A Lie Never Justifiable: A Study in Ethics. H. Clay Trumbull

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СКАЧАТЬ troth. The lovers were pure in purpose and in act, but, if their interview were known, they would both be permanently harmed in reputation and in standing. A rumor of their secret meeting was circulated, and Fridthjof was summoned before the council of heroes to answer to the charge. If ever a lie were justifiable, it would seem to be when a pure woman's honor was at stake, and when a hero's happiness and power for good pivoted on it. Fridthjof tells to Ingeborg the story of his sore temptation when, in the presence of the council, Helge challenges his course.

      "'Say, Fridthjof, Balder's peace hast thou not broken, Not seen my sister in his house while Day Concealed himself, abashed, before your meeting? Speak! yea or nay!' Then echoed from the ring Of crowded warriors, 'Say but nay, say nay! Thy simple word we'll trust; we'll court for thee—Thou, Thorstein's son, art good as any king's. Say nay! say nay! and thine is Ingeborg!' 'The happiness,' I answered, 'of my life On one word hangs; but fear not therefore, Helge! I would not lie to gain the joys of Valhal, Much less this earth's delights. I've seen thy sister, Have spoken with her in the temple's night, But have not therefore broken Balder's peace!' More none would hear. A murmur of deep horror The diet traversed; they who nearest stood Drew back, as I had with the plague been smitten."[1]

      [Footnote 1: Anderson's Viking Tales of the North, p. 223.]

      And so, because Fridthjof would not lie, he lost his bride and became a wanderer from his land, and Ingeborg became the wife of another; and this record is to this day told to the honor of Fridthjof, in accordance with the standard of the North in the matter of truth-telling.

      In ancient Persia, the same high standard prevailed. Herodotus says of the Persians: "The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worse, to owe a debt; because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies."[1] "Their sons are carefully instructed, from their fifth to their twentieth year, in three things alone—to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth."[2] Here the one duty in the realm of morals is truth-telling. In the famous inscription of Darius, the son of Hystaspes, on the Rock of Behistun,[3] there are repeated references to lying as the chief of sins, and to the evil time when lying was introduced into Persia, and "the lie grew in the provinces, in Persia as well as in Media and in the other provinces." Darius claims to have had the help of "Ormuzd and the other gods that may exist," because he "was not wicked, nor a liar;" and he enjoins it on his successor to "punish severely him who is a liar or a rebel."

      [Footnote 1: Rawlinson's Herodotus, Bk. I., § 139.]

      [Footnote 2: Ibid., Bk. I., § 136.]

      [Footnote 3: Sayce's Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, pp. 120–137.]

      The Zoroastrian designation of heaven was the "Home of Song;" while hell was known as the "Home of the Lie."[1] There was in the Zoroastrian thought only two rival principles in the universe, represented by Ormuzd and Ahriman, as the God of truth, and the father of lies; and the lie was ever and always an offspring of Ahriman, the evil principle: it could not emanate from or be consistent with the God of truth. The same idea was manifest in the designation of the subordinate divinities of the Zoroastrian religion. Mithra was the god of light, and as there is no concealment in the light, Mithra was also god of truth. A liar was the enemy of righteousness.[2]

      [Footnote 1: Müller's Sacred Books of the East, XXXI., 184.]

      [Footnote 2: Müller's Sacred Books of the East, XXIII., 119 f., 124 f., 128, 139. See reference to Jackson's paper on "the ancient Persians' abhorrence of falsehood, illustrated from the Avesta," in Journal of Am. Oriental Soc., Vol. XIII., p. cii.]

      "Truth was the main cardinal virtue among the Egyptians," and "falsehood was considered disgraceful among them."[1] Ra and Ma were symbols of Light and Truth; and their representation was worn on the breastplate of priest and judge, like the Urim and Thummim of the Hebrews.[2] When the soul appeared in the Hall of Two Truths, for final judgment, it must be able to say, "I have not told a falsehood," or fail of acquittal.[3] Ptah, the creator, a chief god of the Egyptians, was called "Lord of Truth."[4] The Egyptian conception of Deity was: "God is the truth, he lives by truth, he lives upon the truth, he is the king of truth."[5] The Egyptians, like the Zoroastrians, seemed to count the one all-dividing line in the universe the line between truth and falsehood, between light and darkness.

      [Footnote 1: Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I., 299; III., 183–185.]

      [Footnote 2: Exod. 39: 8–21; Lev. 8: 8.]

      [Footnote 3: Bunsen's Egypt's Place in Universal History, V., 254.]

      [Footnote 4: Wilkinson's Anc. Egyp., III., 15–17.]

      [Footnote 5: Budge's The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 131.]

      Among the ancient Greeks the practice of lying was very general, so general that writers on the social life of the Greeks have been accustomed to give a low place relatively to that people in its estimate of truthfulness as a virtue. Professor Mahaffy says on this point: "At no period did the nation ever attain that high standard which is the great feature in Germanic civilization. Even the Romans, with all their coarseness, stood higher in this respect. But neither in Iliad nor in Odyssey is there, except in phrases, any reprobation of deceit as such." He points to the testimony of Cicero, concerning the Greeks, who "concedes to them all the high qualities they choose to claim save one—that of truthfulness."[1] Yet the very way in which Herodotus tells to the credit of the Persians that they allowed no place for the lie in their ethics[2] seems to indicate his apprehension of a higher standard of veracity than that which was generally observed among his own people. Moreover, in the Iliad, Achilles is represented as saying: "Him I hate as I do the gates of Hades, who hides one thing in his heart and utters another;" and it is the straightforward Achilles, rather than "the wily and shiftful Ulysses," who is the admired hero of the Greeks.[3] Plato asserts, and argues in proof of his assertion, that "the veritable lie … is hated by all gods and men." He includes in the term "veritable lie," or "genuine lie," a lie in the soul as back of the spoken lie, and he is sure that "the divine nature is incapable of a lie," and that in proportion as the soul of a man is conformed to the divine image, the man "will speak, act, and live in accordance with the truth."[4] Aristotle, also, while recognizing different degrees of veracity, insists that the man who is in his soul a lover of truth will be truthful even when he is tempted to swerve from the truth. "For the lover of truth, who is truthful where nothing is at stake [or where it makes no difference], will yet more surely be truthful where there is a stake [or where it does make a difference]; for he will [then] shun the lie as shameful, since he shuns it simply because it is a lie."[5] And, again, "Falsehood abstractly is bad and blamable, and truth honorable and praiseworthy; and thus the truthful man being in the mean is praiseworthy, while the false [in either extreme, of overstating or of understating] are both blamable, but the exaggerating man more so than the other."[6]

      [Footnote 1: Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece, pp. 27, 123. See also Fowler's Principles of Morals, II., 219–221.]

      [Footnote 2: Hist., Bk. I., §139.]

      [Footnote 3: Professor Fowler seems to be quite forgetful of this fact. He speaks of Ulysses as if he had precedence of Achilles in the esteem of the Greeks. See his Principles of Morals, II., 219.]

      [Footnote 4: Plato's Republic, II., 382, a, b.]

      [Footnote 5: Aristotle's Eth. Nic., IV., 13, 1127, a, b.]

      [Footnote 6: Ibid., IV.]

      Theognis recognizes this high ideal of the duty and the beauty of truthfulness, when he says: "At first there is a small attractiveness about a lie, but in the end the gain it brings is both shameful and harmful. СКАЧАТЬ