Apologia Pro Vita Sua | Page 5

he will
suggest that I am an able logician; if I show warmth, I am acting the
indignant innocent; if I am calm, I am thereby detected as a smooth
hypocrite; if I clear up difficulties, I am too plausible and perfect to be

true. The more triumphant are my statements, the more certain will be
my defeat.
So will it be if my Accuser succeeds in his man[oe]uvre; but I do not
for an instant believe that he will. Whatever judgment my readers may
eventually form of me from these pages, I am confident that they will
believe me in what I shall say in the course of them. I have no
misgiving at all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh towards a man
who has been so long before the eyes of the world; who has so many to
speak of him from personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has
ever been to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too
little; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been
wise enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the doctrines
and arguments of his opponents; who has never slurred over facts and
reasonings which told against himself; who has never given his name
or authority to proofs which he thought unsound, or to testimony which
he did not think at least plausible; who has never shrunk from
confessing a fault when he felt that he had committed one; who has
ever consulted for others more than for himself; who has given up
much that he loved and prized and could have retained, but that he
loved honesty better than name, and Truth better than dear friends....
* * * * *
What then shall be the special imputation, against which I shall throw
myself in these pages, out of the thousand and one which my Accuser
directs upon me? I mean to confine myself to one, for there is only one
about which I much care,--the charge of Untruthfulness. He may cast
upon me as many other imputations as he pleases, and they may stick
on me, as long as they can, in the course of nature. They will fall to the
ground in their season.
And indeed I think the same of the charge of Untruthfulness, and select
it from the rest, not because it is more formidable but because it is more
serious. Like the rest, it may disfigure me for a time, but it will not
stain: Archbishop Whately used to say, "Throw dirt enough, and some
will stick;" well, will stick, but not, will stain. I think he used to mean
"stain," and I do not agree with him. Some dirt sticks longer than other

dirt; but no dirt is immortal. According to the old saying, Prævalebit
Veritas. There are virtues indeed, which the world is not fitted to judge
of or to uphold, such as faith, hope, and charity: but it can judge about
Truthfulness; it can judge about the natural virtues, and Truthfulness is
one of them. Natural virtues may also become supernatural;
Truthfulness is such; but that does not withdraw it from the jurisdiction
of mankind at large. It may be more difficult in this or that particular
case for men to take cognizance of it, as it may be difficult for the
Court of Queen's Bench at Westminster to try a case fairly which took
place in Hindostan: but that is a question of capacity, not of right.
Mankind has the right to judge of Truthfulness in a Catholic, as in the
case of a Protestant, of an Italian, or of a Chinese. I have never doubted,
that in my hour, in God's hour, my avenger will appear, and the world
will acquit me of untruthfulness, even though it be not while I live.
Still more confident am I of such eventual acquittal, seeing that my
judges are my own countrymen. I consider, indeed, Englishmen the
most suspicious and touchy of mankind; I think them unreasonable, and
unjust in their seasons of excitement; but I had rather be an Englishman,
(as in fact I am,) than belong to any other race under heaven. They are
as generous, as they are hasty and burly; and their repentance for their
injustice is greater than their sin.
For twenty years and more I have borne an imputation, of which I am at
least as sensitive, who am the object of it, as they can be, who are only
the judges. I have not set myself to remove it, first, because I never
have had an opening to speak, and, next, because I never saw in them
the disposition to hear. I have wished to appeal from Philip drunk to
Philip sober. When shall