soc., Vol. XIII., p. cii.]

      "Truth was the main cardinal virtue among the Egyptians," and "falsehood was considered disgraceful among them."[1] Ra and Ma were symbols of Light and Truth; and their representation was worn on the breastplate of priest and judge, like the Urim and Thummim of the Hebrews.[2] When the soul appeared in the Hall of Two Truths, for final judgment, it must be able to say, "I have not told a falsehood," or fail of acquittal.[3] Ptah, the creator, a chief god of the Egyptians, was called "Lord of Truth."[4] The Egyptian conception of Deity was: "God is the truth, he lives by truth, he lives upon the truth, he is the king of truth."[5] The Egyptians, like the Zoroastrians, seemed to count the one all-dividing line in the universe the line between truth and falsehood, between light and darkness.

      [Footnote 1: Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I., 299; III., 183–185.]

      [Footnote 2: Exod. 39: 8–21; Lev. 8: 8.]

      [Footnote 3: Bunsen's Egypt's Place in Universal History, V., 254.]

      [Footnote 4: Wilkinson's Anc. Egyp., III., 15–17.]

      [Footnote 5: Budge's The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 131.]

      Among the ancient Greeks the practice of lying was very general, so general that writers on the social life of the Greeks have been accustomed to give a low place relatively to that people in its estimate of truthfulness as a virtue. Professor Mahaffy says on this point: "At no period did the nation ever attain that high standard which is the great feature in Germanic civilization. Even the Romans, with all their coarseness, stood higher in this respect. But neither in Iliad nor in Odyssey is there, except in phrases, any reprobation of deceit as such." He points to the testimony of Cicero, concerning the Greeks, who "concedes to them all the high qualities they choose to claim save one—that of truthfulness."[1] Yet the very way in which Herodotus tells to the credit of the Persians that they allowed no place for the lie in their ethics[2] seems to indicate his apprehension of a higher standard of veracity than that which was generally observed among his own people. Moreover, in the Iliad, Achilles is represented as saying: "Him I hate as I do the gates of Hades, who hides one thing in his heart and utters another;" and it is the straightforward Achilles, rather than "the wily and shiftful Ulysses," who is the admired hero of the Greeks.[3] Plato asserts, and argues in proof of his assertion, that "the veritable lie … is hated by all gods and men." He includes in the term "veritable lie," or "genuine lie," a lie in the soul as back of the spoken lie, and he is sure that "the divine nature is incapable of a lie," and that in proportion as the soul of a man is conformed to the divine image, the man "will speak, act, and live in accordance with the truth."[4] Aristotle, also, while recognizing different degrees of veracity, insists that the man who is in his soul a lover of truth will be truthful even when he is tempted to swerve from the truth. "For the lover of truth, who is truthful where nothing is at stake [or where it makes no difference], will yet more surely be truthful where there is a stake [or where it does make a difference]; for he will [then] shun the lie as shameful, since he shuns it simply because it is a lie."[5] And, again, "Falsehood abstractly is bad and blamable, and truth honorable and praiseworthy; and thus the truthful man being in the mean is praiseworthy, while the false [in either extreme, of overstating or of understating] are both blamable, but the exaggerating man more so than the other."[6]

      [Footnote 1: Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece, pp. 27, 123. See also Fowler's Principles of Morals, II., 219–221.]

      [Footnote 2: Hist., Bk. I., §139.]

      [Footnote 3: Professor Fowler seems to be quite forgetful of this fact. He speaks of Ulysses as if he had precedence of Achilles in the esteem of the Greeks. See his Principles of Morals, II., 219.]

      [Footnote 4: Plato's Republic, II., 382, a, b.]

      [Footnote 5: Aristotle's Eth. Nic., IV., 13, 1127, a, b.]

      [Footnote 6: Ibid., IV.]

      Theognis recognizes this high ideal of the duty and the beauty of truthfulness, when he says: "At first there is a small attractiveness about a lie, but in the end the gain it brings is both shameful and harmful. That man has no fair glory, in whose heart dwells a lie, and from whose mouth it has once issued."[1]

      [Footnote 1: Theognis, 607.]

      Pindar looks toward the same standard when he says to Hiero, "Forge thy tongue on the anvil of truth;"[1] and when he declares emphatically, "I will not stain speech with a lie."[2] So, again, when his appeal to a divinity is: "Thou that art the beginning of lofty virtue, Lady Truth, forbid thou that my poem [or composition] should stumble against a lie, harsh rock of offense."[3] In his tragedy of the Philoctetes, Sophocles makes the whole play pivot on the remorse of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, over his having lied to Philoctetes (who is for the time being an enemy of the Greeks), in order to secure through him the killing of Paris and the overthrow of Troy. The lie was told at the instigation of Ulysses; but Neoptolemus repents its utterance, and refuses to take advantage of it, even though the fate of Troy and the triumph of Greek arms depend on the issue. The plain teaching of the tragedy is that "the purposes of heaven are not to be served by a lie; and that the simplicity of the young son of truth-loving Achilles is better in the sight of heaven, even when it seems to lead to failure, than all the cleverness of guileful Ulysses."[4]

      [Footnote 1: Pythian Ode, I, 86.]

      [Footnote 2: Olympian Ode, 4, 16.]

      [Footnote 3: Bergk's Pindar, 183 [221].]

      [Footnote 4: Professor Lamberton]

      It is admitted on all hands that the Romans and the Germans had a high ideal as to the duty of truthfulness and the sin of lying.[1] And so it was in fact with all peoples which had any considerable measure of civilization in former ages. It is a noteworthy fact that the duty of veracity is often more prominent among primitive peoples than among the more civilized, and that, correspondingly, lying is abhorred as a vice, or seems to be unknown as an expedient in social intercourse. This is not always admitted in the theories of writers on morals, but it would seem to be borne out by an examination into the facts of the case. Lecky, in his study of "the natural history of morals,"[2] claims that veracity "usually increases with civilization," and he seeks to show why it is so. But this view of Lecky's is an unfounded assumption, in support of which he proffers no evidence; while Herbert Spencer's exhibit of facts, in his "Cyclopaedia of Descriptive Sociology," seems to disprove the claim of Lecky; and he directly asserts that "surviving remnants of some primitive races in India have natures in which truthfulness seems to be organic; that not only to the surrounding Hindoos, higher intellectually and relatively advanced in culture, are they in this respect far superior, but they are superior to Europeans."[3]

      [Footnote 1: See Fowler's Principles of Morals, II., 220; also Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece, p. 27. Note, for instance, the high standard as to truthfulness indicated by Cicero, in his "Offices," III., 12–17, 32. "Pretense and dissimulation ought to be banished from the whole of life." "Reason … requires that nothing be done insidiously, nothing dissemblingly, nothing falsely." Note, also, Juvenal, Satire XIII., as to the sin of a lie purposed, even if not spoken; and Marcus Aurelius in his "Thoughts," Book IX.: "He … who lies is guilty of impiety to the same [highest] divinity." "He, then, who lies intentionally is guilty of impiety, inasmuch as he acts unjustly by deceiving; and he also who lies unintentionally, inasmuch as he is at variance with the universal nature, and inasmuch as he disturbs the order by fighting against the nature of the world; for he fights against it, who is moved of himself to that which is contrary to truth, for he had received powers from nature through the neglect of which he is not able now to distinguish falsehood from truth."]

      [Footnote 2: History of European Morals, I., 143.]

      [Footnote 3: See Spencer's Principles of Sociology, II., 234 ff.; also his Inductions of Ethics, p. 405 f.]

      Among those Hill Tribes of India which have been most secluded, and which have retained the largest measure of primitive life and customs,