The origin and development of the moral ideas

Moreover, lying is attended not only with social disadvantages, but with supernatural danger. The West African Fjort have a tale about a fisherman who every day used to catch and smuggle into his house great quantities of fish, but denied to his brother and relatives that he had caught anything. All this time the fetish Sunga was watching, and was grieved to hear him lie thus. The fetish punished him by depriving him of the power of speech, that he might lie no more, and so for the future he could only make his wants known by signs.31 In another instance, the Fjort tell us, the earth-spirit turned into a pillar of clay a woman who said that she had no peas for sale, when she had her basket full of them.32 The Nandi of the Uganda Protectorate believe that “God punishes lying by striking the untruthful person with lightning.”33 The Dyaks of Borneo think that the lightning god is made angry even by the most nonsensical untruth, such as the statement that a man has a cat for his mother or that vermin can dance.34 In Aneiteum, of the New Hebrides, the belief prevailed that liars would be punished in the life to come;35 according to the Banks Islanders, they were excluded from the true Panoi or Paradise after death.36 We have already noticed the emphasis which some of the higher religions lay on veracity and good faith, and other statements maybe added testifying the interest which gods of a more civilised type take in the fulfilment of these duties.

In ancient Egypt Amon Ra, “the chief of all the gods,” was invoked as “Lord of Truth”;37 and Maā, or Maat, represented as his daughter, was the goddess of truth and righteousness.38 In a Babylonian hymn the moon god is appealed to as the guardian of truth.39 The Vedic gods are described as “true” and “not deceitful,” as friends of honesty and righteousness;40 and Agni was the lord of vows.41 The Zoroastrian Mithra was a protector of truth, fidelity, and covenants;42 and Rashnu Razista, “the truest true,” was the genius of truth.43 According to the Iliad, Zeus is “no abettor of falsehoods”;44 according to Plato, a lie is hateful not only to men but to gods.45 Among the Romans Jupiter and Dius Fidius were gods of treaties,46 and Fides was worshipped as the deity of faithfulness.47 How shall we explain this connection between religious beliefs and the duties of veracity and fidelity to promises?

Apart from the circumstances which in some cases make gods vindicators of the moral law in general, as conceived of by their worshippers, there are quite special reasons for their disapproval of insincerity and bad faith. Here again we notice the influence of magic beliefs on the religious sanction of morality.

There is something uncanny in the untrue word itself. As Professor Stanley Hall points out, children not in frequently regard every deviation from the most painfully literal truth as alike heinous, with no perspective or degrees of difference between the most barefaced intended and unintended lies. In some children this fear of telling an untruth becomes so neurotic that to every statement, even to yes or no, a “perhaps” or “I think” is added mentally, whispered, or aloud. One boy had a long period of fear that, like Ananias and Sapphira, he might some moment drop down dead for a chance and perhaps unconscious lie.48 On the other hand, an acted lie is felt to be much less harmful than a spoken one; to point the wrong way when asked where some one is gone is less objectionable than to speak wrongly, to nod is less sinful than to say yes. Indeed, acted lies are for the most part easily gotten away with, whereas some mysterious baneful energy seems to be attributed to the spoken untruth. That its evil influence is looked upon as quite mechanical appears from the palliatives used for it.

Many American children are of opinion that a lie may be reversed by putting the left hand on the right shoulder and that even an oath may be neutralised or taken in an opposite sense by raising the left instead of the right hand.49 Among children in New York “it was sufficient to cross the fingers, elbows, or legs, though the act might not be noticed by the companion accosted, and under such circumstances no blame attached to a falsehood.”50 To think “I do not mean it,” or to attach to a statement a meaning quite different from the current one, is a form of reservation which is repeatedly found in children.51 Nor are feelings and ideas of this kind restricted to the young; they are fairly common among grown-up people, and have even found expression in ethical doctrines. They lie at the root of the Jesuit theory of mental reservations. According to Thomas Aquinas, again, though it is wrong to tell a lie for the purpose of delivering another from any danger whatever, it is lawful “to hide the truth prudently under some dissimulation, as Augustine says.”52 It is not uncommonly argued that in defence of a secret we may not “lie,” that is, produce directly beliefs contrary to facts; but that we may “turn a question aside,” that is, produce indirectly, by natural inference from our answer, a negatively false belief; or that we may “throw the inquirer on a wrong scent,” that is, produce similarly a positively false belief.53 This extreme formalism may no doubt to some extent be traced to the influence of early training.

From the day we learned to speak, the duty of telling the truth has been strenuously enjoined upon us, and the word “lie” has been associated with sin of the blackest hue; whereas other forms of falsehood, being less frequent, less obvious, and less easy to define, have also been less emphasised. But after full allowance is made for this influence, the fact still remains that a mystic efficacy is very commonly ascribed to the spoken word. Even among ourselves many persons would not dare to praise their health or fortune for fear lest some evil should result from their speech; and among less civilised peoples much greater significance is given to a word than among us. Herodotus, after mentioning the extreme importance which the ancient Persians attached to the duty of speaking the truth, adds that they held it unlawful even “to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do.”54 I think, then, we may assume that, if for some reason or other, falsehood is stigmatised, the mysterious tendency inherent in the word easily develops into an avenging power which, as often happens in similar cases, is associated with the activity of a god.

The punishing power of a word is particularly conspicuous in the case of an oath. But the evil attending perjury does not come from the lie as such: it is in the first place a result of the curse which constitutes the oath. An oath is essentially a conditional self-imprecation, a curse by which a person calls down upon himself some evil in the event of what he says not being true. The efficacy of the oath is originally entirely magical, it is due to the magic power inherent in the cursing words. In order to charge them with supernatural energy various methods are adopted. Sometimes the person who takes the oath puts himself in contact with some object which represents the state referred to in the oath, so that the oath may absorb, as it were, its quality and communicate it to the perjurer. Thus the Kandhs swear upon the lizard’s skin, “whose scaliness they pray may be their lot if forsworn,” or upon the earth of an ant-hill, “like which they desire that, if false, they may be reduced to powder.”55 The Tunguses regard it as the most dreadful of all their oaths when an accused person is compelled to drink some of the blood of a dog which, after its throat has been cut, is impaled near a fire and burnt, or has its flesh scattered about piece-meal, and to swear:—“I speak the truth, and that is as true as it is that I drink this blood. If I lie, let me perish, burn, or be dried up like this dog.”56 In other cases the person who is to swear takes hold of a certain object and calls it to inflict on him some injury if he perjure himself.

The Kandhs frequently take oath upon the skin of a tiger, “from which animal destruction to the perjured is invoked.”57 The Angami Nagas, when they swear to keep the peace, or to perform any promise, “place the barrel of a gun, or a spear, between their teeth, signifying by this ceremony that, if they do not act up to their agreement, they are prepared to fall by either of the two weapons.”58 The Chuvashes, again, put a piece of bread and a little salt in the mouth and swear, “May I be in want of these, if I say not true!” or “if I do not keep my word!”59 Another method of charging an oath with supernatural energy is to touch, or to establish some kind of contact with, a holy object on the occasion when the oath is taken. The Iowa have a mysterious iron or stone, wrapped in seven skins, by which they make men swear to speak the truth.60 The people of Kesam, in the highlands of Palembang, swear by an old sacred knife,61 the Bataks of South Tóba on their village idols,62 the Ostyaks on the nose of a bear, which is regarded by them as an animal endowed with supernatural power.63 Among the Tunguses a criminal may be compelled to climb one of their sacred mountains, repeating as he mounts, “May I die if I am guilty,” or, “May I lose my children and my cattle,” or, “I renounce for ever all success in hunting and fishing if I am guilty.”64 In Tibetan law-courts, when the great oath is taken, “it is done by the person placing a holy scripture on his head, and sitting on the reeking hide of an ox and eating part of the ox’s heart.”65 Hindus swear on a copy of the Sanskrit haribans,

or with Ganges water in their hands, or touch the legs of a Brâhmana in taking an oath.66 Muhammedans swear on the Koran, as Christians do on the Bible. In Morocco an oath derives efficacy from contact with, or the presence of, any lifeless object, animal, or person endowed with baraka, or holiness, such as a saint-house or a mosque, corn or wool, a flock of sheep or a horse, or a shereef. In mediæval Christendom sacred relics were generally adopted as the most effective means of adding security to oaths, and “so little respect was felt for the simple oath that, ere long, the adjuncts came to be looked upon as the essential feature, and the imprecation itself to be divested of binding force without them.”67