And I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.* WORDSWORTH. Alas! the pernicious influence of this lax morality extends from the nursery and the school to the cabinet and senate. It is a common weakness with men in power, who have used dissimulation successfully, to form a passion for the use of it, dupes to the love of duping! A pride is flattered by these lies. He who fancies that he must be perpetually stooping down to the prejudices of his fellow-creatures, is perpetually reminding and reassuring himself of his own vast superiority to them. But no real greatness can long co-exist with deceit. The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere, lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed. The latter part of the proposition, which has drawn me into this discussion, that, I mean, in which the morality of intentional falsehood is asserted, may safely be trusted to the feader's own moral sense. Is it a groundless apprehension, that the patrons and admirers of such publications may receive the punishment of their indiscretion in the conduct of their sons and daughters? The suspicion of Methodism must be expected by every man of rank and fortune, who carries his examination respecting the books which are to lie on his breakfast-table, farther than to their freedom from gross verbal indecencies, and broad avowals of Atheism in the title-page. For the existence of an intelligent *I am informed, that these very lines have been cited, as a specimen of despicable puerility. So much the worse for the citer. Not willingly in his presence would I behold the sun setting behind our mountains, or listen to a tale of distress or virtue; I should be ashamed of the quiet tear on my own cheek. But let the dead bury the dead! The poet sang for the living. Of what value indeed, to a sane mind, are the likings or dislikings of one man, grounded on the mere assertions of another? Opinions formed from opinions--what are they, but clouds sailing under clouds, which impress shadows upon shadows? Fungum pelle procul, jubeo; nam quid mihi fungo? I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure of the rosemary in old herbals : Apage, sus! Haud tibi spiro. First Cause may be ridiculed in the notes of one poem, or placed doubtfully as one of two or three possible hypotheses, in the very opening of another poem, and both be considered as works of safe promiscuous reading virginibus puerisque: and this, too, by many a father of a family, who would hold himself highly culpable in permitting his child to form habits of familiar acquaintance with a person of loose habits, and think it even criminal to receive into his house a private tutor without a previous inquiry concerning his opinions and principles, as well as his manners and outward conduct. How little I am an enemy to free inquiry of the boldest kind, and in which the authors have differed the most widely from my own convictions and the general faith, provided only, the inquiry be conducted with that seriousness, which naturally accompanies the love of truth, and be evidently intended for the perusal of those only, who may be presumed capable of weighing the arguments,-I shall have abundant occasion of proving in the course of this work. Quin ipsa philosophia talibus e disputationibus non nisi beneficium recipit. Nam si vera proponit homo ingeniosus veritatisque amans, nova ad eam accessio fiet: sin falsa, refutatione eorum priores tanto magis stabilientur.* The assertion, that truth is often no less dangerous than falsehood, sounds less offensively at the first hearing, only because it hides its deformity in an equivocation, or double meaning of the word truth. What may be rightly affirmed of truth, used as synonymous with verbal accuracy, is transferred to it in its higher sense of veracity. By verbal truth, we mean no more than the correspondence of a given fact to given words. In moral truth, we involve likewise the intention of the speaker, that his words should correspond to his thoughts in the sense in which he ex * GALILEI, Syst. Cosm. p. 42.-Moreover, philosophy itself can not but derive benefit from such discussions. For if a man of genius and a lover of truth brings just positions before the public, there is a fresh accession to the stock of philosophic insight; but if erroneous positions, the former truths will by their confutation be established so much the more firmly. The original is in the following words: La filosofia medesima non può se non ricever benefizio dalle nostre dispute; perchè se i nostri pensieri saranno veri, nuovi acquisti si saranno fatti; se falsi, col ributtargli, maggiormente verranno confermate le prime dottrine. Dial. I. 44. Padov. 1774.-Ed. pects them to be understood by others: and in this latter import we are always supposed to use the word, whenever we speak of truth absolutely, or as a possible subject of moral merit or demerit. It is verbally true, that in the sacred Scriptures it is written: As is the good, so is the sinner, and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry. There is one event unto all the living know they shall die, but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward.* But he who should repeat these words, with this assurance, to an ignorant man in the hour of his temptation, lingering at the door of the alehouse, or hesitating as to the testimony required of him in the court of justice, would, spite of this verbal truth, be a liar, and the murderer of his brother's conscience. Veracity, therefore, not mere accuracy; to convey truth, not merely to say it, is the point of duty in dispute: and the only difficulty in the mind of an honest man arises from the doubt, whether more than veracity, that is, the truth and nothing but the truth-is not demanded of him by the law of conscience; whether it does not exact simplicity; that is, the truth only, and the whole truth. If we can solve this difficulty, if we can determine the conditions under which the law of universal reason commands the communication of the truth independently of consequences, we shall then be enabled to judge whether there is any such probability of evil consequences from such communication, as can justify the assertion of its occasional criminality, as can perplex us in the conception, or disturb us in the performance, of our duty. The conscience, or effective reason, commands the design of conveying an adequate notion of the thing spoken of, when this is practicable but at all events a right notion, or none at all. A schoolmaster is under the necessity of teaching a certain rule in simple arithmetic empirically,-(do so and so, and the sum will always prove true);-the necessary truth of the rule-that is, that the rule having been adhered to, the sum must always prove true-requiring a knowledge of the higher mathematics for its demonstration. He, however, conveys a right notion, though he can not convey the adequate one. VOL. II. *Eccles. viii. 15; ix. 2, 5.-Ed. ESSAY VI. Πολυμαθίη κάρτα μὲν ὠφελέει, κάρτα δὲ βλάπτει τὸν ἔχοντα. Ωφελέει μὲν τὸν δεξιὸν ἄνδρα, βλάπτει δὲ τὸν ῥηϊδίως φωνεῦντα πᾶν ἔπος καὶ ἐν παντὶ δήμῳ. Χρὴ δὲ καιροῦ μέτρα εἰδέναι· σοφίης γὰρ οὐτος ὅρος. Εἰ δὲ οἱ ἔξω καιροῦ ῥῆσιν μουσικὴν πεπνυμένως ἀείσουσιν, οὐ παρα δέχονται ἐν ἀργίῃ γνώμην, αἰτίην δ' ἔχουσι μωρίας. ANAXARCHUS, apud Stobæum, Serm. xxxiv.* General knowledge and ready talent may be of very great benefit, but they may likewise be of very great disservice to the possessor. They are highly advantageous to the man of sound judgment, and dexterous in applying them; but they injure your fluent holder-forth on all subjects in all companies. It is necessary to know the measures of the time and occasion: for this is the very boundary of wisdom-(that by which it is defined, and distinguished from mere ability). But he, who without regard to the unfitness of the time and the audience, will soar in the high region of his fancies with his garland and singing robes about him, will not acquire the credit of seriousness amidst frivolity, but will be condemned for his silliness, as the greatest idler of the company, because the most unseasonable. THE moral law, it has been shown, permits an inadequate communication of unsophisticated truth, on the condition that it alone is practicable, and binds us to silence when neither an adequate, nor even a right, exposition of the truth is in our power. We must first inquire then,—what is necessary to constitute, and what may allowably accompany, a right though inadequate notion, and, secondly, what are the circumstances, from which we may deduce the impracticability of conveying even a right notion; the presence or absence of which circumstances it therefore becomes our duty to ascertain. In answer to the first question, the conscience demands: 1. That it should be the wish and design of the mind to convey the truth only; that if in addition to the negative loss implied in its inadequateness, the notion communicated should lead to any positive error, the cause should lie in *Edit. Gaisford.-Ed. the fault or defect of the recipient, not of the communicator, whose paramount duty, whose inalienable right, it is to preserve his own integrity, the integral character of his own moral being. Selfrespect; the reverence which he owes to the presence of humanity in the person of his neighbor; the reverential upholding of the faith of man in man; gratitude for the particular act of confidence; and religious awe for the divine purposes in the gift of language; are duties too sacred and important to be sacrificed to the guesses of an individual, concerning the advantages to be gained by the breach of them. 2. It is further required, that the supposed error shall not be such as will pervert or materially vitiate the imperfect truth, in communicating which we had unwillingly, though not perhaps unwittingly, occasioned it. A barbarian so instructed in the power and intelligence of the infinite Being as to be left wholly ignorant of his moral attributes, would have acquired none but erroneous notions even of the former. At the very best, he would gain only a theory to satisfy his curiosity with; but more probably, would deduce the belief of a Moloch or a Baal. For the idea of an irresistible, invisible Being, naturally produces terror in the mind of uninstructed and unprotected man, and with terror there will be associated whatever has been accustomed to excite it, anger, vengeance, &c.; as is proved by *The best and most forcible sense of a word is often that which is contained in its etymology. The author of the poems, the Synagogue, frequently affixed to Herbert's Temple, gives the original purport of the word "integrity," in the following lines of the fourth stanza of the eighth poem:* Next to sincerity, remember still, Thou must resolve upon integrity. God will have all thou hast, thy mind, thy will, And again, after some verses on constancy and humility, the poem concludes.with He that desires to see The face of God, in his religion must Sincere, entire, constant, and humble be. Having mentioned the name of Herbert, that model of a man, a gentleman, and a clergyman, let me add, that the quaintness of some of his thoughts, not of his diction, than which nothing can be more pure, manly, and unaffected, has blinded modern readers to the great general merit of his poems, which are for the most part exquisite in their kind. * Church-Porch.-Ed. |