A Lie Never Justifiable | Page 7

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.
That man has no fair glory, in whose heart dwells a lie, and from whose
mouth it has once issued."[1]
[Footnote 1: Theognis, 607.]
Pindar looks toward the same standard when he says to Hiero, "Forge
thy tongue on the anvil of truth;"[1] and when he declares emphatically,
"I will not stain speech with a lie."[2] So, again, when his appeal to a
divinity is: "Thou that art the beginning of lofty virtue, Lady Truth,
forbid thou that my poem [or composition] should stumble against a lie,
harsh rock of offense."[3] In his tragedy of the Philoctetes, Sophocles
makes the whole play pivot on the remorse of Neoptolemus, son of
Achilles, over his having lied to Philoctetes (who is for the time being
an enemy of the Greeks), in order to secure through him the killing of
Paris and the overthrow of Troy. The lie was told at the instigation of
Ulysses; but Neoptolemus repents its