A Lie Never Justifiable | Page 7

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 utterance, and refuses to take advantage of it, even though the fate of Troy and the triumph of Greek arms depend on the issue. The plain teaching of the tragedy is that "the purposes of heaven are not to be served by a lie; and that the simplicity of the young son of truth-loving Achilles is better in the sight of heaven, even when it seems to lead to failure, than all the cleverness of guileful Ulysses."[4]
[Footnote 1: Pythian Ode, I, 86.]
[Footnote 2: Olympian Ode, 4, 16.]
[Footnote 3: Bergk's _Pindar_, 183 [221].]
[Footnote