Part 4

XVI. But besides flattering lies, there are many others which are hurtful in various ways, notwithstanding we find them classed among the jocose and officious ones. A coward brags of his prowess, and martial deeds; a stander-by who hears him, and believes what he says, endeavours to make a friend of him, in hopes that he will bear him out in any fray or quarrel in which he should happen to be engaged; and in consequence of the confidence he puts in this support, he precipitates himself into some dispute, where his bravo deserts him, and he loses his life. An ignorant fellow, palms himself upon simple people for a learned man, and they, by believing all he says to be right and true, get their heads filled with extravagances, which they afterwards by venting in other companies, expose their folly, and so by a very easy and short method, acquire the reputation of blockheads.

A neglected or disappointed man, brags of the interest he has with a great person; and some who hear and believe what he says, fancy he will be a good channel through which they may convey an application to that great person, and induce him to assist them in a matter they have much at heart, and in which they are deeply interested, and in hopes of the great benefits they may derive from his friendship and aid, pay great court to him, and waste the greatest part of their substance in presents and bribes to him. A spiritual puffer, brags of the miracles he has seen and experienced of such and such a saint; which one way or other, is generally attended with prejudicial consequences to the cause of religion. The physician brags of a skill or knowledge he does not possess; a valetudinary person who hears him, believing him to be an Esculapius, surrenders himself without further enquiry to his management, and becomes a voluntary victim. A young mariner, brags of his great abilities and skill in navigating and conducting a ship, which afterwards being trusted to him, is shipwrecked and dashed to pieces, on some rock or shoal. The same dangers, in a greater or a less degree, and in proportion to the matters that are confided to their management, are we exposed to, by trusting vaunters in all arts and professions, who although they are unskilful, presume to boast of their great knowledge. I should never have done, was I to set about enumerating all the species of lies, which go under the name of jocose and officious, and which are attended with pernicious consequences.

SECT. VII.

XVII. But I cannot avoid making particular mention, of a certain species of lies, which find ample protection with, and pass current through the world, as if they were perfectly innocent; when in reality, they are extremely injurious to the public. I mean judicial lies; such, as when in stating a fact which gave rise to, or is the subject matter of a litigation, the parties interested, and those employed in the suit, disguise and disfigure it, to make it appear more favourable to their own side. This species of deceit, or as I may say lie, is so frequent, that we scarce see a cause in which it is not practised, and in which, both parties agree in the state of the facts, on which the matter in issue rests; and from hence arise the length of the pleadings, and the principal delay, and great expence of law-suits. Who can entertain a doubt, but that this is very injurious to the public? Yet there is nobody will attempt finding out a remedy for the evil. It might perhaps be asked, what remedy can be applied to it; but to this I should answer, the remedy that is made use of in Japan. Among those islanders, whose political government there is no doubt excells ours in many particulars, they punish a judicial lie, or one advanced in a legal process, with great severity; and the Algerines do the same. Whoever lies, or when he is brought before the Bey, or any of his judicial magistrates, to answer to a civil process, shall deny, if the prosecution is for a debt, that he owes the person suing for it the money in question, or if the prosecutor shall be found guilty of making a false or unjust demand, in either of these cases, he who shall be found to falsify, is adjudged to a rigorous bastinadoing. Thus these causes are speedily and safely determined, nor is there the least necessity for any writing in them, for the fear of that severe punishment, deters any man from demanding what is not due to him, and terrifies any one from denying a just debt. If something like this method was to be adopted among us, law-suits of this sort in Spain, would be as short as they are in those places. What delays law-suits, is not so much the difficulty of finding out what the law is with respect to the matter in question; but such delays arise for the most part, from fallacious suggestions, and evasive statings of facts. If the suitors, and all the parties concerned or employed in a cause, knew, that for every fallacy they advanced, they were to pay a large fine, they would be careful not to suggest or advance any thing, that was not simply and exactly true. By this means, the parties would soon be agreed as to the fact, and a determination would quickly be made in favour of the person who had the right of his side, and there would be nothing left to do, but for process to issue agreeable to the ordinary forms of law, in order to enforce and compleat the judgment. The doing of this, is seldom attended with much expence or delay; and by adopting the before-mentioned method of proceeding, there would soon be a stop put to all law-suits, that are founded on false or sinister suggestions; and people would not be near so exposed to have vexatious and roguish prosecutions commenced against them, as they are at present. The state or public at large, would be great gainers by such a regulation taking place, as the loss occasioned by the attendance, that many artificers, and people employed in useful branches of trade are obliged to give on courts of law would be avoided. So that the whole loss that would be incurred by adopting this method, would fall on the advocates, solicitors, and other men of the law; but this would be amply compensated for to the state, by the increase it would occasion of professors in useful arts.

XVIII. It is true, that our laws in Spain have not been so deficient in this respect, as not to have assigned certain punishments in various cases to judicial lies. One of those which is to be found among the laws which we term the laws _de Partida_ seems to me admirably calculated to suppress this evil. It runs thus: _He of whom any thing is demanded judicially by another person, as his property, who shall deny the person making the demand was ever possessed of it, shall, if it is afterwards proved that the person who makes the demand was possessed of it, be obliged to surrender it to him who demands it, although the demander should not be able to prove the thing ever was his property._ But I could wish in the first place, that both this law, and all others of the same sort, should be extended to more cases than they take in, or to speak more properly, to all cases whatever; so that every judicial lie should be liable to a punishment, proportioned to the mischief it might be attended with. I would wish secondly, that some lawyers in expounding those laws, had given a larger extent to them, and not have limited the operation of them but to few cases; for we have reason to apprehend, that it is in consequence of these expositions, that we very rarely or never, have seen any one punished for this offence, at least I do not remember to have ever known, or to have ever heard of any one that was punished for it. The greatest part of the Judges, although there may appear but little reason for their acting with lenity, are apt to lean to the compassionate side; but it seems to me, that it would be for the good of the public, if upon these occasions, they would exercise a proper degree of severity.

SECT. VIII.

XIX. Finally, by contemplating a lie in all its extent, I find it so inconvenient to the life of man, that I am disposed to think the whole rigour of the laws should be levelled against it, and that it should be treated as a most pestiferous enemy to human society. Zoroaster the famous legislator of the Persians, or Zerduscht, which according to the learned Thomas Hyde was his name, in which sentiment Thomas Stanley differs but little from him, he writing it Zaraduissit; from all which we may conclude, that the changing his name to Zoroaster, was an alteration made by the Greeks to make it correspond the better with their own language; but to have done with criticising upon his name, he in the statutes he formed for the government of that nation, estimated a lie, as one of the most serious crimes a man could commit. I must confess; that he erred in this as a Theologian; but that he was quite right, and acted wisely as a politician; because no better means can be fallen upon, to make men live happy in society, than that of introducing among them, an utter abhorrence of a lie; and on the other hand, if the great propensity in man to lying is not curbed, although the rest of the laws should be ever so pious and just, they will not be able to prevent innumerable mischiefs and disorders.

SECT. IX.

XX. It is only in one particular instance, that I look upon lying to be sufferable; and that is, when there is no fence to resist the impertinent and officious enquiries of people into secrets, that are trusted to a man in confidence. I state the case thus: a friend of mine, for the sake of asking my advice, informs me in confidence of a crime that he has committed. A person in power suspects him to be the man who committed the crime, and by making an improper use of his authority, demands of me, whether I do not know that such a person committed such a crime. I will suppose for argument’s sake, that he is a person of such penetration, that I could not deceive him by evasions, and giving answers, that amounted to my neither owning nor denying that I knew any thing of it; and that my not giving a positive answer, would only tend to confirm him in the opinion that my friend had actually committed the crime he suspected him of; so that I am drove to the necessity of answering positively, yes, or no. It is certain in such a case, that I am bound by the laws of friendship, fidelity, charity and justice, not to reveal the secret confided to me. How then am I to act in such a pressing exigency?

XXI. After stating a variety of different opinions of Theologians, and other eminent men upon cases of this sort, which I shall omit to insert, as I apprehend they would rather seem tedious, than afford either entertainment or instruction to the reader; Father Feyjoo proceeds thus: But I do not chuse to take any part in this question, as it would require more time to discuss, than I at present have leisure to bestow upon it; and therefore shall waive entering into it, and returning to the subject of my discourse, shall say, that admitting a man, upon being unfairly pressed, cannot avoid disclosing a secret which has been confided to him, without telling a lie, those lies ought to be tolerated by human society, and the punishment of them should be left to God alone, for that a republic or state is exposed to no inconvenience from them; and that on the contrary, daily mischiefs might result to it, by not preventing the evil effects, of the malicious, and vicious curiosity of men, who are impertinently fond of prying into other people’s secrets. And he who makes these enquiries, should blame himself for any imposition or deceit that happens in consequence of them, and not the person who told the lie, for the inquisitor is the aggressor in this case, as he may be termed an invader of other people’s secrets, which he had improperly, and without any right so to do, taken upon him officiously to pry into.

ON THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY, AND National Prejudice or Prepossession.

SECT. I.

I. I Seek in men that love of their country, which I find so much celebrated in books, but I do not meet with it; I mean that just, noble and virtuous love, which they owe to their country. In some, I see no kind of affection for their country at all; in others, I perceive only a criminal affection, which is vulgarly called national prejudice.

II. I do not deny, that by turning over history, you will find thousands of victims sacrificed to this idol. What war is undertaken without this specious pretence? What field do we see drenched with human blood, that posterity, over the carcases from whence it flowed, has not fixed the honourable inscription, that those men lost their lives for the good of their country? But if we examine things critically, we shall find the world is much mistaken, in thinking there have been so many, or so refined sacrifices made to this imaginary deity. Let us figure to ourselves a republic, armed for a war, undertaken on the principle of a just defence; and let us also proceed to examine by the light of reason, the impulse which animates men’s hearts to expose their lives in the quarrel. Among the private men, some inlist for the pay and the plunder, others with the hopes of bettering their fortunes, and acquiring military honour and preferment; but the greatest part, from motives of obedience, and fear of the Prince or the General. He who commands the army, is instigated by his interest and his glory. The Prince, or Chief Magistrate, who is at a distance from the danger, acts more for the sake of maintaining his dominion, than for supporting the republic. Now admitting that all these people should find it more for their interest to retire to their houses, than to defend the walls, you would hardly see ten men left on the ramparts.

III. Even those feats of prowess of the antients, which are so blazoned and immortalized by fame, as the ultimate exertions of zeal for the public good, were more probably generated by ambition, and the love of glory, than by the love of their country; and I am inclined to think, that if there had not been witnesses present, to have handed down to posterity an account of their exploits, that from a principle of love to his country, neither Curtius would have precipitated himself into the pit, nor Marcus Attilius Regulus have submitted to die a lingering death in an iron cage; nor would the twin brothers, for the sake of extending the boundaries of Carthage, have consented to be buried alive. The incitement of posthumous fame had great influence among the Gentiles; and it might also happen, that some rushed on a violent death, not so much with a view of acquiring posthumous fame, as from the mad vanity of seeing themselves admired and applauded for a few instants of their lives, of which Lucian gives us a striking example, in the death that was submitted to by the philosopher Peregrinus.

IV. Among the Romans, the love of their country, was so much in vogue and so prevalent, that it seemed as if this noble inclination was the soul of their whole republic. But what appears to me is, that the Romans themselves, on account of Cato’s constant and steady attachment to the public, looked upon him as a very uncommon man, and as one descended from Heaven. It may be said of all the rest of them, almost without exception, that in serving their country, they sought more their own exaltation than the public utility. They gave Cicero the glorious surname of father of his country, for the successful and vigorous opposition he made to Catiline’s conspiracy. This in appearance was a great merit, although in reality it was but an equivocal one; for not only the success of Cicero’s attaining the consulate, depended upon that fury’s not carrying his point, but his life also; for it is true, that when afterwards Cæsar tyrannized over the republic, Cicero accommodated himself very well with him. The subornations of Jugurtha, King of Numidia, shewed abundantly, what sort of spirit influenced the Roman senate; which, contrary to the interest of the republic, tolerated in that penetrating and violent Prince, many grave and pernicious evils, because every new insolence he committed, was accompanied with a new present to the senators. He was at last brought to Rome, and detained there; and although he was so far from correcting or reforming his old practices, that within the city itself, he committed new and enormous offences; by the favour of gold, he was permitted to go at large, which in the delinquent himself begot such a contempt of that government, that when he left Rome, after getting at a little distance from the city, he turned about, and looking at it with disdain, called it _a venal city_, adding, that it would soon perish, if any one could find money enough to pay the price of its ruin: _Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem invenirit_ (Sallust in Jugurtha). The same thing, and even more pointedly, was said by Petronius:

_Venalis populus, venalis curia patrem._

This is a picture of the love of their country so celebrated among the Romans, and to which many at this day, judge they owed the enormous extension of the Roman empire.

SECT. II.

V. Our opinion of this matter differs greatly from that of the bulk of mankind, by whom it is generally believed, the love of their country is natural to, and transcendent in all men; and as a proof of it, they alledge the repugnance, which all, or nearly all men feel at abandoning the country in which they were born, to go and reside in any other whatever; but I find here a great equivocation, and that what men call the love of their country, is in reality, nothing else but the love of their own convenience. There is no man who does not leave his own country cheerfully, when he has expectations by going to another of mending his fortune; and examples of this sort are seen every day. Of all the fables that have been fabricated by the poets, there is no one appears to be more void of probability, than that of Ulysses’s having preferred the dreary and unpleasant rocks and craigs of his own country Ithaca, to the immortality full of delights, which was offered him by the nymph Calipso, upon condition that he would come and live with her in the island of Ogygia.

VI. I may be told, that the Scythians, as Ovid testifies, fled from the delicacies of Rome, to the asperities of their own frozen soil; that the Laplanders, maugre all the conveniences and accommodations that were offered them at Vienna, sighed to return to their own poor steril country; and that but a few years ago, a Canadian savage who was brought to Paris, where he was furnished with every possible convenience, lived there in a seeming state of affliction and melancholy.

VII. I say in answer to all this, that it is true; but it is also true, that these men live with more convenience to themselves in Scythia, in Lapland, and in Canada, than in Vienna, at Paris, or in Rome. Habituated to the food of their country, however hard and coarse it may appear to us, they find it both grateful and salutary. They are born among snow, and live pleasantly in the midst of it; and as we cannot bear the cold of northern regions, they cannot endure the heat of southern ones. Their mode of government, is suited to their tempers and dispositions, and although the form is but indifferent, they being reconciled to it by custom, believe that nature itself never dictated any other. Our policy seems as barbarous to them, as theirs does to us. Here, we think it impossible to live without a house or permanent abode; they look upon this as a voluntary imprisonment, and regard it as much more convenient, to be at liberty to change their habitation, when, and unto wherever it is most agreeable to them, fabricating it in the evening, for the use of the night and the next day, either in the valley, on the side of the mountain, or in the plain. The accommodation afforded by changing situations as the seasons of the year vary, is enjoyed among us, by none but the great and the opulent; among those barbarians, there is no one who does not enjoy it; and I must confess for myself, that I look upon a man’s having power, whenever he pleases, to remove from a disagreeable neighbourhood, and settle himself in one he likes better, as a very enviable happiness.

VIII. Olaus Rudbec, a noble Swede, who had travelled a great deal through the northern regions, in a book that he wrote, intitled _Lapland Illustrated_, says, that the inhabitants of it, are so convinced of the advantages of their situation, that they would not exchange their own, for all the countries in the world. In fact, they possess some benefits or conveniencies in it, which are not imaginary, but real. That country, produces some regaling fruits, although they are different from ours; and the abundance of game and fish in it, all of them remarkably fine flavoured, is immense. The winters, which with us are so disagreeably damp and rainy, are there clear and serene; from whence it follows, that the natives are active, healthy, and robust. Thunder storms are scarce ever known in that region, nor is there a venomous snake to be found in all the country. They live also exempt from those two great scourges of Heaven, war and pestilence, their climate defending them from both these visitations, it being as obnoxious to strangers and the plague, as it is healthy to the natives. The snow does not incommode them, for by their natural agility, added to art and contrivance they fly over the tops of the snowy heights like crows. The multitude of white bears with which the country abounds, serves them for amusement and diversion; for they are so dextrous in combating these fierce animals, that there is scarce a Laplander, who does not kill many of them in a year, although it is very rare, that a Laplander is ever killed by one of them.

IX. We may add, that the long nights in those subpolar regions, of which they give us so horrible a representation, are not so dismal as they are imagined to be. They hardly experience total darkness there above one whole month; the reason is, because the sun descends below his horizon only twenty-three degrees and a half; and according to the computation of astronomers, the twilight may be perceived at eighteen degrees of depression. Neither does the apparent absence of the sun continue for six months, as it is commonly thought, but for five only, for on account of the great refraction of the rays in that atmosphere, you see the sun, half a month before it mounts above the horizon, and for the same space of time after it descends below it. Some Dutchmen in a northern voyage they made in 1596, being in the latitude of 76, were vastly astonished at seeing the sun fifteen or sixteen days before they expected to see it. In our discourse on mathematical paradoxes, we explained this phænomenon, and shewed, that by attending to, and computing all things, those who inhabit near the Poles, enjoy the light of the sun for a greater portion of the year, than those who live in the temperate and torrid zones; therefore what is said of the equal repartition of light all over the world, although it is generally assented to, is not true.

X. We much admire, and live very happily on the aliments we commonly use; but there is no nation, to which the same thing does not happen. The people of the northern regions, find the flesh of bears, wolves, and foxes, very savoury and regaling. The Tartars are fond of horse-flesh; the Arabs of the flesh of camels; and the Africans and Chinese, of that of dogs; for they both eat and sell them in the markets as we do pig pork. In some regions of Africa, they eat monkies, crocodiles, and serpents; and Scaliger says, that in various parts of the east, bats are esteemed as regaling a dish, as chickens are with us.