The origin and development of the moral ideas

The ancient Scandinavians considered it disgraceful for a man to tell a lie, to break a promise, or to commit a treacherous act.228 To kill or rob openly was a pardonable offence, if an offence at all; but he who did it secretly was a nithinger, a “hateful man,” unless indeed he afterwards openly declared his deed.229 In the Irish Senchus Mór it is said that not only false witness, but lying in general, deprives the guilty person of “half his honour-price up to the third time”;230 and, according to the commentary to the Book of Aicill, the double of his own full honour-price is due from each person who commits the crime of secret murder.231

In the Old Testament there are recorded, from the patriarchal age, some cases of lying, which, far from being condemned, in no way prevented the liar being a special object of divine favour. It must be admitted, however, that undue importance has been attached to some of these acts of falsehood,232 which were committed among foreigners with a view to escaping an impending danger.233 For instance, when Isaac, dwelling in Gerar, said of his wife that she was his sister, for fear lest the men of the place should kill him,234 he did a thing which few conscientious men under similar circumstances would hesitate to do. As for Jacob’s long course of double-dealing with his father-in-law, who was equally greedy and unscrupulous, it should be remembered that they were natives of different lands.235 Again, when Jacob, at the instigation of his mother, grossly deceived his own blind father, the intriguers, as has been pointed out,236 manifestly felt that the blessing extorted from Isaac ought to descend upon Jacob rather than upon Esau, and inasmuch as the word of the father was held to carry with it divine validity and potency, the securing of it by fair means or foul was deemed an urgent necessity. It is obvious that the ancient Hebrews did not condemn deceit as wrong in the abstract, and that they were very unscrupulous in the use of means.

Whenever David was threatened by any danger, he immediately employed a falsehood which served his turn; though not incapable of generosity, he deceived enemies and friends indifferently, and there is probably no record of treachery and lying consistently pursued which surpasses in baseness his affair with his faithful servant Uriah the Hittite.237 It is true that his conduct towards Uriah was condemned; “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”238 But it is significant that Yahveh himself occasionally had recourse to deceit for the purpose of carrying out his plans. In order to ruin Ahab he commissioned a lying spirit to deceive his prophets;239 and once he threatened to use deception as a means of taking revenge upon idolaters.240 But to bear false witness against a neighbour was strictly prohibited;241 the false witness should suffer the punishment which he was minded to bring upon the person whom he calumniated.242 In Ecclesiasticus lying is severely censured:—“A lie is a foul blot in a man, yet it is continually in the mouth of the untaught. A thief is better than a man that is accustomed to lie: but they both shall have destruction to heritage.

The disposition of a liar is dishonourable, and his shame is ever with him.”243 “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.”244 According to the Talmud, “four shall not enter Paradise: the scoffer, the liar, the hypocrite, and the slanderer.”245 Only for the sake of peace, and especially domestic peace, may a man tell a lie without sinning;246 but he who changes his word commits as heavy a sin as he who worships idols.247 The duty of truthfulness was particularly emphasised by the Essenes.248 He who entered their sect had to pledge himself always to love truth and strive to reclaim all liars.249 “They are eminent for fidelity,” says Josephus. “Whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury; for they say that he who cannot be believed without [swearing by] God is already condemned.”250

“Speak every man truth with his neighbour,”251 was from early times regarded as one of the most imperative of Christian maxims.252 According to St. Augustine, a lie is not permissible even when told with a view to saving the life of a neighbour; “since by lying eternal life is lost, never for any man’s temporal life must a lie be told.”253 Yet all lies are not equally sinful; the degree of sinfulness depends on the mind of the liar and on the nature of the subject on which the lie is told.254 This became the authorised doctrine of the Church.255 Thomas Aquinas says that, although lying is always sinful, it is not a mortal sin if the end intended be not contrary to charity, “as appears in a jocose lie, that is intended to create some slight amusement, and in an officious lie, in which is intended even the advantage of our neighbour.”256 Yet from early times we meet within the Christian Church a much less rigorous doctrine, which soon came to exercise a more powerful influence on the practice and feelings of men than did St. Augustine’s uncompromising love of truth.

The Greek Fathers maintained that an untruth is not a lie when there is a “just cause” for it; and as a just cause they regarded not only self-defence, but also zeal for God’s honour.257 This zeal, together with an indiscriminate devotion to the Church, led to those “pious frauds,” those innumerable falsifications of documents, inventions of legends, and forgeries of every description, which made the Catholic Church a veritable seat of lying, and most seriously impaired the sense of truth in the minds of Christians.258 By a fiction, Papacy, as a divine institution, was traced back to the age of the Apostles, and in virtue of another fiction Constantine was alleged to have abdicated his imperial authority in Italy in favour of the successor of St. Peter.259 The Bishop of Rome assumed the privilege of disengaging men from their oaths and promises.

An oath which was contrary to the good of the Church was declared not to be binding.260 The theory was laid down that, as faith was not to be kept with a tyrant, pirate, or robber, who kills the body, it was still less to be kept with an heretic, who kills the soul.261 Private protestations were thought sufficient to relieve men in conscience from being bound by a solemn treaty or from the duty of speaking the truth; and an equivocation, or play upon words in which one sense is taken by the speaker and another sense intended by him for the hearer, was in some cases held permissible.262 According to Alfonso de’ Liguori—who lived in the eighteenth century and was beatified in the nineteenth, and whose writings were declared by high authority not to contain a word that could be justly found fault with,263—there are three sorts of equivocation which may be employed for a good reason, even with the addition of a solemn oath.

We are allowed to use ambiguously words having two senses, as the word volo, which means both to “wish” and to “fly”; sentences bearing two main meanings, as “This book is Peter’s,” which may mean either that the book belongs to Peter or that Peter is the author of it; words having two senses, one more common than the other or one literal and the other metaphorical—for instance, if a man is asked about something which it is in his interest to conceal, he may answer, “No, I say,” that is “I say the word ‘no’”264 As for mental restrictions, again, such as are “purely mental,” and on that account cannot in any manner be discovered by other persons, are not permissible; but we may, for a good reason, make use of a “non-pure mental restriction,” which, in the nature of things, is discoverable, although it is not discovered by the person with whom we are dealing.265 Thus it would be wrong secretly to insert the word “no” in an affirmative oath without any external sign; but it would not be wrong to insert it in a whispering voice or under the cover of a cough.

The “good reason” for which equivocations and non-pure mental restrictions may be employed is defined as “any honest object, such as keeping our goods spiritual or temporal.”266 In support of this casuistry it is uniformly said by Catholic apologists that each man has a right to act upon the defensive, that he has a right to keep guard over the knowledge which he possesses in the same way as he may defend his goods; and as for there being any deceit in the matter—why, soldiers use stratagems in war, and opponents use feints in fencing.267