Friends in Council | Page 5

is only that the taste and habits of men are more easily
discernible in pleasure than in business. The want of truth is as great a
hindrance to the one as to the other. Indeed, there is so much insincerity
and formality in the pleasurable department of human life, especially in
social pleasures, that instead of a bloom there is a slime upon it, which
deadens and corrupts the thing. One of the most comical sights to
superior beings must be to see two human creatures with elaborate
speech and gestures making each other exquisitely uncomfortable from
civility: the one pressing what he is most anxious that the other should
not accept, and the other accepting only from the fear of giving offence
by refusal. There is an element of charity in all this too; and it will be
the business of a just and refined nature to be sincere and considerate at
the same time. This will be better done by enlarging our sympathy, so
that more things and people are pleasant to us, than by increasing the
civil and conventional part of our nature, so that we are able to do more
seeming with greater skill and endurance. Of other false hindrances to
pleasure, such as ostentation and pretences of all kinds, there is neither
charity nor comfort in them. They may be got rid of altogether, and no
moaning made over them. Truth, which is one of the largest creatures,
opens out the way to the heights of enjoyment, as well as to the depths
of self-denial.
It is difficult to think too highly of the merits and delights of truth; but
there is often in men's minds an exaggerated notion of some bit of truth,
which proves a great assistance to falsehood. For instance, the shame of
some particular small falsehood, exaggeration, or insincerity, becomes
a bugbear which scares a man into a career of false dealing. He has
begun making a furrow a little out of the line, and he ploughs on in it to
try and give some consistency and meaning to it. He wants almost to

persuade himself that it was not wrong, and entirely to hide the
wrongness from others. This is a tribute to the majesty of truth; also to
the world's opinion about truth. It proceeds, too, upon the notion that all
falsehoods are equal, which is not the case; or on some fond craving for
a show of perfection, which is sometimes very inimical to the reality.
The practical, as well as the high-minded, view in such cases, is for a
man to think how he can be true now. To attain that, it may, even for
this world, be worth while for a man to admit that he is inconsistent,
and even that he has been untrue. His hearers, did they know anything
of themselves, would be fully aware that he was not singular, except in
the courage of owning his insincerity.
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Ellesmere. That last part requires thinking about. If you were to permit
men, without great loss of reputation, to own that they had been
insincere, you might break down some of that majesty of truth you talk
about. And bad men might avail themselves of any facilities of owning
insincerity, to commit more of it. I can imagine that the apprehension
of this might restrain a man from making any such admission as you
allude to, even if he could make up his mind to do it otherwise.
Milverton. Yes; but can anything be worse than a man going on in a
false course? Each man must look to his own truthfulness, and keep
that up as well as he can, even at the risk of saying, or doing, something
which may be turned to ill account by others. We may think too much
about this reflection of our external selves. Let the real self be right. I
am not so fanciful as to expect men to go about clamouring that they
have been false; but at no risk of letting people see that, or of even
being obliged to own it, should they persevere in it.
Dunsford. Milverton is right, I think.
Ellesmere. Do not imagine that I am behind either of you in a wish to
hold up truth. My only doubt was as to the mode. For my own part, I
have such faith in truth that I take it mere concealment is in most cases
a mischief. And I should say, for instance, that a wise man would be
sorry that his fellows should think better of him than he deserves. By
the way, that is a reason why I should not like to be a writer of moral
essays, Milverton--one should be supposed to be so very good.
Milverton. Only by