or importance of the circumstances.” Basil, on the contrary, asserts without qualification, as his conviction, that it never is permissible to employ a falsehood even for a good purpose. He appeals to the words of Christ that all lies are of the Devil.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., p. 46.]
[Footnote 2: Neander’s _Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik_, p. 219.]
Chrysostom, as a young man, evaded ordination for himself and secured it to his dearest friend Basil (who should not be confounded with Basil the Great, the brother of Gregory of Nyssa) by a course of deception, which he afterwards labored to justify by the claim that there were lies of necessity, and that God approved of deception as a means of good to others.[1] In the course of his exculpatory argument, he said to his much aggrieved friend Basil: “Great is the value of deceit, provided it be not introduced with a mischievous intention. In fact, action of this sort ought not to be called deceit, but rather a kind of good management, cleverness, and skill, capable of finding out ways where resources fail, and making up for the defects of the mind…. That man would fairly deserve to be called a deceiver who made an unrighteous use of the practice, not one who did so with a salutary purpose. And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived.”[2]
[Footnote 1: See Smith and Wace’s _Dictionary of Christian Biography_, I., 519 f.; art. “Chrysostom, John.”]
[Footnote 2: See Chrysostom’s “Treatise on the Priesthood,” in _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series (Am. ed.), IX., 34-38.]
In fact, Chrysostom seems, in this argument, to recognize no absolute and unvarying standard of truthfulness as binding on all at all times; but to judge lies and deceptions as wrong only when they are wrongly used, or when they result in evil to others. He appears to act on the anti-Christian theory[1] that “the end justifies the means.” Indeed, Dr. Schaff, in reprobating this “pious fraud” of Chrysostom, as “conduct which every sound Christian conscience must condemn,” says of the whole matter: “The Jesuitical maxim, ‘the end justifies the means,’ is much older than Jesuitism, and runs through the whole apocryphal, pseudo-prophetic, pseudo-apostolic, pseudo-Clementine, and pseudo-Isidorian literature of the early centuries. Several of the best Fathers show a surprising want of a strict sense of veracity. They introduce a sort of cheat even into their strange theory of redemption, by supposing that the Devil caused the crucifixion under the delusion [intentionally produced by God] that Christ was a mere man, and thus lost his claim upon the fallen race.” [2]
[Footnote 1: Rom. 3: 7, 8.]
[Footnote 2: See Dr. Schaff’s “Prologemena to The Life and Works of St. Chrysostom,” in _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first Series (Am. ed.), IX., 8.]
Chrysostom, like Gregory of Nyssa, having done that which was wrong in itself, with a laudable end in view, naturally attempts its defense by the use of arguments based on a confusion in his own mind of things which are unjustifiable, with things which are allowable. He does not seem to distinguish between deliberate deception as a mode of lying, and concealment of that which one has a right to conceal. Like many another defender of the right to lie in behalf of a worthy cause, in all the centuries, Chrysostom essays no definition of the “lie,” and indicates no distinction between culpable concealment, and concealment that is right and proper. Yet Chrysostom was a man of loving heart and of unwavering purpose of life. In an age of evil-doing, he stood firm for the right. And in spite of any lack of logical perceptions on his part in a matter like this, it can be said of him with truth that “perhaps few have ever exercised a more powerful influence over the hearts and affections of the most exalted natures.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Smith and Wace’s _Dictionary of Christian Biography_, I., 532.]
Augustine, on the other hand, looks at this question, in accordance with the qualities of his logical mind, in its relation to an absolute standard; and he is ready to accept the consequences of an adherence to that standard, whether they be in themselves desirable or deplorable. He is not afraid to define a lie, and to stand by his definition in his argument. He sees and notes the difference between justifiable concealment, and concealment that is for the purpose of deception. “It is lawful then,” he says on this point, “to conceal at fitting time whatever seems fit to be concealed: but to tell a lie is never lawful, therefore neither to conceal by telling a lie.”[1] In his treatise “On Lying” _(De Mendacid_),[2] and in his treatise “Against Lying” _(Contra Mendaciuni)[3]_ as well as in his treatise on “Faith, Hope, and Love” _(Enchiridion)_,[4] and again in his Letters to Jerome,[5] Augustine states the principle involved in this vexed question of the ages, and goes over all the arguments for and against the so-called “lie of necessity.” He sees a lie to be a sin _per se_, and therefore never admissible for any purpose whatsoever. He sees truthfulness to be a duty growing out of man’s primal relation to God, and therefore binding on man while man is in God’s sight. He strikes through the specious arguments based on any temporary advantages to be secured through lying, and rejects utterly the suggestion that man may do evil that good may come.
[Footnote 1: _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series (Am. ed.), IX., 466.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., III., 455-477.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., pp. 479-500.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., pp. 230-276.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., I., “Letters of St. Augustine.”]
The sound words of Augustine on this question, as based on his sound arguments, come down to us with strength and freshness through the intervening centuries; and they are worthy of being emphasized as the expressions of unchanging truth concerning the duty of truthfulness and the sin of lying. “There is a great question about lying,” he says at the start, “which often arises in the midst of our everyday business, and gives us much trouble, that we may not either rashly call that a lie which is not such, or decide that it is sometimes right to tell a lie; that is, a kind of honest, well-meant, charitable lie.” This question he discusses with fulness, and in view of all that can be said on both sides. Even though life or salvation were to pivot on the telling of a lie, he is sure that no good to be gained could compensate for the committal of a sin.
Arguing that a lie is essentially opposed to God’s truth–by which alone man can have eternal life–Augustine insists that to attempt to save another’s life through lying, is to set off one’s eternal life against the mere bodily life of another. “Since then by lying eternal life is lost, never for any man’s temporal life must a lie be told. And as to those who take it ill, and are indignant that one should refuse to tell a lie, and thereby slay his own soul in order that another may grow old in the flesh, what if by our committing adultery a person might be delivered from death: are we therefore to steal, to commit whoredom…. To ask whether a man ought to tell a lie for the safety of another, is just the same as asking whether for another’s safety a man ought to commit iniquity.”
“Good men,” he says, “should never tell lies.” “To tell a lie is never lawful, therefore neither to conceal [when concealment is desirable] by telling a lie.” Referring to the fact that some seek to find a justification in the Bible teachings for lying in a good cause,–“even in the midst of the very words of the divine testimonies seeking place for a lie,”–he insists, after a full examination of this claim, “that those [cited] testimonies of Scripture have none other meaning than that we must never at all tell a lie.”
“A lie is not allowable, even to save another from injury.” “Every lie must be called a sin.” “Nor are we to suppose that there is any lie that is not a sin, because it is sometimes possible, by telling a lie, to do service to another.” “It cannot be denied that they have attained a very high standard of goodness who never lie except to save a man from injury; but in the case of men who have reached this standard, it is not the deceit, but their good intention, that is justly praised, and sometimes even rewarded,”–as in the case of Rahab in the Bible story. “There is no lie that is not contrary to truth. For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and injustice, sin and righteousness, health and sickness, life and death, so are truth and a lie contrary the one to the other. Whence by how much we love the former, by so much ought we to hate the latter.”
“It does indeed make very much difference for what cause, with what end, with what intention, a thing be done: but those things which are clearly sins, are upon no plea of a good cause, with no seeming good end, no alleged good intention, to be done. Those works, namely, of men, which are not in themselves sins, are now good, now evil, according as their causes are good or evil…. When, however, the works in themselves are evil,… who is there that will say, that upon good causes, they may be done, so as either to be no sins, or, what is more absurd, to be just sins?” “He who says that some lies are just, must be judged to say no other than that some sins are just, and that therefore some things are just which are unjust: than which what can be more absurd?” “Either then we are to eschew lies by right doing, or to confess them [when guilty of them] by repenting: but not, while they unhappily abound in our living, to make them more by teaching also.”
In replying to the argument that it would be better to lie concerning an innocent man whose life was sought by an enemy, or by an unjust accuser, than to betray him to his death, Augustine said courageously: “How much braver,… how much more excellent, to say, ‘I will neither betray nor lie.'” “This,” he said, “did a former bishop of the Church of Tagaste, Firmus by name, and even more firm in will. For when he was asked by command of the emperor, through officers sent by him, for a man who was taking refuge with him, and whom he kept in hiding with all possible care, he made answer to their questions, that he could neither tell a lie nor betray a man; and when he had suffered so many torments of body (for as yet emperors were not Christians), he stood firm in his purpose. Thereupon, being brought before the emperor, his conduct appeared so admirable that he without any difficulty obtained a pardon for the man whom he was trying to save. What conduct could be more brave and constant?”[1]
[Footnote 1: See _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series (Am. ed.), III., 408.]
The treatise “Against Lying” was written by Augustine with special reference to the practice and teaching of the sect of Priscillianists. These Christians “affirmed, with some other of the theosophic sects, that falsehood was allowable for a holy end. Absolute veracity was only binding between fellow-members of their sect.”[1] Hence it was claimed by some other Christians that it would be fair to shut out Priscillianists from a right to have only truth spoken to them, since they would not admit that it is always binding between man and man. This view of truthfulness as merely a social obligation Augustine utterly repudiated; as, indeed, must be the case with every one who reckons lying a sin in and of itself. Augustine considered, in this treatise, various hypothetical cases, in which the telling of the truth might result in death to a sick man, while the telling of a falsehood might save his life. He said frankly: “And who can bear men casting up to him what a mischief it is to shun a lie that might save life, and to choose truth which might murder a man? I am moved by this objection exceedingly, but it were doubtful whether also wisely.” Yet he sees that it were never safe to choose sin as a means to good, in preference to truth and right with all their consequences.
[Footnote 1: See Smith and Wace’s _Dict. of Chris. Biog_., IV., 478, art. “Priscillianus.”]
Jerome having, like many others, adopted Origen’s explanation of the scene between Peter and Paul at Antioch, Augustine wrote to him in protest against such teaching, with its implied approval of deceit and falsehood.[1] A correspondence on this subject was continued between these two Fathers for years;[2] and finally Jerome was led to adopt Augustine’s view of the matter,[3] and also to condemn Origen for his loose views as to the duty of veracity.[4] But however Jerome might vacillate in his theory, as in his practice, concerning the permanent obligations of truthfulness, Augustine stood firm from first to last in the position which is justified by the teachings of the Bible and by the moral sense of the human race as a whole,–that a lie is always a lie and always a sin, and that a lie can never be justified as a means to even the best of ends.
[Footnote 1: See _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, first series (Am. ed.), I., Letters XXVIII., XL.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., Letters LXVII., LXVIII., LXXII., LXXIII., LXXIV., LXXV.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., Letter CLXXX.]
[Footnote 4: _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, second series (Am. ed.), III., 460 ff.; _Rufinus’ Apology_, Book II.; _Jerome’s Apology_, Book I., p. 492.]
From the days of Chrysostom and Augustine to the present time, all discussions of this question have been but a repetition of the arguments and objections then brought forward and examined. There can be, in fact, only two positions maintained with any show of logical consistency. Either a lie is in its very nature antagonistic to the being of God, and therefore not to be used or approved by him, whatever immediate advantages might accrue from it, or whatever consequences might pivot on its rejection; or a lie is not in itself a sin, is not essentially at variance with the nature of God, but is good or evil according to the spirit of its use, and the end to be gained by it; and therefore on occasions God could lie, or could approve lying on the part of those who represent him.
The first of these positions is that maintained by the Shepherd of Hermas, by Justin Martyr, by Basil the Great, and by Augustine; the second is practically that occupied by Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom, even though they do not explicitly define, or even seem to perceive, it as their position. There are, again, those like Origen and Jerome, who are now on one side of the dividing line, and now on the other; but they are not logically consistent with themselves in their opinions or practices. And those who are not consistent usually refrain from explicit definitions of the lie and of falsehood; they make no attempt at distinguishing between justifiable concealment, and concealment for the very purpose of deception.
With all the arguments on this question, in all the centuries, comprised within these well-defined bounds, it were useless to name each prominent disputant, in order merely to classify him as on the one side or on the other, or as zigzagging along the line which he fails to perceive. It were sufficient to point out a few pre-eminent mountain peaks, in the centuries between the fifth and the nineteen of the Christian era, as indicative of the perspective history of this discussion.
Towering above the greatest of the Schoolmen in the later middle ages stands Thomas Aquinas. As a man of massive intellect, of keenness of perception, of consistent logical instincts, and of unquestioned sincerity and great personal devoutness, we might expect him to be found, like Augustine, on the side of principle against policy, in unqualified condemnation of lying under any circumstances whatsoever, and in advocacy of truthfulness at all hazards. And that, as a matter of fact, is his position.
In his _Summa Theologies_[1] Aquinas discusses this whole question with eminent fairness, and with great thoroughness. He first states the claims of those who, from the days of Chrysostom, had made excuses for lying with a good end in view, and then he meets those claims severally. He looks upon lies as evil in themselves, and as in no way to be deemed good and lawful, since a right concurrence of all elements is essential to a thing’s being good. “Whence, every lie is a sin, as Augustine says in his book ‘Against Lying.'” His conclusion, in view of all that is to be said on both sides of the question, is: “Lying is sinful not only as harmful to our neighbor, but because of its own disorderliness. It is no more permitted to do what is disorderly [that is, contrary to the divine order of the universe] in order to prevent harm, than it is to steal for the purpose of giving alms, except indeed in case of necessity when all things are common property [when, for instance, the taking of needful food in time of a great disaster, as on a wrecked ship, is not stealing]. And therefore it is not allowable to utter a lie with this view, that we may deliver one from some peril. It is allowable, however, to conceal the truth prudently, by a sort of dissimulation, as Augustine says.” This recognizes the correctness of Augustine’s position, that concealment of what one has a right to conceal may be right, provided no lie is involved in the concealment. As to the relative grades of sin in lying, Aquinas counts lying to another’s hurt as a mortal sin, and lying to avert harm from another as a venial sin; but he sees that both are sins.
[Footnote 1: _Secunda Secundae_, Quaestio CX., art. III.]
It is natural to find Aquinas, as a representative of the keen-minded Dominicans, standing by truth as an eternal principle, regardless of consequences; as it is also natural to find, on the other side, Duns Scotus, as a representative of the easy-going Franciscans, with his denial of good absolute save as manifested in the arbitrary will of God. Duns Scotus accepted the “theory of a twofold truth,” ascribed to Averroes, “that one and the same affirmation might be theologically true and philosophically false, and _vice versa_.” In Duns Scotus’s view, “God does not choose a thing because it is good, but the thing chosen is good because God chooses it;” “it is good simply and solely because God has willed it precisely so; but he might just as readily have willed the opposite thereof. Hence also God is not [eternally] bound by his commands, and he can in fact annul them.”[1] According to this view, God could forbid lying to-day and justify it to-morrow. It is not surprising, therefore, that “falsehood and misrepresentation” are “under certain circumstances allowable,” in the opinion of Duns Scotus.
[Footnote 1: See Kurtz’s _Church History_ (Macpherson’s Translation), II., 101, 167-169; Ueberweg’s _History of Philosophy_, I., 416, 456 f.; Wuttke’s _Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), I., 218, Sec. 34.]
So, all along the centuries, the religious teacher who holds to the line between truth and falsehood as an eternal line must, if logically consistent, refuse to admit any possible justification of lying. Only he who denies an eternally absolute line between the true and the false could admit with consistency the justification by God of an act that is essentially hostile to the divine nature. Any exception to this rule is likely to be where a sympathetic nature inclines a teacher to seek for an excuse for that which seems desirable even though it be theoretically wrong.
When it comes to the days of the Protestant Reformation, we find John Calvin, like his prototype Augustine, and like Augustine’s follower Aquinas, standing firmly against a lie as antagonistic to the very nature of God, and therefore never justifiable. Martin Luther, also, is a fearless lover of the truth; but he is disposed to find excuses for a lie told with a good end in view, although he refrains from asserting that even the best disposed lie lacks the element of sinfulness.[1] On the other hand, Ignatius Loyola, and his associates in the founding of the Society of Jesus as a means of checking the Protestant Reformation, acted on the idea that was involved in the theology of Duns Scotus, that the only standard of truth and right is in the absolute and arbitrary will of God; and that, therefore, if God, speaking through his representative in the newly formed Society, commands the telling of a lie, a lie is justifiable, and its telling is a duty. Moreover, these Jesuit leaders in defining, or in explaining away, the lie, include, under the head of justifiable concealment, equivocations and falsifications that the ordinary mind would see to be forms of the lie.[2]
[Footnote 1: See Martensen’s _Christian Ethics_, p. 216. Compare, for example, Luther’s comments on Exodus I: 15-21, with Calvin’s comments on Genesis 12: 14-20.]
[Footnote 2: See Symonds’s _Renaissance in Italy_, I., 263-267; Cartwright’s _The Jesuits_; Meyrick’s _Moral Theology of the Church of Rome_; Pascal’s _Provincial Letters_. See, also, Kurtz’s _Church History_, II., 430.]
It is common to point to the arguments of the Jesuits in favor of lies of expediency, in their work for the Church and for souls, as though their position were exceptional, and they stood all by themselves in including falsehood as a means to be employed rightfully for a good end.
But in this they are simply logically consistent followers of those Christian Fathers, and their successors in every branch of the Church, who have held that a lie for righteous purposes was admissible when the results to be secured by it were of vital importance. All the refinements of casuistry have their value to those who admit that a lie may be right under certain conceivable circumstances; but to those who, like Augustine and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin _per se_, and therefore never admissible, casuistry itself has no interest as a means of showing when a sin is not sinful.[1]
[Footnote 1: Hence the casuistry of the Schoolmen and of the Jesuits, and the question of Mental Reservations, and of “Probabilities,” are not treated in detail here.]
Some of the zealous defenders of the principles and methods of the Jesuits affirm that, in their advocacy of dissimulation and prevarication in the interests of a good cause, the Jesuits do not intend to justify lying, but are pointing out methods of proper concealment which are not within the realm of the lie. In this (waiving the question whether these defenders are right or not as to the fact) they seem even more desirous of being counted against lying than those teachers, in the Romish Church or among Protestants, who boldly affirm that a lie itself is sometimes justifiable. Thus it is _claimed_ by a Roman Catholic writer, in defense of the Jesuits, that Liguori, their favorite theologian, taught “that to speak falsely is immutably a sin against God. It may be permitted under no circumstances, not even to save life. Pope Innocent III. says, ‘Not even to defend our life is it lawful to speak falsely;'” therefore, when Liguori approves any actions that seem opposed to truthfulness, “he allows the instances because they are not falsehood.”[1] On the other hand, Jeremy Taylor squarely asserts: “It is lawful to tell a lie to children or to madmen, because they, having no powers of judging, have no right to the truth.”[2]
[Footnote 1: See Meyrick’s _Moral Theology of the Church of Rome_, Appendix, p. 256 f.]
[Footnote 2: Jeremy Taylor’s _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X., 103.]
But Jeremy Taylor’s trouble is in his indefinite definition of “a lie,” and in his consequent confusion of mind and of statement with reference to the limitations of the duty of veracity. He writes on this subject at considerable length,[1] and in alternation declares himself plainly first on one side, and then on the other, of the main question, without even an attempt at logical consistency. He starts out with the idea that “we are to endeavor to be like God, who is truth essentially;” that “God speaks truth because it is his nature;” that “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament do indefinitely and severely forbid lying,” and “our blessed Saviour condemns it by declaring every lie to be of the Devil;” and that “beyond these things nothing can [could] be said for the condemnation of lying.” All that certainly is explicit and sound,–as sound as Basil the Great, as St. Augustine, or as Thomas Aquinas!
[Footnote 1: Jeremy Taylor’s _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X., 100-132.]
When he attempts the definition of a lie, however, Jeremy Taylor would seem to claim that injustice toward others and an evil motive are of its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a lie is not a lie. “Lying is to be understood to be something said or written to the hurt of a neighbor, which cannot be understood [by the hearer or reader] otherwise than to differ from the mind of him that speaks.” As Melanchthon says, “To lie is to deceive our neighbor to his hurt.” “If a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful; but if it can be separate from injustice, then it may be innocent.”
Jeremy Taylor naturally falls back on the Bible stories of the Hebrew midwives and Rahab the harlot, and assumes that God commended their lying, as lying, because they had a good end in view; and he asserts that “it is necessary sometimes by a lie to advantage charity by losing of a truth to save a life,” and that “to tell a lie for charity, to save a man’s life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince, of an useful and a public person, hath not only been done in all times, but commended by great and wise and good men.” From this it would appear that lying, which Jeremy Taylor sets out with denouncing as contrary to God’s nature, and as declared by our Saviour to be always of the Devil, may, under certain circumstances, be a godly sin. Gregory of Nyssa and young Chrysostom could not have done better than this in showing the sinlessness of a sin in a good cause.
Seeing that concealment of that which is true is often a duty, and seeing also that concealment of that which ought to be disclosed is often practically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently; jumps to the conclusion that concealment and equivocation and lying are practically the same thing, and that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while again it is a sin. He holds that the right to be spoken to in truthfulness, “though it be regularly and commonly belonging to all men, yet it may be taken away by a superior right supervening; or it may be lost, or it may be hindered, or it may cease upon a greater reason.” As “that which is but the half of a true proposition either signifies nothing or is directly a lie,” it must be admitted that “in the same cases in which it is lawful to tell a lie, in the same cases it is lawful to use a mental reservation;” and “where it is lawful to lie, it is lawful to equivocate, which may be something less than a plain lie.” Moreover, “it is lawful upon a just cause of great charity or necessity to use, in our answers and intercourses, words of divers signification, though it does deceive him that asks.”
Jeremy Taylor ingenuously confesses that, in certain cases where lying is allowable or is a duty, “the prejudice which the question is like to have is in the meaning and evil sound of the word lying; which, because it is so hateful to God and man, casts a cloud upon anything that it comes near.” But, on the whole, Jeremy Taylor is willing to employ with commendation that very word “lying” which is “so hateful to God and man.” And in various cases he insists that “it is lawful to tell a lie,” although “the lie must be charitable and useful,”–a good lie, and not a wicked lie; for a good lie is good, and a wicked lie is wicked. He does not shrink from the consequences of his false position.
Jeremy Taylor can therefore be cited as arguing that a lie is never admissible, but that it often is commendable. He does not seem to be quite sure of any real difference between lying and justifiable concealment, or to have in his mind an unvarying line between truthfulness and lying. He admits that God and man hate lying, but that a good lie, nevertheless, is a very good thing. And so he leaves the subject in more of a muddle than he found it.
Coming down to the present century, perhaps the most prominent and influential defender of the “lie of necessity,” or of limitations to the law of veracity, is Richard Rothe; therefore it is important to give special attention to his opinions and arguments on this subject. Rothe was a man of great ability, of lovely spirit, and of pervasive personal influence; and as a consequence his opinions carry special weight with his numerous pupils and followers.
Kurtz[1] characterizes Rothe as “one of the most profound thinkers of the century, equaled by none of his contemporaries in the grasp, depth, and originality of his speculation,” and his “Theological Ethics” as “a work which in depth, originality, and conclusiveness of reasoning, is almost unapproached.” And in the opinion of Lichtenberger,[2] Rothe “is unquestionably the most distinguished theologian of the School of Conciliation, and the most original thinker since Schleiermacher,” while “he also showed himself to be one of the humblest Christians and one of the finest formed characters of his age.” It is not to be wondered at therefore, that, when such a leader in thought and in influence as Rothe declares himself in favor of a judicious use of falsehood as a means of good, many are inclined to feel that there must be some sound reason for his course. Yet, on the other hand, the arguments in favor of falsehood, put forward by even such a man, ought to be scrutinized with care, in order to ascertain if they are anything more than the familiar arguments on the same side repeated in varying phrase in all the former centuries from Chrysostom to Jeremy Taylor.
[Footnote 1: _Church History_ (Macpherson’s translation), III., 201.]
[Footnote 2: _History of German Theology in the 19th Century_, p. 492.]
The trouble with Rothe in his treatment of this Matter[1] is, that he considers the duty of truthfulness merely in its personal and social aspects, without any direct reference to the nature, and the declared will, of God. Moreover, his peculiar definition of a lie is adapted to his view of the necessities of the case. He defines a lie as “the unloving misuse of speech (or of other recognized means of communication) to the intentional deception of our neighbor.” In his mind, lovelessness toward one’s fellow-man is of the very essence of the lie, and when one speaks falsely in expression of a spirit of love to others, it is not necessarily a lie.
[Footnote 1: Rothe’s _Theologische Ethik_, IVter Band, secs. 1064, 1065.]
Rothe does not seem to recognize, in its application to this matter, the great principle that there is no true love for man except in conformity to and in expression of love for God; hence that nothing that is in direct violation of a primal law of God can be an exhibition of real love for one of God’s creatures.
It is true that Rothe assumes that the subject of Theological Ethics is an essential branch of Speculative Theology; but in his treatment of Special Duties he seems to assume that Society rather than God is their background, and therefore the idea of sin as sin does not enter into the discussion. His whole argument and his conclusions are an illustration of the folly of attempting to solve any problem in ethics without considering the relation to it of God’s eternal laws, and of the eternal principles which are involved in the very conception of God. Ethics necessarily includes more than social duties, and must be considered in the light of duty to God as above all.
“The intentional deception of our neighbor,” says Rothe, “by saying what is untrue, is not invariably and unqualifiedly a lie. The question in this case is essentially one of the purpose…. It is only in the case where the untruth spoken with intent to deceive is at the same time an act of unlovingness toward our neighbor, that it is a violation of truthfulness as already defined, that is, a lie.” In Rothe’s view, “there are relations of men to each other in which [for the time being] avowedly the ethical fellowship does not exist, although the suspension of this fellowship must, of course, always be regarded as temporary, and this indeed as a matter of duty for at least one of the parties. Here there can be no mention of love, and therefore no more of the want of it.” Social duties being in such cases suspended, and the idea of any special duty toward God not being in consideration, it is quite proper, as Rothe sees it, for enemies in war, or in private life, to speak falsely to each other. Such enemies “naturally have in speech simply a weapon which one may use against the other…. The duty of speaking the truth cannot even be thought of as existing between persons so arrayed against each other…. However they may try to deceive each other, even with the help of speech, they do not lie.”
But Rothe goes even farther than this in the advocacy of such violations, or abrogations, of the law of veracity, as would undermine the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for limited and selected applications,–after the fashion of the American humorist who “believed in universal salvation if he could pick his men.” Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is needful in dealing with public or personal enemies, but often, also, in dealing with “children, the sick, the insane, the drunken, the passionately excited, and the morally weak,”–and that takes in a large share of the human race. He gives many illustrations of falsehood supposed to be necessary (where, in fact, they would seem to the keen-minded reader to be quite superfluous[1]) and having affirmed the duty of false speaking in these cases, he takes it for granted (in a strange misconception of the moral sense of mankind) that the deceived parties would, if appealed to in their better senses, justify the falsehoods spoken by mothers in the nursery, by physicians in the sick-room, and by the clear-headed sober man in his intercourse with the angry or foolish or drunken individual.
[Footnote 1: Nitzsch, the most eminent dogmatic theologian among Schleiermacher’s immediate disciples, denies the possibility of conceiving of a case where loving consideration for others, or any other dutiful regard for them, will not attain its end otherwise and more truly and nobly than by lying to them, or where “the loving liar or falsifier might not have acted still more lovingly and wisely without any falsification…. The lie told from supposed necessity or to serve another is always, even in the most favorable circumstances, a sign either of a wisdom which is lacking in love and truth, or of a love which is lacking in wisdom.”]
“Of course,” he says, “such a procedure presupposes a certain relation of guardianship, on the part of the one who speaks untruth, over him whom he deceives, and a relative irresponsibility on the part of the other,–an incapacity to make use of certain truths except to his actual moral injury. And in each case all depends on the accuracy of this assumption.” It is appalling to find a man like Rothe announcing a principle like this as operative in social ethics! Every man to decide for himself (taking the responsibility, of course, for his personal decision) whether he is in any sense such a guardian of his fellow-man as shall make it his duty to speak falsely to him in love!
Rothe frankly admits that there is no evidence that Jesus Christ, while setting an example here among men, ever spoke one of these dutiful untruths; although it certainly would seem that Jesus might have fairly claimed as good a right to a guardianship of his earthly fellows as the average man of nowadays.[1] But this does not restrain Rothe from deliberately advising his fellow-men to a different course.
[Footnote 1: Rothe says on this point: “That the Saviour spoke untruth is a charge to whose support only a single passage, John 7:8, can be alleged with any show of plausibility. But even here there was no speaking of untruth, even if [Greek: ank][a disputed reading] be regarded as the right reading.” See on this passage Meyer in his _Commentary_, and Westcott in _The Bible Commentary_.]
Rothe names Marheineke, DeWette, von Ammon, Herbart, Hartenstein, Schwartz, Harless, and Reinhard, as agreeing in the main with his position; while as opposed to it he mentions Kant, Fichte, Krause, Schleiermacher, von Hirscher, Nitzsch, Flatt, and Baumgarten-Crusius. But this is by no means a question to be settled by votes; and not one of the writers cited by Rothe as of his mind, in this controversy, has anything new to offer in defense of a position in such radical disagreement with the teachings of the Bible, and with the moral sense of the race, on this point, as that taken by Rothe. In his ignoring of the nature and the will of God as the basis of an argument in this matter, and in his arbitrary and unauthorized definition of a lie (with its inclusion of the claim that the deliberate utterance of a statement known to be false, for the express purpose of deceiving the one to whom it is spoken, is not necessarily and inevitably a lie), Rothe stands quite pre-eminent. Wuttke says, indeed, of Rothe’s treatment of ethics: “Morality [as he sees it] is an independent something alongside of piety, and rests by no means on piety,–is entirely co-ordinate to and independent of it.”[1] Yet so great is the general influence of Rothe, that various echoes of his arguments for falsehoods in love are to be found in subsequent English and American utterances on Christian ethics.
[Footnote 1: Wuttke’s _Christian Ethics_ (Lacroix’s transl.), sec. 48.]
Contemporaneous with Richard Rothe, and fully his peer in intellectual force and Christ-likeness of spirit, stands Isaac August Dorner. Dr. Schaff says of him:[1] “Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Mueller, and Richard Rothe. He mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel, appropriated the best elements of both, infused into them a positive evangelical faith and a historic spirit;” and as a lecturer, especially “on dogmatics and ethics … he excelled all his contemporaries.” And to this estimate of him Professor Mead adds:[2] “Even one who knows Dorner merely as the theological writer, will in his writings easily detect the fine Christian tone which characterized the man; but no one who did not personally know him can get a true impression of the Johannean tenderness and childlike simplicity which distinguished him above almost any one of equal eminence whom the world has ever known.”
[Footnote 1: _Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl_., p. 58.]
[Footnote 2: Preface to Dorner’s _System of Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), p. vii.]
When, therefore, it is considered that, after Rothe had given his views on veracity to the world, Dorner wrote on the same subject, as the very last work of his maturest life, a special interest attaches to his views on this mooted question. And Dorner is diametrically opposed to Rothe in this thing. Dorner bases the duty of truthfulness on our common membership in Christ, and the love that grows out of such a relation.[1] “Truth does not,” indeed, “demand that all that is in a man should be brought out, else it would be a moral duty for him to let also the evil that is in him come forth, whereas it is his duty to keep it down.” But if an untrue statement be made with the intention to deceive, it is a lie.
[Footnote 1: See Dorner’s _System of Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), pp. 487-492.]
“Are there cases,” he asks, “where lying is allowable? Can we make out the so-called ‘white lie’ to be morally permissible?” Then he takes up the cases of children and the insane, who are not entitled to know all the truth, and asks if it be right not only to conceal the truth but to falsify it, in talking with them. Concealment may be a duty, he admits, but he denies that falsifying is ever a duty. “How shall ethics ever be brought to lay down a duty of lying [of ‘white lying’], to recommend evil that good may come? The test for us is, whether we could ever imagine Christ acting in this way, either for the sake of others, or–which would be quite as justifiable, since self-love is a moral duty–for his _own_ sake.”
As to falsifying to a sick or dying man, he says, “we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin.” In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving, even with the best of motives, a lie, and therefore a sin–never justifiable. Like Augustine, Dorner recognizes degrees of guilt in lies, according to the spirit and motive of their telling; but in any event, if there be falsehood with the purpose of deceiving, it is a sin–to be regretted and repented of.
Dorner makes a fresh distinction between the stratagems of war and lying, which is worthy of note. He says that playful fictions, after the manner of riddles to be guessed out, are clearly allowable. So “in war, too, something like a game of this kind is carried on, when by way of stratagem some deceptive appearance is produced, and a riddle is thus given to the enemy. In such cases there is no falsehood; for from the conditions of the situation,–whether friendly or hostile,–the appearance that is given is confessedly nothing more than an appearance, and is therefore honest.”
The simplicity and clearness of Dorner, in his unsophistical treatment of this question, is in refreshing contrast with the course of Rothe,–who confuses the whole matter in discussion by his arbitrary claim that a lie is not a lie, if it be told with a good purpose and a loving spirit. And the two men are representative disputants in this controversy of the centuries, as truly as were Augustine and Chrysostom.
A close friend of Dorner was Hans Lassen Martensen, “the greatest theologian of Denmark,” and a thinker of the first class, “with high speculative endowments, and a considerable tincture of theosophical mysticism.”[1] Martensen’s “Christian Ethics” do not ignore God and the Bible as factors in any question of practical morals under discussion. He characterizes the result of such an omission as “a reckoning of an account whose balance has been struck elsewhere; if we bring out another figure, we have reckoned wrong.” Martensen’s treatment of the duty of veracity is a remarkable exhibit of the workings of a logical mind in full view of eternal principles, yet measurably hindered and retarded by the heart-drawings of an amiable sentiment. He sees the all-dividing line, and recognizes the primal duty of conforming to it; yet he feels that it is a pity that such conformity must be so expensive in certain imaginary cases, and he longs to find some allowance for desirable exceptions.[2]
[Footnote 1: See Kurtz’s _Church History_ (Macpherson’s transl.), III., 201; _Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl_., p. 57; _Johnson’s Univ. Cycl._., art. “Martensen.”]
[Footnote 2: Martensen’s _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, (Eng. trans.,) pp. 205-226.]
Martensen gives as large prominence as Rothe to love for one’s fellow-man; but he bases that love entirely, as Rothe does not, on love for Christ. “Only in Christ, and [in] the light which, proceeding from him, is poured over human nature and all human life, can we love men in the central sense, and only then does philanthropy receive its deepest religious and moral character, when it is rooted in the truth of Christ.” And as Christ is Truth, those who are Christ’s must never violate the truth. “‘Thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not lie, neither in word nor deed; thou shalt neither deny the truth, nor give out anything that is not truth for truth,’–this commandment must dominate and penetrate all our life’s relations.” “Truth does not exist for man’s sake, but man for the sake of the truth, because the truth would reveal itself to man, would be owned and testified by him.” This would seem to be explicit enough to shut out the possibility of a justifiable lie!
“Yet it does not follow from this,” says Martensen, “that our duty to communicate the truth to others is unlimited…. ‘There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.’ No one is bound to say everything to everybody.” Here he distinguishes between justifiable concealment and falsehood. Then he comes to the question “whether the so-called ‘lie of exigency’ can ever be justifiable.” He runs over the arguments on both sides, and recalls the centuries of discussion on the subject. He thinks that adherence to the general principle which forbids lying would, in certain cases where love prompted to falsehood, cause in most minds an inward feeling that the letter killeth, and that to follow the promptings of love were better. Hence he argues that “as in other departments there are actions which, although from the standpoint of the ideal they are to be rejected, yet, from the hardness of men’s hearts, must be approved and admitted, and under this restriction become relatively justifiable and dutiful actions, simply because greater evils are thereby averted; so there is also an untruth from exigency that must still be allowed for the sake of human weakness.” And in his opinion “it comes to this, that the question of casuistry cannot be solved by general and abstract directions, but must be solved in an individual, personal way, especially according to the stage of moral and religious development and ripeness on which the person in question is found.”
Having made these concessions, in the realm of feeling, to the defenders of the “lie of exigency,” which may be “either uttered from love to men, or as defense against men–a defense in which either a justifiable self-love or sympathy with others is operative,” Martensen proceeds to show that every such falsehood is abnormal and immoral. “When we thus maintain,” he says, “that in certain difficult cases an ‘untruth from necessity’ may occur, which is to be allowed for the sake of human weakness, and under the given relations may be said to be justified and dutiful, we cannot but allow, on the other hand, that in every such untruth there is something of sin, nay something that needs excuse and forgiveness…. Certainly even the truth of the letter, the external, actual truth, even the formally correct, finds its right, the ground of its validity, in God’s holy order of the world. But by every lie of exigency the command is broken, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.'”
Martensen protests against the claim of Rothe that a falsehood spoken in love “is not at all to be called a lie, but can be absolutely defended as morally _normal_, and so in no respect needs pardon.” “However sharply we may distinguish between lie and untruth (_mendacium_ and _falsilo-quium_), the untruth in question can never be resolved into the morally normal.” And he suggests that if one had more of wisdom and courage and faith, he might be true to the truth in an emergency without fear of the consequences.
“Let us suppose, for instance,” he says, “the … case, where the husband deceives his sick spouse from fear that she could not survive the news of the death of her child; who dare maintain that if the man had been able in the right way, that is in the power of the gospel, with the wisdom and the comfort of faith, to announce the death of the child, a religious crisis might not have arisen in her soul, which might have a healing and quickening effect upon her bodily state? And supposing that it had even led to her death, who dare maintain that that death, if it was a Christian death, were an evil, whether for the mother herself, or for the survivors?
“Or, let us take the woman who, to save her chastity, applies the defense of an untruth: who dare maintain that if she said the truth to her persecutors, but uttered it in womanly heroism, with a believing look to God, with the courage, the elevation of soul springing from a pure conscience, exhibiting to her persecutors the badness and unworthiness of their object, she might not have disarmed them by that might that lies in the good, the just cause, the cause whose defense and shield God himself will be? And even if she had to suffer what is unworthy, who dare maintain that she could not in suffering preserve her moral worth?”
Martensen recalls the story of Jeanie Deans, in Scott’s “Heart of Midlothian,” who refuses to tell a lie of exigency in order to save her sister’s life; yet who, having uttered the truth which led to her sister’s sentence of death, set herself, in faith in God, to secure that sister’s pardon, and by God’s grace compassed it. “Most people would at least be disposed to excuse Jeanie Deans, and to forgive her, if she had here made a false oath, and thereby had afforded her protection to the higher truth.” And if a loving lie of exigency be a duty before God, an appeal to his knowledge of the fact is, of course, equally a duty. To refuse to appeal to God in witness of the truth of a falsehood that is told from a loving sense of duty, is to show a lack of confidence in God’s approval of such an untruth. “But she will, can, and dare, for her conscience’ sake, not do this.”
“But the best thing in this tale,” adds Martensen, “is that it is no mere fiction. The kernel of this celebrated romance is actual history.” And Sir Walter Scott caused a monument to be erected in his garden, with the following inscription, in memory of this faithful truth-lover:
“This stone was placed by the Author of ‘Waverley’ in memory of Helen Walker, who fell asleep in the year of our Lord 1791. This maiden practiced in humility all the virtues with which fancy had adorned the character that bears in fiction the name of Jeanie Deans. She would not depart a foot’s breadth from the path of truth, not even to save her sister’s life; and yet she obtained the liberation of her sister from the severity of the law by personal sacrifices whose greatness was not less than the purity of her aims. Honor to the grave where poverty rests in beautiful union with truthfulness and sisterly love.”
“Who will not readily obey this request,” adds Martensen, “and hold such a memory in honor?… Who does not feel himself penetrated with involuntary, most hearty admiration?”
In conclusion, in view of all that can be said on either side of the question, Martensen is sure that “the lie of exigency itself, which we call inevitable, leaves in us the feeling of something unworthy, and this unworthiness should, simply in following Christ, more and more disappear from our life. That is, the inevitableness of the lie of exigency will disappear in the same measure that an individual develops into a true personality, a true character…. A lie of exigency cannot occur with a personality that is found in possession of full courage, of perfect love and holiness, as of the enlightened, all-penetrating glance. Not even as against madmen and maniacs will a lie of exigency be required, for to the word of the truly sanctified personality there belongs an imposing commanding power that casts out demons. It is this that we see in Christ, in whose mouth no guile was found, in whom we find nothing that even remotely belongs to the category of the exigent lie.”
So it is evident that if one would seek excuse for the lie of exigency, in the concessions made by Martensen, he must do so only on the score of the hardness of his heart, and the softness of his head, as one lacking a proper measure of wisdom, of courage, and of faith, to enable him to conform to the proper ideal standard of human conduct. And even then he must recognize the fact that in his weakness he has done something to be ashamed of, and to demand repentance. Cold comfort that for a decent man!
It would seem that personal temperament and individual peculiarities had their part in deciding a man’s attitude toward the question of the unvarying duty of veracity, quite as surely as the man’s recognition of great principles. An illustration of this truth is shown in the treatment of the subject by Dr. Charles Hodge on the one hand, and by Dr. James H. Thornwell on the other, as representatives, severally, of Calvinistic Augustinianism in the Presbyterian Church of the United States, in its Northern and Southern branches. Starting from the same point of view, and agreeing as to the principles involved, these two thinkers are by no means together in their conclusions; and this, not because of any real difference in their processes of reasoning, but apparently because of the larger place given by the former to the influence of personal feeling, as over against the imperative demands of truth.
Dr. Hodge begins with the recognition and asseveration of eternal principles, that can know no change or variation in their application to this question; and then, as he proceeds with its discussion, he is amiably illogical and good-naturedly inconsistent, and he ends in a maze, without seeming quite sure as to his own view of the case, or giving his readers cause to know what should be their view. Dr. Thornwell, on the other hand, beginning in the same way, proceeds unwaveringly to the close, in logical consistency of reasoning; leaving his readers at the last as fully assured as he is as to the application of unchangeable principles to man’s life and duties.
No one could state the underlying principles involved in this question more clearly and explicitly than does Dr. Hodge at the outset;[1] and it would seem from this statement that he could not be in doubt as to the issue of the discussion of this question of the ages. “The command to keep truth inviolate belongs to a different class [of commands] from those relating to the sabbath, to marriage, or to property. These are founded on the permanent relations of men in the present state of existence. They are not in their own nature immutable. But truth is at all times sacred, because it is one of the essential attributes of God, so that whatever militates against or is hostile to truth is in opposition to the very nature of God.”
[Footnote 1: See Hodge’s _Systematic Theology_, III., 437-463.]
“Truth is, so to speak, the very substratum of Deity. It is in such a sense the foundation of all the moral perfections of God, that without it they cannot be conceived of as existing. Unless God really is what he declares himself to be; unless he means what he declares himself to mean; unless he will do what he promises,–the whole idea of God is lost. As there is no God but the true God, so without truth there is and can be no God. As this attribute is the foundation, so to speak, of the divine, so it is the foundation of the physical and moral order of the universe…. There is, therefore, something awfully sacred in the obligations of truth. A man who violates the truth, sins against the very foundation of his moral being. As a false god is no god, so a false man is no man; he can never be what man was designed to be; he can never answer the end of his being. There can be in him nothing that is stable, trustworthy, or good.”
Here is a platform that would seem to be the right standing-place for all and for always. Dr. Hodge apparently recognizes its well-defined limits and bounds; yet when he comes to discuss the question whether a certain person is, in a supposable case, on it, or off it, he does not seem so sure as to its precise boundary lines. He begins to waver when he cites Bible incidents. Recognizing the fact that fables and parables, and works of fiction, even though untrue, are not falsehoods, he strangely jumps to the conclusion that the “intention to deceive” is “not always culpable.” He immediately follows this non-sequitur with a reference to the lying Hebrew midwives,[1] and he quotes the declaration of God’s blessing on them, as if it were an approval of their lying, or their false speaking with an intention to deceive, instead of an approval of their spirit of devotion to God’s people.[2]
[Footnote 1: Exod. I: 19, 20.]
[Footnote 2: Comp. p. 35 f., _supra_.]
From the midwives he passes to Samuel, sent of God to Bethlehem; [1] and under cover of the expressed opinions of others, Dr. Hodge says vaguely: “Here, it is said, is a case of intentional deception commanded. Saul was to be deceived as to the object of Samuel’s journey to Bethlehem.” Yet, whoever “said” this was guilty of a gratuitous charge of intentional deception, against the Almighty. Samuel was directed of God to speak the truth, so far as he spoke at all, while he concealed from others that which others had no right to know.[2] It would appear, however, throughout this discussion, that Dr. Hodge does not perceive the clear and important distinction between justifiable concealment from those who have no right to a knowledge of the facts, and concealment, or even false speaking, with the deliberate intention of deceiving those interested. In fact, Dr. Hodge does not even mention “concealment,” as apart from its use for the specific purpose of deception.
[Footnote 1: I Sam. 16: i, 2.]
[Footnote 2: Comp. pp. 38-40, _supra_.]
Again Dr. Hodge cites the incident of Elisha at Dothan[1] as if in illustration of the rightfulness of deception under certain circumstances. But in this case it was concealment of facts that might properly be concealed, and not the deception of enemies as enemies, that Elisha compassed. The Syrians wanted to find Elisha. Their eyes were blinded, so that they did not recognize him when in his presence. In order to teach them a lesson, Elisha told the Syrians that they could not find him, or the city which was his home, by their own seeking; but if they would follow him he would bring them to the man whom they sought. They followed him, and he showed himself to them. When their eyes were opened in Samaria he would not suffer them to be harmed, but had them treated as guests, and sent back safely to their king.
[Footnote 1: Kings 6: 14-20.]
Having cited these three cases, no one of which can fairly be made to apply to the argument he is pursuing, Dr. Hodge complacently remarks: “Examples of this kind of deception are numerous in the Old Testament. Some of them are simply recorded facts, without anything to indicate how they were regarded in the sight of God; but others, as in the cases above cited, received either directly or by implication the divine sanction.”
But Dr. Hodge goes even farther than this. He ventures to suggest that Jesus Christ deceived his disciples by intimating what was not true as to his purpose, in more than one instance. “Of our blessed Lord himself it is said in Luke 24:28, ‘He made as though [Greek: prosepoieito]–he made a show of: he would have gone further.’ He so acted as to make the impression on the two disciples that it was his purpose to continue his journey. (Comp. Mark 6: 48.)”[1] This suggestion of Dr. Hodge’s would have been rebuked by even Richard Rothe, and would have shocked August Dorner. Would Dr. Hodge deny that Jesus _could_ have had it in his mind to “go further,” or to have “passed by” his disciples, if they would not ask him to stop? And if this were a possibility, is it fair to intimate that a purpose of deception was in his mind, when there is nothing in the text that makes that a necessary conclusion? Dr. Hodge, indeed, adds the suggestion that “many theologians do not admit that the fact recorded in Luke 24:28 [which he cites as an illustration of justifiable deception by our Lord] involved any intentional deception;” but this fact does not deter him from putting it forward in this light.
[Footnote 1: When Jesus came walking on the sea, toward his disciples in their tempest-tossed boat, “he would have passed them by;” but their cry of fear drew him toward them.]
In the discussion of the application to emergencies, in practical life, of the eternal principle which he points out at the beginning, Dr. Hodge is as far from consistency as in his treatment of Bible narratives. “It is generally admitted,” he says, “that in criminal falsehoods there must be not only the enunciation or signification of what is false, and an intention to deceive, but also a violation of some obligation.” What obligation can be stronger than the obligation to be true to God and true to one’s self? If, as Dr. Hodge declares, “a man who violates the truth, sins against the very foundation of his moral being,” a man would seem to be always under an obligation not to violate the truth by speaking that which is false with an intention to deceive. But Dr. Hodge seems to lose sight of his premises, in all his progress toward his conclusions on this subject.
“There will always be cases,” he continues, “in which the rule of duty is a matter of doubt. It is often said that the rule above stated applies when a robber demands your purse. It is said to be right to deny that you have anything of value about you. You are not bound to aid him in committing a crime; and he has no right to assume that you will facilitate the accomplishment of his object. This is not so clear. The obligation to speak the truth is a very solemn one; and when the choice is left a man to tell a lie or lose his money, he had better let his money go. On the other hand, if a mother sees a murderer in pursuit of her child, she has a perfect right to mislead him by any means in her power [including lying?]; because the general obligation to speak the truth is merged or lost, for the time being, in the higher obligation.” Yet Dr. Hodge starts out with the declaration that the obligation “to keep truth inviolate,” is highest of all; that “truth is at all times sacred, because it is one of the essential attributes of God;” that God himself cannot “suspend or modify” this obligation; and that man is always under its force. And now, strangely enough, he claims that in various emergencies “the general obligation to speak the truth is merged, or lost, for the time being, in the higher obligation.” The completest and most crushing answer to the vicious conclusions of Dr. Hodge as to the varying claims of veracity, is to be found in the explicit terms of his unvaryingly correct premises in the discussion.
Dr. Hodge appears to be conscious of his confusion of mind in this discussion, but not to be quite sure of the cause of it. As to his claim that the general obligation to speak the truth may be merged for the time being in a “higher obligation,” he says: “This principle is not invalidated by its possible or actual abuse. It has been greatly abused.” And he adds, farther on, in the course of the discussion:
“The question now under consideration is not whether it is ever right to do wrong, which is a solecism; nor is the question whether it is ever right to lie; but rather what constitutes a lie.”
Having claimed that a lie necessarily includes falsity of statement, an intention to deceive, and “a violation of some obligation,” Dr. Hodge goes on to show that “every lie is a violation of a promise,” as growing out of the nature of human society, where “every man is expected to speak the truth, and is under a tacit but binding promise not to deceive his neighbor by word or act.” And, after all this, he is inclined to admit that there are cases in which falsehoods with the intention of deceiving are not lying, and are justifiable. “This, however,” he goes on to say, “is not always admitted. Augustine, for example, makes every intentional deception, no matter what the object or what the circumstances, to be sinful.” And then, in artless simplicity, Dr. Hodge concludes: “This would be the simplest ground for the moralist to take. But as shown above, and as generally admitted, there are cases of intentional deception which are not criminal.”
According to the principles laid down at the start by Dr. Hodge, there is no place for a lie in God’s service; but according to the inferences of Dr. Hodge, in the discussion of this question, there are places where falsehoods spoken with intent to deceive are admissible in God’s sight and service. His whole treatment of this subject reminds me of an incident in my army-prison life, where this question as a question was first forced upon my attention. The Union prisoners, in Columbia at that time, received their rations from the Confederate authorities, and had them cooked in their own way, and at their own expense, by an old colored woman whom they employed for the purpose. Two of us had a dislike for onions in our stew, while the others were well pleased with them. So we two agreed with old “Maggie,” for a small consideration, to prepare us a separate mess without onions. The next day our mess came by itself. We took it, and began our meal with peculiar satisfaction; but the first taste showed us an unmistakable onion flavor in our stew. When old Maggie came again, we remonstrated with her on her breach of engagement. “Bless your hearts, honeys,” she replied, “you must have _some_ onions in your stew!” She could not comprehend the possibility of a beef stew without onions, even though she had formally agreed to make it.
Dr. Hodge’s premises in the discussion of the duty of truthfulness rule out onions; but his inferences and conclusions have the odor and the taste of onions. He stands on a safe platform to begin with; but he is an unsafe guide when he walks away from it. His arguments in this case are an illustration of his own declaration: “An adept in logic may be a very poor reasoner.”
Dr. Thornwell’s “Discourses on Truth”[1] are a thorough treatment of the obligation of veracity and the sin of lying. He is clear in his definitions, marking the distinction between rightful concealment as concealment, and concealment for the purpose of deception. “There are things which men have a right to keep secret,” he says, “and if a prurient curiosity prompts others officiously to pry into them, there is nothing criminal or dishonest in refusing to minister to such a spirit. Our silence or evasive answers may have the effect of misleading. That is not our fault, as it was not our design. Our purpose was simply to leave the inquirer as nearly as possible in the state of ignorance in which we found him: it was not to misinform him, but not to inform him at all.
[Footnote 1: In Thornwell’s _Collected Writings_, II., 451-613.]
“‘Every man,’ says Dr. Dick, ‘has not a right to hear the truth when he chooses to demand it. We are not bound to answer every question which may be proposed to us. In such cases we may be silent, or we may give as much information as we please, and suppress the rest. If the person afterward discover that the information was partial, he has no title to complain, because he had no right even to what he obtained; and we are not guilty of a falsehood unless we made him believe, by something which we said, that the information was complete.'” “The _intention_ of the speaker, and the _effect_ consequent upon it, are very different things.”
Dr. Thornwell recognizes the fact that the moral sense of humanity discerns the invariable superiority of truth over falsehood. “If we place virtue in sentiment,” he says, “there is nothing, according to the confession of all mankind, more beautiful and lovely than truth, more ugly and hateful than a lie. If we place it in calculations of expediency, nothing, on the one hand, is more conspicuously useful than truth and the confidence it inspires; nothing, on the other, more disastrous than falsehood, treachery, and distrust. If there be then a moral principle to which, in every form, humanity has given utterance, it is the obligation of veracity.” “No man ever tells a lie without a certain degree of violence to his nature.”
Dr. Thornwell bases this obligation of veracity on the nature of God, and on the duty of man to conform to the image of God in which he was created. “Jesus Christ commends himself to our confidence and love,” he says, “on the ground of his being the truth;… and makes it the glory of the Father that he is the God of truth, and the shame and everlasting infamy of the prince of darkness that he is the father of lies;” and he adds: “The mind cannot move in charity, nor rest in Providence, unless it turn upon the poles of truth.” “Every man is as distinctly organized in reference to truth, as in reference to any other purpose.”
In Dr. Thornwell’s view, it is not, as Dr. Paley would have it, that “a lie is a breach of promise,” because as between man and man “the truth is expected,” according to a tacit understanding. As Dr. Thornwell sees it, “we are not bound by any other expectations of man but those which we have authorized;” and he deems it “surprising to what an extent this superficial theory of ‘contract’ has found advocates among divines and moralists,” as, for example, Dr. Robert South, whom he quotes.[1] “If Dr. Paley had pushed his inquiries a little farther,” adds Thornwell, “he might have accounted for this expectation [of truthfulness] which certainly exists, independently of a promise, upon principles firmer and surer than any he has admitted in the structure of his philosophy. He might have seen it in the language of our nature proclaiming the will of our nature’s God.” The moral sense of mankind demands veracity, and abhors falsehood.
[Footnote 1: Smith’s _Sermon, on Falsehood and Lying_.]
Dr. Thornwell is clear as to the teachings of the Bible, in its principles, and in the illustration of those principles in the sacred narrative. The Bible as he sees it teaches the unvarying duty of veracity, and the essential sinfulness of falsehood and deception. He repudiates the idea that God, in any instance, approved deception, or that Jesus Christ practiced it. “When our Saviour ‘made as though he would have gone farther,’ he effectually questioned his disciples as to the condition of their hearts in relation to the duties of hospitality. The angels, in pretending that it was their purpose to abide in the street all night, made the same experiment on Lot. This species of simulation involves no falsehood; its design is not to deceive, but to catechize and instruct. The whole action is to be regarded as a sign by which a question is proposed, or the mind excited to such a degree of curiosity and attention that lessons of truth can be successfully imparted.”
And so on through other Bible incidents. Dr. Thornwell has no hesitation in distinguishing when concealment is right concealment, and when concealment is wrong because intended to deceive.
Exposing the incorrectness of the claim, made by Dr. Paley, as by others, that certain specific falsehoods are not lies, Dr. Thornwell shows himself familiar with the discussion of this question of the ages in all the centuries; and he moves on with his eye fixed unerringly on the polar star of truth, in refreshing contrast with the amiable wavering of Dr. Hodge’s footsteps.
“Paley’s law,” he concludes, “would obviously be the destruction of all confidence. How much nobler and safer is the doctrine of the Scriptures, and of the unsophisticated language of man’s moral constitution, that truth is obligatory on its own account, and that he who undertakes to signify to another, no matter in what form, and no matter what may be the right in the case to know the truth, is bound to signify according to the convictions of his own mind! He is not always bound to speak, but whenever he does speak he is solemnly bound to speak nothing but the truth. The universal application of this principle would be the diffusion of universal confidence. It would banish deceit and suspicion from the world, and restrict the use of signs to their legitimate offices.”
A later work on Christian Ethics, which acquires special prominence through its place in “The International Theological Library,” edited by Drs. Briggs and Salmond, is by Dr. Newman Smyth. It shows signs of strength in the premises assumed by the writer, in accordance with the teachings of Scripture and of the best moral sense of mankind; and signs of weakness in his processes of reasoning, and in his final conclusion, according to the mental methods of those who have wavered on this subject, from John Chrysostom to Richard Rothe and Charles Hodge.
Dr. Smyth rightly bases Christian ethics on the nature and will of God, as illustrated in the life and teachings of the divine-human Son of God. “A thoroughly scientific ethics must not only be adequate to the common moral sense of men, but prove true also to the moral consciousness of the Son of man. No ethics has right to claim to be thoroughly scientific, or to offer itself as the only science of ethics possible to us in our present experience, until it has sought to enter into the spirit of Christ, and has brought all its, analysis and theories of man’s moral life to the light of the luminous ethical personality of Jesus Christ.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Smyth’s _Christian Ethics_, p. 6.]
In his general statement of “the duty of speaking the truth,” Dr. Smyth is also clear, sound, and emphatic.[1] “The law of truthfulness is,” he says, “a supreme inward law of thought.” “The obligation of veracity … is an obligation which every man owes to himself. It is a primal personal obligation. Kant was profoundly right when he regarded falsehood as a forfeiture of personal worth, a destruction of personal integrity…. Truthfulness is the self-consistency of character; falsehood is a breaking up of the moral integrity. Inward truthfulness is essential to moral growth and personal vigor, as it is necessary to the live oak that it should be of one fiber and grain from root to branch. What a flaw is in steel, what a foreign substance is in any texture, that a falsehood is to the character,–a source of weakness, a point where under strain it may break…. Truthfulness, then, is due, first by the individual to himself as the obligation of personal integrity. The unity of the personal life consists in it.”
[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., pp. 386-389.]
And in addition to the obligation of veracity as a duty to one’s self, Dr. Smyth recognizes it as a duty to others. He says: “Truthfulness is owed to society as essential to its integrity. It is the indispensable bond of social life. Men can be members, one of another in a social organism only as they live together in truth. Society would fall, to pieces without credit; but credit rests on the general social virtue of truthfulness…. The liar is rightly regarded as an enemy to mankind. A lie is not only an affront against the person to whom it is told, but it is an offense against humanity.”
If Dr. Smyth had been content to leave this matter with the explicit statement of the principles that are unvaryingly operative, he would have done good service to the world, and his work could have been commended as sound and trustworthy in this department of ethics; but as soon as he begins to question and reason on the subject, he begins to waver and grow confused; and in the end his inconclusive conclusions are pitiably defective and reprehensible.[1]
[Footnote 1: Smyth’s _Christian Ethics_, pp. 392-403]
In considering “the so-called lies of necessity,” Dr. Smyth declares with frankness: “Some moralists in their supreme regard for truth will not admit that under any conceivable circumstances a lie can be deemed necessary, not even to save life or to prevent a murderer from accomplishing his fiendish purpose.” And then over against this he indicates his fatal confusion of mind and weakness of reasoning in the suggestion: “But the sound human understanding, in spite of the moralists, will prevaricate, and often with great vigor and success, in such cases. Who is right,–Kant, or the common moral sense? Which should be followed,–the philosophic morality, or the practice of otherwise most truthful men?”
It is to be noted that, in these two declarations, Dr. Smyth puts lying as if it were synonymous with prevarication; else there is no reason for his giving the one as over against the other. And this indicates a peculiar difficulty in the whole course of Dr. Smyth’s argument concerning the “so-called lie of necessity.” He essays no definition of the “lie.” He draws no clear line of distinction between a lie, a falsehood, a deceit, and a prevarication, or between a justifiable concealment and an unjustifiable concealment; and in his various illustrations of his position he uses these terms indiscriminately, in such a way as to indicate that he knows no essential difference between them, or that he does not care to emphasize any difference.
If, in the instance given above, Dr. Smyth means that “the sound human understanding, in spite of the moralists,” will approve lying, or falsifying with the intention to deceive, he ought to know that the sound human understanding will not justify such a course, and that it is unfair to intimate such a thing.[1] And when he asks, in connection with this suggestion, “Who is right,–Kant, or the common moral sense? Which should be followed, the philosophic morality, or the practice of otherwise most truthful men?” his own preliminary assertions are his conclusive answer. He says specifically, “Kant was profoundly right when he regarded falsehood as a forfeiture of personal worth, a destruction of personal integrity;” and the “common moral sense” of humanity is with Kant in this thing, in accordance with Dr. Smyth’s primary view of the case, as over against the intimation of Dr. Smyth’s question. As to the suggested “practice of otherwise most truthful men” in this thing,–if men who generally tell the truth, lie, or speak falsely, or deceive, under certain circumstances, they are much like men who are generally decent, but who occasionally, under temptation, are unchaste or dishonest; they are better examples in their uprightness than in their sinning.
[Footnote 1: See pp. 9-32, _supra_.]
It would seem, indeed, that, notwithstanding his sound basis of principles, which recognizes the incompatibility of falsehood with true manhood and with man’s duty to his fellows, Dr. Smyth does not carry with him in his argument the idea of the essential sinfulness of a lie, and therefore he is continually inconsistent with himself. He says, for example, in speaking of the suspension of social duties in war time: “If the war is justifiable, the ethics of warfare come at once into play. It would be absurd to say that it is right to kill an enemy, but not to deceive him. Falsehood, it may be admitted, as military strategy, is justifiable, if the war is righteous.”
Here, again, is the interchange of the terms “deception” and “falsehood.” But unless this is an intentional jugglery of words, which is not to be supposed, this means that it would be absurd to say that it is right to kill an enemy, but not right to tell him a falsehood. And nothing could more clearly show Dr. Smyth’s error of mind on this whole subject than this declaration. “Absurd” to claim that while it is right to take a man’s life in open warfare, in a just cause, it would not be right to forfeit one’s personal worth, and to destroy one’s personal integrity, which Dr. Smyth says are involved in a falsehood! “Absurd” to claim that while God who is the author of life can justify the taking of life, he cannot justify the sin of lying! No, no, the absurdity of the case is not on _that_ side of the line.
There is no consistency of argument on this subject in Dr. Smyth’s work. His premises are sound. His reasoning is confused and inconsistent. “Not only in some cases of necessity is falsehood permissible, but we may recognize a positive obligation of love to the concealment of the truth,” he says. Here again is that apparent confounding of unjustifiable “falsehood” with perfectly proper “concealment of truth.” He continues: “Other duties which under such circumstances have become paramount, may require the preservation of one’s own or another’s life through a falsehood. Not only ought one not to tell the truth under the supposed conditions, but, if the principle assumed be sound, a good conscience may proceed to enforce a positive obligation of untruthfulness…. There are occasions when the interests of society and the highest motives of Christian love may render it much more preferable to discharge the duty of self-defense through the humanity of a successful falsehood, than by the barbarity of a stunning blow or a pistol-shot. General benevolence demands that the lesser evil, if possible, rather than the greater, should be inflicted on another.”
Just compare these conclusions of Dr. Smyth with his own premises. “Truthfulness … is an obligation which every man owes to himself. It is a primal personal obligation…. Truthfulness is the self-consistency of character; falsehood is a breaking up of the moral integrity.” “The liar is rightly regarded as an enemy to mankind. A lie is not only an affront against the person to whom it is told, but it is an offense against humanity.” But what of all that? “There are occasions when the interests of society and the highest motives of Christian love may render it much more preferable to discharge the duty of self-defense through the humanity of a successful falsehood, than by the barbarity of a stunning blow or a pistol-shot. General benevolence demands that the lesser evil, if possible, rather than the greater, should be inflicted on another.” Better break up one’s moral integrity, and fail in one’s primal personal obligation to himself,–better become an enemy of mankind, and commit an offense against humanity,–than defend one’s self against an outlaw by the barbarity of a stunning blow or a bullet!
Would any one suppose from his premises that Dr. Smyth looked upon personal truthfulness as a minor virtue, and upon falsehood as a lesser vice? Does he seem in those premises to put veracity below chastity, and falsehood below personal impurity? Yet is he to be understood as intimating, in this phase of his argument, that unchastity, or dishonesty, or any other vice than falsehood, is to be preferred, in practice, over a stunning blow or a fatal bullet against a would-be murderer?[1] The looseness of Dr. Smyth’s logic, as indicated in this reasoning on the subject of veracity, would in its tendency be destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar to those which are put forward in excuse for common sins against chastity, by the free-and-easy defenders of a lax standard in such matters. “Some moralists,” says the average young man of the world, “in their extreme regard for personal purity, will not admit that any act of unchastity is necessary, even to protect one’s health, or as an act of love. But the men of virility and strong feeling will let down occasionally at this point, in spite of the moralists. Which should be followed,–the philosophic morality, or the practice of many otherwise decent and very respectable men?”
[Footnote 1: See Augustine’s words on this point, quoted at p. 100, _supra_.]
Confounding, as always, a wise and right concealment of truth with actual falsehood, Dr. Smyth says of the duty of a teacher in the matter of imparting truth to a pupil according to the measure of the pupil’s ability to receive it: “An occasional friendly use of truth as a crash towel may be wholesome; but ordinarily there is a more excellent way.” _That_ is a counting of truth precious, with a vengeance!
Dr. Smyth seems inclined to accept in the main the conclusions, on this whole subject, of Rothe, but without Rothe’s measure of consistency in the argument. Rothe starts wrong, and of course ends wrong. Dr. Smyth, like Dr. Hodge, starts right and ends wrong. No sorer condemnation of Dr. Smyth’s position can be made, than by the simple presentation of his own review of his own argument, when he says: “To sum up, then, what has been said concerning the so-called lies of necessity, the principle to be applied with wisdom is simply this: give the truth always to those who in the bonds of humanity have the right to the truth; conceal it or falsify it only when it is unmistakably evident that the human right to the truth from others has been forfeited, or temporarily is held in abeyance by sickness, weakness, or some criminal intent: do not in any case prevaricate, unless you can tell the necessary falsehood deliberately and positively, from principle, with a good conscience void of offense toward men, and sincere in the sight of God.” What says the moral sense of humanity to such a position as that?
As over against the erroneous claim, made by Richard Rothe, and Newman Smyth, and others, that the “moral sense” of mankind is at variance with the demands of “rigid moralists,” in regard to the unjustifiableness of falsehood, it is of interest to note the testimony of strong thinkers, who have written on this subject with the fullest freedom, from the standpoint of speculative philosophy, rather than of exclusively Christian ethics. For example, James Martineau, while a Christian philosopher, discusses the question of veracity as a philosopher, rather than as a Christian, in his “Types of Ethical Theory;”[1] and he insists that “veracity is strictly natural, that is, it is implied in the very nature which leads us to intercommunion in speech.”
[Footnote 1: Martineau’s _Types of Ethical Theory_, II., 255-265.]
As he sees it, a man is treacherous to himself who speaks falsely at any time to any one, and the man’s moral sense recoils from his action accordingly. Dr. Martineau says: “It is perhaps, the peculiar _treachery_ of this process which fixes upon falsehood a stamp of _meanness_ quite exceptional; and renders it impossible, I think, to yield to its inducements, even in cases supposed to be venial, without a disgust little distinguishable from compunction. This must have been Kant’s feeling when he said: ‘A lie is the abandonment, or, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity of man.'”
Dr. Martineau is not so rigid a moralist but that he is ready to agree with those easy-going theologians who find a place for exceptional falsehoods in their reasoning; yet he is so true a man in his moral instincts that his nature recoils from the results of such reasoning. “After all,” he says, “there is something in this problem which refuses to be thus laid to rest; and in treating it, it is hardly possible to escape the uneasiness of a certain moral inconsequence. If we consult the casuist of Common Sense he usually tells us that, in theory, Veracity can have no exceptions; but that, in practice, he is brought face to face with at least a few; and he cheerfully accepts a dispensation, when required, at the hands of Necessity.
“I confess rather to an inverse experience. The theoretic reasons for certain limits to the rule of veracity appear to me unanswerable; nor can I condemn any one who acts in accordance with them. Yet when I place myself in a like position, at one of the crises demanding a deliberate lie, an unutterable repugnance returns upon me, and makes the theory seem shameful. If brought to the test, I should probably act rather as I think than as I feel,[1] without, however, being able to escape the stab of an instant compunction and the secret wound of a long humiliation. Is this the mere weakness of superstition? It may be so. But may it not also spring from an ineradicable sense of a common humanity, still leaving social ties to even social aliens, and, in the presence of an imperishable fraternal unity, forbidding to the individual of the moment the proud right of spiritual ostracism?…”
[Footnote 1: No, a man who feels like that would be true in the hour of temptation. His doubt of himself is only the tremulousness of true courage.]
“How could I ever face the soul I had deceived, when perhaps our relations are reversed, and he meets my sins, not with self-protective repulse, but with winning love? And if with thoughts like these there also blends that inward reverence for reality which clings to the very essence of human reason, and renders it incredible, _a priori_, that falsehood should become an implement of good, it is perhaps intelligible how there may be an irremediable discrepancy between the dioptric certainty of the understanding and the immediate insight of the conscience: not all the rays of spiritual truth are refrangible; some there are beyond the intellectual spectrum, that wake invisible response, and tremble in the dark.”
Dr. Martineau’s definition of right and wrong is this:[1] “Every action is right, which, in presence of a lower principle, follows a higher: every action is wrong, which, in presence of a higher principle, follows a lower;” and his moral sense will not admit the possibility of falsehood being at any time higher than truth, or of veracity ever being lower than a lie.
[Footnote 1: _Types of Ethical Theory_, II., 270.]
Professor Thomas Fowler, of the University of Oxford, writing as a believer in the gradual evolution of morals, and basing his philosophy on experience without any recognition of _a priori_ principles, is much more nearly in accord, at this point,[1] with Martineau, than with Rothe, Hodge, and Smyth. Although he is ready to concede that a lie may, theoretically, be justifiable, he is sure that the moral sense of mankind is, at the present state of average development, against its propriety. Hence, he asserts that, even when justice might deny an answer to an improper question, “outside the limits of justice, and irrespectively of their duty to others, many persons are often restrained, and quite rightly so, from returning an untruthful or ambiguous answer by purely self-regarding feelings. They feel that to give an untruthful answer, even under such circumstances as I have supposed, would be to burden themselves with the subsequent consciousness of cowardice or lack of self-respect. And hence, whatever inconvenience or annoyance it may cost them, they tell the naked truth, rather than stand convicted to themselves of a want of courage or dignity.”
[Footnote 1: _Principles of Morals_, II., 159-161.]
“Veracity, though this was by no means always the case,” Professor Fowler continues, “has become the point of honor in the upper ranks of modern civilized societies, and hence it is invested with a sanctity which seems to attach to no other virtue; and to the uninstructed conscience of the unreflective man, the duty of telling the truth appears, of all duties, to be the only duty which never admits of any exceptions, from the unavoidable conflict with other duties.” He ranges the moral sense of the “upper ranks of modern civilized societies,” and “the uninstructed conscience of the unreflective man,” against any tolerance of the “lie of necessity,” leaving only the locality of Muhammad’s coffin for those who are arrayed against the rigid moralists on this question.
While he admits the theoretical possibility of the “lie of necessity,” Professor Fowler concludes as to its practical expediency: “Without maintaining that there are no conceivable circumstances under which a man will be justified in committing a breach of veracity, it may at least be said that, in the lives of most men, there is no case likely to occur in which the greater social good would not be attained by the observation of the general rule to tell the truth, rather than by the recognition of an exception in favor of a lie, even though that lie were told for purely benevolent reasons.” That is nearer right than the conclusions of many an inconsistent intuitionist!
Leslie Stephen, a consistent agnostic, and a believer in the slow evolution of morals, in his “Science of Ethics,”[1] naturally holds, like Herbert Spencer, to the gradual development of the custom of truthfulness, as a necessity of society.[2] The moral sense of primitive man, as he sees it, might seem to justify falsehood to an _enemy_, rather than, as Rothe and Smyth would claim, to those who are _wards of love_. In illustration of this he says: “The obligation to truthfulness is [primarily] limited to relations with members of the same tribe or state; and, more generally, it is curious to observe how a kind of local or special morality is often developed in regard to this virtue. The schoolboy thinks it a duty to his fellows to lie to his master, the merchant to his customer, and the servant to his employer; and, inversely, the duty is often recognized as between members of some little clique or profession, as soon as it is seen to be important for their corporate interest, even at the expense of the wider social organization. There is honor among thieves, both of the respectable and other varieties.”
[Footnote 1: Leslie Stephen’s _Science of Ethics_, pp. 202-209.]
[Footnote 2: See pp. 26-32, _supra_.]
But Leslie Stephen sees that, in the progress of the race, the importance of veracity has come to a recognition, “in which it differs from the other virtues.” While the law of marriage may vary at different periods, “the rule of truthfulness, on the other hand, seems to possess the _a priori_ quality of a mathematical axiom…. Truth, in short, being always the same, truthfulness must be unvarying. Thus, ‘Be truthful’ means, ‘Speak the truth whatever the consequences, whether the teller or the hearer receives benefit or injury.’ And hence, it is inferred, truthfulness implies a quality independent of the organization of the agent or of society.” While Mr. Stephen would himself find a place for the “lie of necessity” under conceivable circumstances, he is clear-minded enough to perceive that the moral sense of the civilized world is opposed to this view; and in this he is nearer correct than those who claim the opposite.
It is true that those who seek an approbation of their defense of falsehoods which they deem a necessity, assume, without proof, their agreement with the moral sense of the race. But it is also true that there stands opposed to their theory the best moral sense of primitive man, as shown in a wide area of investigation, and also of thinkers all the way up from the lowest moral grade to the most rigorous moralists, including intuitionists, utilitarians, and agnostics. However deficient may be the practice of erring mortals, the ideal standard in theory, is veracity, and not falsehood.
As to the opinions of purely speculative philosophers, concerning the admissibility of the “lie of necessity,” they have little value except as personal opinions. This question is one that cannot be discussed fairly without relation to the nature and law of God. It is of interest, however, to note that a keen mind like Kant’s insists that “the highest violation of the duty owed by man to himself, considered as a moral being singly (owed to the humanity subsisting in his person), is a departure from truth, or lying.”[1] And when a man like Fichte,[2] whom Carlyle characterizes as “that cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves of Academe,” declares that no measure of evil results from truth-speaking would induce him to tell a lie, a certain moral weight attaches to his testimony. And so with all the other philosophers. No attempt at exhaustiveness in their treatment is made in this work. But the fullest force of any fresh argument made by them in favor of occasional lying is recognized so far as it is known.
[Footnote 1: See Semple’s _Kant’s Metaphysic of Ethics_, p. 267.]
[Footnote 2: See Martensen’s _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, sec. 97.]
One common misquotation from a well-known philosopher, in this line, is, however, sufficiently noteworthy for special mention here. Jacobi, in his intense theism, protests against the unqualified idealism of Fichte, and the indefinite naturalism of Schelling; and, in his famous Letter to Fichte,[1] he says vehemently: “But the Good what is it? I have no answer if there be no God. As to me, this world of phenomena–if it have all its truth in these phenomena, and no more profound significance, if it have nothing beyond itself to reveal to me–becomes a repulsive phantom, in whose presence I curse the consciousness which has called it into existence, and I invoke against it annihilation as a deity. Even so, also, everything that I call good, beautiful, and sacred, turns to a chimera, disturbing my spirit, and rending the heart out of my bosom, as soon as I assume that it stands not in me as a relation to a higher, real Being,–not a mere resemblance or copy of it in me;–when, in fine, I have within me an empty and fictitious consciousness only. I admit also that I know nothing of ‘the Good _per se_,’ or ‘the True _per se_,’ that I even have nothing but a vague notion of what such terms stand for. I declare that it revolts me when people seek to obtrude upon me the Will which wills nothing, this empty nut of independence and freedom in absolute indifference, and accuse me of atheism, the true and proper godlessness, because I show reluctance to accept it.”
[Footnote 1: F.H. Jacobi’s _Werke_, IIIter Band, pp. 36-38.]
Insisting thus that he must have the will of a personal God as a source of obligation to conform to the law of truth and virtue, and that without such a source no assumed law can be binding on him, Jacobi adds: “Yes I am the atheist, and the godless man who, in opposition to the Will that wills nothing, will lie as the lying Desdemona lied; will lie and deceive as did Pylades in passing himself off as Orestes; will commit murder as did Timoleon; break law and oath as did Epaminondas, as did John De Witt; will commit suicide as did Otho; will undertake sacrilege with David; yes and rub ears of corn on the Sabbath merely because I am an hungered, and because the law is made for man and not man for the law.”
Jacobi’s reference, in this statement, to lying and other sins, was taken by itself as the motto to one of Coleridge’s essays;[1] and this seems to have given currency to the idea that Jacobi was in favor of lying. Hence he is unfairly cited by ethical writers[2] as having declared himself for the lie of expediency; whereas the context shows that that is not his position. He is simply stating the logical consequences of a philosophy which he repudiates.
[Footnote 1: Coleridge’s Works: _The Friend_, Essay XV.]
[Footnote 2: See, for instance, Martensen’s _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, sec. 97.]
Among the false assumptions that are made by many of the advocates of the “lie of necessity” is the claim that in war, in medical practice, and in the legal profession, the propriety of falsehood and deceit, in certain cases, is recognized and admitted on all sides. While the baselessness of this claim has been pointed out, incidentally, in the progress of the foregoing discussion,[1] it would seem desirable to give particular attention to the matter in a fuller treatment of it, before closing this record of centuries of discussion.
[Footnote 1: See pp. 71-75, _supra_.]
It is not true that in civilized warfare there is an entire abrogation, or suspension, of the duty of truthfulness toward an enemy. There is no material difference between war and peace in this respect. Enemies, on both sides, understand that in warfare they are to kill each other if they can, by the use of means that are allowable as means; but this does not give them the privilege of doing what is utterly inconsistent with true manhood.
Enemies are not bound to disclose their plans to each other. They have a duty of concealing those plans from each other. Hence, as Dorner has suggested, they proffer to each other’s sight only appearances, not assurances; and it is for each to guess out, if he can, the real purpose of the other, below the appearance. An enemy can protect his borders by pitfalls, or torpedoes, or ambushes, carefully concealed from sight, in order to guard the life of his own people by destroying the life of his opponents, or may make demonstrations, before the enemy, of possible movements, in order to conceal his purposed movements; but in doing this he does only what is allowable, in effect, in time of peace.[1]
[Footnote 1: Several of the illustrations of Oriental warfare in the Bible record are to be explained in accordance with this principle. Thus with the ambush set by Joshua before Ai (Josh. 8: 1-26): the Canaanites did not read aright the riddle of the Israelitish commander, and they suffered accordingly. Yet Dr. Dabney (_Theology_, p. 424) cites this as an instance of an intentional deception which was innocent in God’s sight. And again, in the case recorded at 2 Kings 7: 6, where the Lord “made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host,… and they arose and … fled for their life,” thinking that Hittite and Egyptian forces were approaching, it is evident that God simply caused the Syrians, who were contending with his people, to feel that they were fighting hopelessly against God’s cause. The impression God made on their minds was a correct one. He could bring chariots and horses as a great host against them. They did well to realize this fact. But the Syrians’ explanation of this impression was incorrect in its details.]
A similar method of mystifying his opponent is adopted by the base-ball pitcher in his demonstrations with the ball before letting it drive at the batsman. The batsman holds himself responsible for reading the riddle of the pitcher’s motions. Yet the pitcher is forbidden to deceive the batsman by a feint of delivering the ball without delivering it.
If an enemy attempts any communication with his opponent, he has no right to lie to, or to deceive him. He must not draw him into an ambuscade, or over concealed torpedoes, on the plea of desiring an amicable interview with him; and his every word given to an enemy must be observed sacredly as an obligation of truth.
Even before the Christian era, and centuries prior to the time when Chrysostom was confused in his mind on this point, Cicero wrote as to the obligations of veracity upon enemies in time of war, and in repudiation of the idea that warfare included a suspension of all moral relations between belligerents during active hostilities.[1]
[Footnote 1: Cicero’s _De Officiis_, I., 12, 13.]
He said: “The equities of war are prescribed most carefully by the heralds’ law (_lex fetialis_) of the Roman people,” and he went on to give illustrations of the recognized duty of combatants to keep within the bounds of mutual social obligations. “Even where private persons, under stress of circumstances, have made any promise to the enemy,” he said, “they should observe the exactest good faith, as did Regulus, in the first Punic war, when taken prisoner and sent to Rome to treat of the exchange of prisoners, having sworn that he would return. First, when he had arrived, he did not vote in the Senate for the return of the prisoners. Then, when his friends and kinsmen would have detained him, he preferred to go back to punishment rather than evade his faith plighted to the enemy.
“In the second Punic war also, after the battle of Cannae, of the ten Romans whom Hannibal sent to Rome bound by an oath that they would return unless they obtained an agreement for the redemption of prisoners, the censors kept disfranchised those who perjured themselves, making no exception in favor of him who had devised a fraudulent evasion of his oath. For when by leave of Hannibal he had departed from the camp, he went back a little later, on pretense of having forgotten something. Then departing again from the camp [without renewing his oath], he counted himself set free from the obligation of his oath. And so he was free _so_ far as the words went, but not so in reality; for always in a promise we must have regard to the meaning of our words, rather than to the words themselves.”
In modern times, when Lord Clive, in India, acted on the theory that an utter lack of veracity and good faith on the part of an enemy justified a suspension of all moral obligations toward him, and practiced deceit on a Bengalee by the name of Omichund, in order to gain an advantage over the Nabob of Bengal, he was condemned by the moral sense of the nation for which he thus acted deceitfully; and, in spite of the specious arguments put forth by his partisan defenders, his name is infamous because of this transaction.
“English valor and English intelligence have done less to extend and preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity,” says Lord Macaulay. “All that we could have gained by imitating the doublings, the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries, which have been employed against us, is as nothing when compared with what we have gained by being the one power in India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath which superstition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the ‘yea, yea,’ and the ‘nay, nay,’ of a British envoy.” Therefore it is that Lord Macaulay is sure that “looking at the question of expediency in the lowest sense of the word, and using no arguments but such as Machiavelli might have employed in his conferences with Borgia, we are convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and that he committed, not merely a crime but a blunder.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Macaulay’s _Essay on Lord Clive_.]
So again when an English vessel of war made signals of distress, off the coast of France, during the war with Napoleon, and thereby deceived men from the enemy into coming to its relief, and then held them as prisoners, the act was condemned by the moral sense of the world. As Woolsey says, in his “International Law:”[1] “Breach of faith between enemies has always been strongly condemned, and that vindication of it is worthless which maintains that, without an express or tacit promise to our enemy, we are not bound to keep faith with him.”
[Footnote 1: Sect. 133, p. 213.]
The theologian who assumes that the duty of veracity is suspended between enemies in war time is ignorant of the very theory of civilized warfare; or else he fails to distinguish between justifiable concealment, by the aid of methods of mystifying, and falsehood which is never justifiable. And that commander who should attempt to justify falsehood and bad faith in warfare on the ground that it is held justifiable in certain works on Christian ethics, would incur the scorn of the civilized world for his credulity; and he would be told that it is absurd to claim that because he is entitled to kill a man in warfare it must be fair to lie to him.
In the treatment of the medical profession, many writers on ethics have been as unfair, as in their misrepresentation of the general moral sense with reference to warfare. They have spoken as if “the ethics of the medical profession” had a recognized place for falsehood in the treatment of the sick. But this assumption is only an assumption. There are physicians who will lie, and there are physicians who will not lie; and in each case the individual physician acts in this matter on his own responsibility: he has no code of professional ethics justifying a lie on his part as a physician, when it would not be justifiable in a layman.
Concealment of that which he has a right to conceal, is as clearly a duty, in many a case, on the part of a physician, as it is on the part of any other person; but falsehood is never a legitimate, or an allowable, means of concealment by physician or layman. As has been already stated[1] if it be once known that a physician is ever ready to speak words of cheer to a patient falsely, that physician is measurably deprived of the possibility of encouraging a patient by truthful words of cheer when he would gladly do so. And physicians would probably be surprised to know how generally they are estimated in the community according to their reputation in this matter. One is known as a man who will speak falsely to his patients as a means of encouragement, while another is known as a man who will be cautious about giving his opinion concerning chances of recovery, but who will never tell an untruth to a patient or to any other person. But in no case can a physician claim that the ethics of his profession as a profession justify him in a falsehood to any person–patient or no patient.
[Footnote 1: See p. 75 f., _supra_.]
A distinguished professor in one of the prominent medical colleges of this country, in denying the claim of a writer on ethics that it may become the duty of a physician to deceive his patient as a means of curing him, declares that a physician acting on this theory “will not be found in accord with the best and the highest medical teaching of the present day;” and he goes on to say:[1] “In my profession to-day, the truth properly presented, we have found, carries with it a convincing and adjusting element which does not fail to bring the afflicted person to that condition of mind that is most conducive to his physical well-being, and let me add also, I believe, to his spiritual welfare.” This statement was made in connection with the declaration that in the hospital which was in his charge it is not deemed right or wise to deceive a patient as to any operation to be performed upon him. And there are other well-known physicians who testify similarly as to the ethics of their profession.
[Footnote 1: In a personal communication to the author.]
An illustration of the possible good results of concealing an unpleasant fact from a sick person, that has been a favorite citation all along the centuries with writers on ethics who would justify emergency falsehoods, is one which is given in his correspondence by Pliny the younger, eighteen centuries ago.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Epistles of Pliny the Younger_, Book III., Epis. 16. Pliny to Nepos.]
Caecinna Paetus and his son “were both at the same time attacked with what seemed a mortal illness, of which the son died…. His mother [Arria] managed his funeral so privately that Paetus did not know of his death. Whenever she came into his bedchamber, she pretended that her son was better, and, as often as he inquired after his health, would answer that he had rested well, or had eaten with an appetite. When she found she could no longer restrain her grief, but her tears were gushing out, she would leave the room, and, having given vent to her passion, return again with dry eyes and a serene countenance, as if she had dismissed every sentiment of sorrow.”
This Roman matron also committed suicide, as an encouragement to her husband whom she desired to have put an end to his own life, when he was likely to have it taken from him by the executioner; and Pliny commends her nobleness of conduct in both cases. It is common among ethical writers, in citing this instance in favor of lying, to say nothing about the suicide, and to omit mention of the fact that the mother squarely lied, by saying that her dead boy had eaten a good breakfast, instead of employing language that might have been the truth as far as it went, while it concealed that portion of the truth which she thought it best to conceal. It is common to quote her as simply saying of her son” He is better;”[1] quite a different version from Pliny’s, and presenting a different issue.
[Footnote 1: See Newman Smyth’s _Christian Ethics_, p. 395, where this case is stated with vagueness of phrase, and as thus stated is approved.]
It was perfectly proper for that mother to conceal the signs of her sorrow from her sick husband, who had no right to know the truth concerning matters outside of his sick-room at such a time. And if, indeed, she could say in all sincerity, as expressive of her feelings in the death of her son, by the will of the gods, “He is better,” it would have been possible for her to feel that she was entitled to say that as the truth, and not as a falsehood; and in that case she would not have intended a deceit, but only a concealment. But when, on the other hand, she told a deliberate lie–spoke falsely in order to deceive–she committed a sin in so doing, and her sin was none the less a sin because it resulted in apparent good to her husband. An illustration does not overturn a principle, but it may misrepresent it.
Another illustration, on the other side of the case, is worth citing here. Victor Hugo pictures, in his _Les Miserables_,[1] a sister of charity adroitly concealing facts from a sick person in a hospital, while refusing to tell a falsehood even for the patient’s good. “Never to have told a falsehood, never to have said for any advantage, or even indifferently, a thing which was not the truth, the holy truth, was the characteristic feature of Sister Simplice.” She had taken the name of Simplice through special choice. “Simplice, of Sicily, our readers will remember, is the saint who sooner let her bosom be plucked out than say she was a native of Segeste, as she was born at Syracuse, though the falsehood would have saved her. Such a patron saint suited this soul.” And in speaking of Sister Simplice, as never having told even “a white lie,” Victor Hugo quotes a letter from the Abbe Sicard, to his deaf-mute pupil Massieu, on this point: “Can there be such a thing as a white lie, an innocent lie? Lying is the absolute of evil. Lying a little is not possible. The man who lies tells the whole lie. Lying is the face of the fiend; and Satan has two names,–he is called Satan and Lying.” Victor Hugo the romancer would seem to be a safer guide, so far, for the physician or the nurse in the sick-room, than Pliny the rhetorician, or Rothe the theologian.[2]
[Footnote 1: Book VII.]
[Footnote 2: Yet Victor Hugo afterwards represents even Sister Simplice as lying unqualifiedly, when sorely tempted–although not in the sick-room.]
A well-known physician, in speaking to me of this subject, said: “It is not so difficult to avoid falsehood in dealing with anxious patients as many seem to suppose. _Tact_, as well as _principle_, will do a good deal to help a physician out, in an emergency. I have never seen any need of lying, in my practice.” And yet another physician, who had been in a widely varied practice for forty years, said that he had never found it necessary to tell a lie to a patient; although he thought he might have done so if he had deemed it necessary to save a patient’s life. In other words, while he admitted the possible justification of an “emergency lie,” he had never found a first-class opening for one in his practice. And he added, that he knew very well that if he had been known to lie to his patients, his professional efficiency, as well as his good name, would have suffered. Medical men do not always see, in their practice, the supposed advantages of lying, which have so large prominence in the minds of ethical writers.
Another profession, which is popularly and wrongly accused of having a place for the lie in its system of ethics, is the legal profession.