THE VALUE OF TRUTH
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 tobea liar. That seems rather queer, does it not? I wonder why it is so.
Now that I think of it, I seem always tohave 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 inwhich 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 ofthis 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 thelate 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 prosperouswhen 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.