The origin and development of the moral ideas

THE condemnation of untruthfulness and bad faith springs from a variety of sources. In the first place, he who tells a lie, or who breaks a promise, generally commits an injury against another person. His act consequently calls forth sympathetic resentment, and becomes an object of moral censure.

Men have a natural disposition to believe what they are told. This disposition is particularly obvious in young children; it is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and, as Adam Smith observes, they very seldom teach it enough.1 Even people who are themselves pre-eminent liars are often deceived by the falsehoods of others.2 When detected a deception always implies a conflict between two irreconcilable ideas; and such a conflict gives rise to a feeling of pain,3 which may call forth resentment against its volitional cause, the deceiver.

But men are not only ready to believe what they are told, they also like to know the truth. Curiosity, or the love of truth, is coeval with the first operations of the intellect; it seems to be an ultimate fact in the human frame.4 In our endeavour to learn the truth we are frustrated by him who deceives us, and he becomes an object of our resentment.

Nor are we injured by a deception merely because we like to know the truth, but, chiefly, because it is of much importance for us that we should know it. Our conduct is based upon our ideas; hence the erroneous notion as regards some fact in the past, present, or future, which is produced by a lie or false promise, may lead to unforeseen events detrimental to our interests. Moreover, on discovering that we have been deceived, we have the humiliating feeling that another person has impertinently made our conduct subject to his will. This is a wound on our pride, a blot on our honour. Francis I. of France laid down as a principle, “that the lie was never to be put up with without satisfaction, but by a base-born fellow.”5 “The lie,” says Sainte-Palaye, “has always been considered the most fatal and irreparable affront that a man of honour could receive.”6

How largely the condemnation of falsehood and bad faith is due to the harm suffered by the victim appears from the fact that a lie or breach of faith is held more condemnable in proportion to the magnitude of the harm caused by it. But even in apparently trifling cases the reflective mind strongly insists upon the necessity of truthfulness and fidelity to a given word. Every lie and every unfulfilled promise has a tendency to lessen mutual confidence, to predispose the perpetrator to commit a similar offence in the future, and to serve as a bad example for others. “The importance of truth,” says Bentham, “is so great, that the least violation of its laws, even in frivolous matters, is always attended with a certain degree of danger. The slightest deviation from it is an attack upon the respect we owe to it. It is a first transgression which facilitates a second, and familiarises the odious ideal of falsehood.”7 Contrariwise, as Aristotle observes, he who is truthful in unimportant matters will be all the more so in important ones.8 Similar considerations, however, require a certain amount of reflection and farsightedness; hence intellectual development tends to increase the emphasis laid on the duties of sincerity and good faith. At the earlier stages of civilisation it is frequently considered good form to tell an untruth to a person in order to please him, and ill-mannered to contradict him, however much he be mistaken,9 for the reason that farther consequences are left out of account.

The detestation of falsehood is in a very large measure due to the motive which commonly is at the bottom of a lie. It is doubtful whether a lie ever is told simply from love of falsehood.10 The intention to produce a wrong belief has a deeper motive than the mere desire to produce such a belief; and in most cases this motive is the deceiver’s hope of benefiting himself at the expense of the person deceived. A better motive makes the act less detestable, or may even serve as a justification. But the broad doctrine that the end sanctifies the means is generally rejected; and the principle which sometimes allows deceit from a benevolent motive has been restricted within very narrow limits by a higher conception of individual freedom and individual rights. Thus the emancipation of morality from theology has brought discredit on the old theory that religious deception is permissible when it serves the object of saving human souls from eternal perdition. The opinion that no motive whatsoever can justify an act of falsehood has been advocated not only by intuitional moralists, but on utilitarian grounds.11 But it certainly seems absurd to the common sense of mankind that we should be allowed to save our own life or the life of a fellow-man by killing the person who wants to take it, but not by deceiving him.

It is easy to see why falsehood is so frequently held permissible, praiseworthy, or even obligatory, when directed against a stranger. In early society an injury inflicted on a stranger calls forth no sympathetic resentment. On the contrary, being looked upon with suspicion or hated as an enemy, he is considered a proper object of deception. Among the Bushmans “no one dare give any information in the absence of the chief or father of the clan.”12 “A Bedouin,” says Burckhardt, “who does not know the person interrogating him, will seldom answer with truth to questions concerning his family or tribe. The children are taught never to answer similar questions, lest the interrogator may be a secret enemy and come for purposes of revenge.”13 Among the Beni Amer a stranger can never trust a man’s word on account of “their contempt for everything foreign.”14 That even civilised nations allow stratagem in warfare is the natural consequence of war itself being allowed; and if good faith is to be preserved between enemies, that is because only thereby useless cruelty can be avoided and an end be put to hostilities.

However, deceit is not condemned merely because it is an injury to the party deceived and as such apt to arouse sympathetic resentment, but it is an object of disinterested, moral resentment also because it is intrinsically antipathetic. Lying is a cheap and cowardly method of gaining an undue advantage, and is consequently despised where courage is respected.15 It is the weapon of the weak, the woman,16 and the slave.17 Fraud, says Cicero, is the property of a fox, force that of a lion; “both are utterly repugnant to society, but fraud is the more detestable.”18 “To lie is servile,” says Plutarch, “and most hateful in all men, hardly to be pardoned even in poor slaves.”19 On account of its cowardliness, lying was incompatible with Teutonic and knightly notions of manly honour; and among ourselves the epithets “liar” and “coward” are equally disgraceful to a man. “All … in the rank and station of gentlemen,” Sir Walter Scott observes, “are forcibly called upon to remember that they must resent the imputation of a voluntary falsehood as the most gross injury.”20 Fichte asks, “Whence comes that internal shame for one’s self which manifests itself even stronger in the case of a lie than in the case of any other violation of conscience?” And his answer is, that the lie is accompanied by cowardice, and that nothing so much dishonours us in our own eyes as want of courage.21 According to Kant, “a lie is the abandonment, and, as it were, the annihilation, of the dignity of a man.”22

But a lie may also be judged of from a very different point of view. It may be not only a sign of cowardice, but a sign of cleverness. Hence a successful lie may excite admiration, a disinterested kindly feeling towards the liar, genuine moral approval; whereas to be detected in a lie is considered shameful. And not only is the clever liar an object of admiration, but the person whom he deceives is an object of ridicule. To the mind of a West African native, Miss Kingsley observes, there is no intrinsic harm in lying, “because a man is a fool who believes another man on an important matter unless he puts on the oath.”23 A Syrian proverb says, “Lying is the salt (goodness) of men, and shameful only to one who believes.”24

The duties of sincerity and good faith are also to some extent, and in certain cases principally, founded on prudential considerations. Although, as the Märchen tells us, it happens every day in the world that the fraudulent is successful,25 there is a widespread notion that, after all, “honesty is the best policy.” “Nothing that is false can be lasting,” says Cicero.26 “The liar is short-lived” (that is, soon detected), say the Arabs.27 According to a Wolof proverb, “lies, however numerous, will be caught by truth when it rises up.”28 The Basutos have a saying that “cunning devours its master.”29 It has been remarked that “if there were no such thing as honesty, it would be a good speculation to invent it, as a means of making one’s fortune.”30