“The art of silence and of well-term’d speech.” OLD POET.
Of the many practices to which our people are addicted, and which exhibit their progress towards the higher walks of civilization, there is none more prominent than the habit of lying. Celius wrote of Pompey, “he is wont to think one thing and speak another;” and we may say, that amongst us, it has almost become difficult to decide, whether we act upon the principle that language was invented to express our thoughts, or simply for the purpose of enabling us to conceal them.
I have an old friend who, adding to a mind accustomed to accurate observation, more than fifty years of experience, frequently remarks that he has never yet had half a dozen conversations with any person, without detecting a falsehood.[1] It is well known that in our day it is scarcely possible to bargain even with a saint, without discovering him a liar; and I verily believe that had all who ever indulged this habit been treated like Ananias and his spouse, the world would long since have been depopulated. Fortunately, none are now so summarily punished, or there would be a terrible “falling down and giving up of the ghost.” For this generous forbearance, we may, perhaps, be indebted to the superiority which we have acquired over these two rude victims. We have certainly improved somewhat upon their example, yet it must be owned that our progress in this habit has not been commensurate with that made in the other improvements of the age. Some of the fabrications of the Carthaginians and old Assyrians, noted for their proficiency in this particular, were greatly superior to any encountered in the present day. We have lost the ancient spirit, which, it is feared, can only be revived by re-enacting some of the ancient laws. For instance, in
Sparta, it is said, thieves were punished, not for stealing, but for permitting themselves to be caught; the law-makers, no doubt, arguing that the fool deserves severer chastisement than the rogue. Were the same rule adopted now as to lying, it would soon close the mouths of those arrant bunglers who so frequently provoke our ridicule and contempt.
Man was originally endowed with the power of clear and distinct articulation, which, after some improvement, enabled him to convey what ideas he pleased to his fellows. It is agreeable to all experience that in using this excellent gift, he should consult his own convenience, and he has accordingly introduced this habit of lying. From the highest to the humblest, and from the gray-haired old man to his youthful grand-child, all find it of use. The priest, the lawyer, the physician, have rendered it a necessary part of their professions. Tradesmen and mechanics have by no means neglected it, and some have made such signal use of it, that we now look upon the sons of Crispin as comparable only to a horde of Cretians, who, we are assured by excellent authority, were always liars. The conveniences resulting from this practice have ever been so very apparent, that its origin was almost coeval with the existence of man; for one of our primitive ancestors, after exhibiting his moral depravity by murdering his brother, was stupid enough, when asked the whereabouts of the slain, to answer the all-knowing questioner, “I know not; am I my brother’s keeper?” Since his day it has been introduced into every walk of life, and is now used without reference to the occasion—some being even so addicted to it as to tell a lie when the simple truth would answer better. In childhood we seek to avoid the rod by resorting to it, and when we attain to years of discretion we find it convenient upon much more trifling occasions. Does some intolerable bore intrude upon you, you dismiss him to the digestion of a lie, and find pleasure in the reflection of having done so. When an impatient creditor duns you, what more convenient than a plausible falsehood? When an appeal is made to your purse by some importunate borrower or beggar, you know well how to answer him by an untruth. Should you get into difficulty, you study what virtue there is in language, and use it to effect your end. When an inquisitive wife pests you with her troublesome inquiries, you have the example of an honorable Roman senator for telling her a lie; and when you have broken a promise, why, you know well how to excuse yourself by resorting to the same means that caused its violation.
Knowing the great conveniences of this habit, and being masters of our tongues, the fault lies with us if we cannot touch whatever chord in the nature of our fellows that we wish to arouse. To attain this degree of perfection, however, we should be properly schooled. Ever since the times of Thauth, Hermes, and Cadmus, many have endeavored to excel in efforts to reduce the gift of speech to writing, and to regular rules and systems. Every variety of sciences, whatever their pretensions, have so used it as best to promote their interests, inventing new words, or assigning strange meanings to old ones, whenever occasion required. It has been the great fountain and support of every excellence of which we know, and the powerful medium of every humbug that has heretofore cursed society. It may, therefore, appear strange that no one has yet, for the great benefit of mankind in general, resorted to it for the elements to establish, as a distinct profession, the art of well and skillfully framing a falsehood.
The schools of philosophy have settled it that men may lie. Whether they have done so upon the strength of the bold opinion of the crafty Lysander, that truth and falsehood are indifferent things; or upon the comprehensive saying of Sophocles, “I judge no speech amiss that is of use;” or upon the more designing maxim of the Spaniard, “tell a lie and you will get out the truth;” or upon the anatomical principle of the petit Prince of Bantam, which will certainly be admired by our modern physiologists, “my tongue has no bone in it to make it more stiff than is necessary for my interest;” it is not material here to determine. Suffice it; that it has been so settled, and as our practices conform to so enlightened a decision, policy would seem to require that they be reduced to regular and systematic rules. It is true, some have manifested considerable anxiety to secure for this habit a kind of scientific distinction. They have accordingly had resort to the stars, or if despairing of flights so lofty, the hand or a pack of cards answered equally well to tell a fortune by. Though their plans and schemes were sufficiently ingenious, lying itself could not endure them. They could hope for no proselytes except amongst the credulous, and even amongst those they could only gain such as believed there was as much “pleasure in being cheated as to cheat.” Thus their efforts in this excellent work, have not only been defeated, notwithstanding the high encouragement they sometimes received, but if Euripides speaks to the purpose, they themselves have been made to feel the consequences of their mistakes:
“What’s an Astrologer? I thus reply,
A man who speaks few truths, but many a lie,
Which, when found out, he takes his heels to fly.”
Perhaps their great failure is principally to be attributed to the narrow defectiveness of the founder of their tribe. It is true, the worthy man’s name has not yet been definitely ascertained, but then this very ignorance has helped us out of our perplexities in searching for it. The writers and critics upon Junius, when unable to discover the author of the famous letters, very sagely conclude that he was a man who had made himself acquainted with the affairs of his time, and who was, withal, somewhat of a genius. So Voltaire has disposed of this query in a very summary manner, by assuring us that “the first rogue who met with the first block-head” was the inventor of soothsaying. Whilst this conclusion has been generally accepted as a very satisfactory one, it must be admitted that, though he may have been an acute rogue, he was none the less an indiscreet one, or he would not have attempted to confine this important privilege and practice of lying within so exclusive a circle.
There could be no lack of material in speech upon which to construct a system of scientific lying. Perhaps, by applying to it a term which has long since been banished from “ears polite,” on account of its harshness, I may be accused of a want of interest in so noble an enterprise. If so, I can only render as an excuse, that if lying can claim any one merit more than another, it is that of having ever maintained its own identity, no matter what efforts were made to increase its respectability by titles supposed to be more delicate. In this particular, it must be owned, it has always resembled its author, who, whether known as Satan or Beelzebub, Lucifer or Pluto, is nothing but the plain, common devil after all; and who, though you should call him an angel, would be the devil still. Thus sacrificing no merit which it can justly claim, the difficulties of reducing it to a science could be easily overcome.
An old maxim has it that “fools and children sometimes speak the truth.” If “maxims are the condensed good sense of nations,” as Sir James Mackintosh pithily observes, it would require excessive presumption to deny the wisdom of this one, so universally received and acted upon. The ancient moralists, after rearing a queer medley of truth and nonsense upon a few wise sayings, pronounced the heterogeneous mass the “Science of Morality.” This was at least generous, for it must be owned that a more convenient appellation for all who desired to sin according to moral law, could not have been invented by their philosophic magnanimity. “It is in the creed, sir,” would have answered every accusation, and put an end to all further contention. “Know thyself,” and “Too much of nothing,” proverbial sayings for ages, were so well received that the seven wise men of Greece consecrated them to Apollo, and inscribed them in letters of gold upon the door of his temple at Delphos. After so important a precedent of respect to maxims, notwithstanding the many changes wrought by time since the days of Thales and Solon, he who should seek to reduce the practice of lying to scientific rules, might claim equal consideration for the axiom given above, which he would of course so interpret as to make all wise men liars. If the wisest and the best who ever assumed the troublesome nature of man, could hang all the law and the prophets upon two commandments, surely the modern man of science might build a system upon a single maxim, whose object would be more to increase the dominion of Satan than the glory of a different kingdom. The service he would thus render to society would be incalculable, and forever perpetuate his name as one of its most worthy benefactors. By teaching the public, young and old, and without distinction of sex, to lie according to an approved system, our contempt would no longer be aroused by the fools now addicted to the practice, and who constantly exhibit a stupidity only equalled by that of the first liar of whom we have any record. Though we may have mules in the professions, who only make work for keener and shrewder knaves, and blunderers in the sciences, this should be no excuse for bunglers in this most worthy art of lying. Such, however, could readily be got rid of by elevating the habit to the dignity of a science, which each should be permitted to practice after being skilled in its rules. To secure the more general proficiency of those who desired to study the system, it should be made an indispensable antecedent requisite, that they be fully worthy of their Prince, and as honest as the Lombardian sect spoken of in the bull of Pope Adrian VI., who fully acknowledged the devil as their head, and promised obedience to him.
P. A.
[1] Note.—The editor was at first inclined to believe that this old man could never have been within the circle of good society, but the developments of the times have removed this uncharitable opinion. When one half, or more, of the independent lay people of this country, together with perhaps one-third of the ministers of the Gospel, (for such is the general estimate,) can voluntarily connect themselves with a secret political organization, one of whose principles is universally felt to be the worst species of lying, it may not be long before it will be extremely difficult to find a man of real truth.—ED.