Part 10

Moreover, when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precocious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information? If we discuss the pathology of divorce with the first-comer, what is to prevent divorce from becoming, in the end, as natural as daily bread? And if nothing is to be _tabu_ in talk, how many things will remain _tabu_ in practice? The human race is, in the end, as relentlessly logical as that. Even the aborigines that we have occasionally mentioned turn scandals over to the medicine-man, and keep a few delicate silences themselves. Perhaps we are “returning to Nature,” as the Rousseauists wanted us to; with characteristic Anglo-Saxon thoroughness, going the savages one better. But it is a pity to forget how to blush; for though in the ideal society a blush would never be forced to a cheek, it would not be because nothing was considered (as a German might say) blushworthy. Each man’s private conscience ought to be a nice little self-registering thermometer: he ought to carry his moral code incorruptibly and explicitly within himself, and not care what the world thinks. The mass of human beings, however, are not made that way; and many people have been saved from crime or sin by the simple dislike of doing things they would not like to confess to people with a code. I do not contend that that is a high form of morality; but it has certainly saved society a good many practical unpleasantnesses. And we are clearly courting the danger of essentially undiscussable actions when we admit every action to discussion.

I saw it seriously contended in some journal or other, not long ago, that, whether any other women were enfranchised or not, prostitutes ought undoubtedly to have the vote, because only thus could the social evil be effectively dealt with. Incredible enough; but there it was. Not many people, perhaps, would agree with that particular reformer; but undoubtedly there is a mania at present, in the classes that used to be conventional, for getting one’s information from the other camp. It is valuable to know the prostitute’s opinion--facts never come amiss; but why assume that we have only to know it to hold it? Is it not conceivable that other generations than our own have known her opinions, and that lines of demarcation have been drawn because a lot of people, as intelligent as we, did not agree with her? The present tendency, however, is to consider every one’s opinion important, in social and ethical matters, except that of respectable folk. My own pessimistic notion is, as I have hinted, that the philanthropic assault on the conventional code has come primarily from people who were too ignorant, or too lazy, or too undisciplined, to submit to the code; and that the success of the assault results from the sheer defenceless niceness--the mingled altruism and humility--of the people accused of conventionality. At all events, the fact is that our reticences have somehow become cases of cowardice, and our rejections forms of brutality. We are all a little pathetic in our credulity, and we are very like Moses Primrose at the fair. Well: let us buy green spectacles if we must; but let us, as long as we can, refuse to look through them!

It may seem a far cry from “temperament” to social service. I have known a great many people who went in for social service, and I do not think it is. The motives of the heterogeneous foes of convention may lie as far apart as the Poles (one Pole is very like the other, by the way, as far as we can make out from Peary and Amundsen) but the object is the same: to destroy the complicated fabric which the centuries have lovingly built up. (Even if you call it “restoration,” it is apt to amount to the same thing, as any good architect knows.) At the bar of Heaven, sober Roundheads and drunken rioters will probably be differently dealt with; but here on earth, both have been given to smashing stained-glass windows. Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give. The iconoclasts do the same thing; for civilization, whether it be perfect or not, is a fruit of time. Conventions are easy to come by, if you are willing to take conventions like those of the Central Australians. The difference between a perfected and a barbaric convention is a difference of refinement, in the old alchemical sense. A lot of the _tabu_ business is too stupid and meaningless for words. Civilization has been a weeding-out process, controlled and directed by increasing knowledge. We have infinitely more conventions than the aborigines: we simply have not such silly ones. The foes of modern convention are not suggesting anything wiser, or better, or more subtle: they are only attacking all convention blindly, as if the very notion of _tabu_ were wrong. The very notion of _tabu_ is one of the tightest notions in the world. Better any old _tabu_ than none, for a man cannot be said to be “on the side of the stars” at all, unless he makes refusals. What the foes of convention want is to have all _tabu_ overthrown. It is very dull of them, for even if a cataclysm came and helped them out--even if we were all turned, over night, into potential fossils for the delight of future scientists--the next beginnings of society would be founded on _tabu_. We shudder at the Central Australians; we should hate life on their terms. But I would rather live among the Warramunga than among the twentieth-century anarchists, for I cannot conceive a more odious society than one where nothing is considered indecent or impious. We may think, that the mental agility of the Warramunga could be better applied. Well: in time, it will be. But they are lifted above the brute just in so far as they develop mental agility in the framing of a moral law, however absurd a one. I said that their conventions were almost too complicated for us to master. That, I fancy, is because any mind they have, they give to their conventions. It is the natural consequence of giving your mind to science and history and philology and art, that you simplify where you can; also, that your conventions become purified by knowledge. Even the iconoclasts of the present day do not want us to throw away such text-book learning as we have achieved. They do ask us, though, to throw away the racial inhibitions that we have been so long acquiring. Is it possible that they do not realize what a slow and difficult business it is to get any particular opinion into the instincts of a race? Only the “evolution” they are so fond of talking about can do that. Perhaps we ought to take comfort from the reflection. But it is easier to destroy than to build up; and they are quite capable of wasting a few thousand years of our time.

No: the iconoclasts want to bring us, if possible, lower than the Warramunga. Some of them might be shocked at the allegation, for some of them, no doubt, are idealists--after the fashion of Jean-Jacques, be it understood. These are merely, one may say respectfully, mistaken: for they do not reckon with human nature any more than do the socialists. But the majority, I incline to believe, are merely the natural foes of dignity, of spiritual hierarchy, of wisdom perceived and followed. They object to guarded speech and action, because they themselves find self-control a nuisance. So, often, it is; but if the moral experience of man-kind has taught us anything, it has taught us that, without self-control, you get no decent society at all. When the mistress of Lowood School told Mr. Brocklehurst that the girls’ hair curled naturally, he retorted: “Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to become children of grace.” We do not sympathize with Mr. Brocklehurst’s choice of what was to be objected to in nature; we do not, indeed, sympathize with him in any way, for he was a hypocrite. But none the less, it is better to be, in the right sense, a child of grace than a child of nature. Attila did not think so; and Attila sacked Rome. We may be sacked--the planet is used to these _débâcles_--but let us not, either as a matter of mistaken humility or by way of low strategy, pretend that the Huns were Crusaders!

THE BOUNDARIES OF TRUTH

It is pretty much taken for granted by decent folk that the truth should be told in all circumstances. “It is never permissible to lie” has been, ever since the Christian era came in, the common opinion, if not the common practice. And yet, which one of us has never lied, I will not say against his conscience, but for the very sake of his conscience? Conventional religion has been assumed to be our sole guide, while our actual conduct is usually based on the different, and more explicit, code of honor. Honor is not religion, though with real religion it has always been at peace; civilized manners are not religion, though, again, they have always been at peace with it. In the matter of lying, both honor and civilized manners have a great deal to say; and the fact that we realize this subconsciously is responsible for a great many minor perplexities.

Strictly speaking, in Candide’s “best of possible worlds” lies should not pass human lips. There are many people who stick to the literal interpretation of the precept: ladies, for example, who retire to the back porch before they permit their maids to tell the unwelcome caller that they are “out.” There, presumably, they gaze at the blue sky, and congratulate themselves on their unimpeachable veracity. Yet even scrupulous people allow their servants to say they are out when they are in, because “out” is conventionally understood to mean many things. On the other hand, Mr. Chesterton tells us that, under certain conditions, mere silence is the most damnable lie of all. The matter is not so simple as it seems: its intricacies may become a morass for the unwary, and an enchanted garden for the casuist.

Very few people, I fancy, would say, after deliberation, that no lie was ever justified. To be sure, I once heard a serious young man protest that Shakespeare had damned Desdemona by allowing her, at her last gasp, to exculpate Othello. I have also known people who objected vehemently to the late Mark Twain because he said so many things that were not so. But there are occasions when lies are taken for granted, even by the law. A man on trial for his life is supposed to tell the truth, but not if it will incriminate him. A wife is not dragged to the witness-stand against her will to testify against her husband--no one would legitimately expect anything but perjury from her. I do not see much difference between legally permitting a man to say “Not guilty” when he is guilty, and legally permitting him to lie. Is there any solitary maiden lady who would not willingly give the midnight marauder to understand that her husband was just coming down the stairs, armed to the teeth? A man is not supposed, except by an extinct type of Puritan, to “give away” the lady who has made sacrifices for him; and even the extinct type of Puritan would hardly expect you to tell your hostess that her dinner-party had been dull. From this heterogeneous group of examples, one may infer that there are lies and lies; and while it is never permissible to lie, it is sometimes quite unpermissible to do anything else.

Most lies of the decenter sort are social. “The admixture of a lie doth ever give pleasure,” said the moralist Bacon. There is certainly very little defence for the lie that does not give pleasure. It is to save other people’s feelings, not our own, that we tell lies. Let me put a case quite bluntly. How, without lying, is a man to thank his small niece properly for the necktie which she has selected for his Christmas present? No one wants merely to be thanked for one’s trouble; every one wants to be told that his taste has been perfect. Now that the late Phillips Brooks’s handsome evasion of fact has become historic, who ever dares _not_ to praise a baby explicitly? I confess that it goes against the grain with me to say that I have enjoyed something which I have detested; and I have frequently accepted invitations (especially over the telephone) because my tongue would not twist itself round the phrase “another engagement” when the other engagement was non-existent. But I have never had the slightest compunction about saying that I was sorry I had another engagement, when I did have another engagement and was not sorry.

I know only one person whom I could count on not to indulge herself in these conventional falsehoods, and she has never been able, so far as I know, to keep a friend. The habit of literal truth-telling, frankly, is self-indulgence of the worst. Nothing could be more delightful, in an evil sense, than telling certain people that their Christmas presents, their babies, and their hospitalities are all horrors which defy description; especially if one could count it a virtue to one’s self to say those things starkly. But one cannot keep that weapon only for one’s foes: the only excuse for saying inexcusable things is that one always says them. Roughly speaking, one’s friends are the people of whom one thinks, habitually, pleasant things. But even friends can be annoying, or unbeautiful, or dull. And it is of the essence of those manners which are morals not to tell them so if one can help it. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend”--and must sometimes be dealt. But no stabbing over non-essentials! And above all, no stabbing when it is a pleasure to stab. Sometimes these truth-tellers congratulate themselves that their praise is immensely enhanced by its rarity. There, I fancy, they are mistaken: for in the first place, praise that is too long on the way loses its savor; and in the second, they acquire, I have noticed, a censorious habit of mind that prevents them from praising at all.

No: in the course of mere conventional living, a certain amount of lying must be done. “How do you do?” “I am very well, thank you.” You may have indigestion, and in that case you have lied. Yet is it your business to make your acquaintance uncomfortable by telling him the facts in the case? Certain things are true of any man personally which have nothing to do with his social existence: personally, if he has a toothache, he has it; socially, he has not a toothache unless he mentions it. Then, there are lies which are not verbal at all--lies of implication. The early Puritans who objected to paint and powder, objected to them, I fancy, on perfectly Catholic grounds--it was immoral to make yourself attractive, and paint and powder were literally meretricious. On the same principle, to this day, a nun cuts off her hair. The modern feeling against paint and powder--for it does in some quarters survive--is rather, I imagine, on the score of dishonesty. You are not supposed to disguise a beautiful complexion if you really have it. But if you have not a good complexion, you are deceiving people--you are acting a lie--by making yourself look as if you had. The ground of the objection has shifted.

Some author--is it Mr. Kipling?--says of one of his heroines that she was as honest as her own front teeth. I know a great many people who are as honest as their own front teeth are false; and certainly no one expects them to go about calling attention to the skill of their dentist. Perhaps some sophist will say that between wearing false hair and declaring one’s false hair to be one’s own, there is all the difference in the world. I protest that it is tacit falsehood to wear it at all--unless one does it after the fashionless fashion of an ancient lady I knew in my childhood who, quite bald at the age of ninety-five, hung two wads of chestnut hair across her head, like saddle-bags, on a black velvet ribbon. And such tacit falsehoods are all in the spirit of the conventional politeness we use daily. To rouge a pale face may be vanity; but to thank a stupid hostess for the pleasure she has not given, is loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. I am inclined to think that even rouge is more often than not altruistic in intention. One does not wish, for the sake of society, to be either a fright or a brute. Certain things are demanded of every man who meets the world on its own ground. From the moment he has “accepted with pleasure,” he has agreed to play the game; and it is as unfair of him to give or take the wrong cues as it would be for the castle to insist on making the knight’s move. No: we need not go out of our way to lie; but we must not, even to be clever, tell the truth when an innocent lie is innocently demanded of us.

It occurs to me that my examples of conventional falsehood are largely feminine. So, I fancy, they should be. One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them. A man expects his wife to do this kind of thing for him. It is she who accepts or refuses their common invitations, directs their joint social manœuvres, encounters the world for them both on the purely social side. He is not expected to do it any more than he is expected to order the dinner. There is more straight-from-the-shoulder talk, I imagine, among men by themselves than among women by themselves; but that is partly because women slip out of the social harness less frequently and less easily. A man among men is perhaps (I speak under correction) more inveterately his personal self; a woman among women more inveterately her social self. It may be that it is easier to wear the harness constantly than to gall one’s shoulders afresh each day with putting it on. I am inclined to think that women are as honest with their intimate friends as are men; but--they have had an age-long training in the penalties of making one’s self unpleasant. So many low motives are imputed to women--and most of them, at the present day, quite unjustly--that they are driven to the lesser mendacities for the sake of getting some justice done them. When Mr. A. asks Mrs. B. if she does not think Mrs. C. beautiful, she is almost bound to say that she does, though she does not. Otherwise, she will be taken for a jealous fool. One lie is better than two; and it is better to be thought a fool when you are not, than jealous and a fool when you are neither.

Comparatively few people, however, will cavil at these mendacities, which are indeed ψευδῆ ἀψευδῆ--as mechanical and uncalculated as a gentleman’s “I beg your pardon” when a lady has insisted on colliding with him in the street. Truth is not so difficult to bound on that side; for most people recognize the social exigency, and if you are praising some one’s unskilful cook on one day, the chances are that she will be congratulating you on your amateur gardening the next. We simply have to be polite, as our race and clime understand politeness; and no one except a _naïf_ is really going to take this sort of thing seriously. It is perhaps regrettable that we do not carry courtesy even further; for nothing makes people so worthy of compliments as occasionally receiving them. One is more delightful for being told one is delightful--just as one is more angry for being told one is angry. Let us pass, however, to more debatable ground.

There is an old refrain which runs, “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.” I am inclined to think that it is full of social philosophy. Most of us, probably, have put up our hardest fights for veracity on occasions when questions have been asked us that never should have been asked. “Refuse to answer,” says the ghost of that extinct Puritan whom we have evoked. An absurd counsel: for, as we all know, to most of these questions no answer is the most explicit answer of all. If the Devil has given you wit enough, you may contrive to keep the letter of the commandment. But usually that does not happen. I dare say many moralists will not agree with me; but I hold that a question put by some one who has no right, from any point of view, to the information demanded, deserves no truth. If a casual gossip should ask me whether my unmarried great-aunt lived beyond her means, I should feel justified in saying that she did not, although it might be the private family scandal that she did. There are inquiries which are a sort of moral burglary. The indiscreet questioner--and by indiscreet questions I mean questions which it is not conceivably a man’s duty either to the community or to any individual to answer--is a marauder, and there is every excuse for treating him as such. I am sure that every reader remembers, in his own experience, such questions, and counts among his acquaintance at least one such questioner. Let him say whether, in these conditions, he has felt it his moral duty to hand over information, any more than he would consider it his moral duty to hand over his plate to a thief. I am not speaking of cases where the temptation to lie is merely the temptation to save one’s face: it is not permissible to lie merely to save one’s face. But it is sometimes permissible to lie to save another person’s face--as it was pardonable, surely, in Desdemona to declare that Othello had not murdered her.

In regard to the lie of exaggeration, a word should perhaps parenthetically be said. We all know the child who has seen two elephants in the garden eating the roses. We also know the delightful grown-up who “embroiders” his narratives. He will never tell the same adventure twice with the same details. The fact remains that he may each time leave you with precisely the same impression of the adventure in its entirety. It is quite possible that you trust him exceedingly. Of course it is also possible that his _ben trovato_ is never _vero_. You will have to determine after long experience of him whether he is fundamentally false, or merely has a sense of style. Personally, I know exaggerators of both kinds: people whose lies are only picturesque adjectives, and people whose picturesque adjectives are only lies. There is a subtle distinction between the two. At the risk of being at loggerheads with the rhetoricians, one must say that truth goes deeper than words, and that there is not much in a truthfulness which is only phrase-deep.

The old ladies who are shivering on the back porch will disapprove of me for saying these things, almost as much as I disapprove of them for being on the back porch. To speak frankly, I have not found that the people who cling to the letter are always the people who cling to the spirit of the law. Some of the men and women who will not say in so many words the thing which is not, will deliberately give a false impression. They are not the servants of truth; they are the parasites of truth. The ladies I have referred to may be technically “out”; but they are really “out” only to the undesired visitor--exactly as much as if they had stopped in their own sitting-rooms. (Remember, please, that I am not speaking of the people who receive the unwelcome caller rather than permit a maid to fib--they are in a very different case.) I should not instinctively go to these people for an accurate account of a serious situation. Any one whose conscience is satisfied with that kind of loyalty to fact knows very little about the spirit of truth.