A Lie Never Justifiable Part 9

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 superst.i.tion? 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 a.s.serts 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 circ.u.mstances 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 sanct.i.ty 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 circ.u.mstances, 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, a.s.sume, 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 G.o.d. 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)_, -- 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 Sch.e.l.ling; 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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.sume 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 fict.i.tious 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 G.o.dlessness, 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 G.o.d as a source of obligation to conform to the law of truth and virtue, and that without such a source no a.s.sumed law can be binding on him, Jacobi adds: "Yes I am the atheist, and the G.o.dless 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 pa.s.sing 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)_, --97.]

Among the false a.s.sumptions 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 a.s.surances; 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 G.o.d'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 Hitt.i.te and Egyptian forces were approaching, it is evident that G.o.d simply caused the Syrians, who were contending with his people, to feel that they were fighting hopelessly against G.o.d's cause. The impression G.o.d 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 ill.u.s.trations of the recognized duty of combatants to keep within the bounds of mutual social obligations. "Even where private persons, under stress of circ.u.mstances, 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 superst.i.tion 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 a.s.sumes 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sumption is only an a.s.sumption. 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.