Before CHAPTER XXXII THE RESPECT FOR OTHER MEN’S HONOUR AND SELF-REGARDING PRIDE—POLITENESS
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Westermarck, Edward
Modes of conduct which are recommended by prudence tend on that account in various ways to be regarded as morally compulsory or praiseworthy. This subject will be discussed in connection with duties and virtues which are called “self-regarding,” but in the present place it is necessary to remind ourselves of the share which early education has in making prudence a matter of moral consideration. Few duties owe so much to the training of parents and teachers as does veracity. Children easily resort to falsehood, in self-defence or otherwise, and truthfulness is therefore enjoined on them with particular emphasis.94
The moral ideas referring to truthfulness are, finally, much influenced by the force of habit. Where lying is frequent it is, other things being equal, less strenuously condemned, if condemned at all, than in communities which are strictly truthful. It is natural to speak the truth. Von Jhering’s suggestion that man was originally a liar, and that veracity is the result of human progress,95 is not consistent with facts. Language was not invented to disguise the truth, but to express it. As Hutcheson remarked long ago, “truth is the natural production of the mind when it gets the capacity of communicating it, dissimulation and disguise are plainly artificial effects of design and reflection.”96 It may be doubted whether there are any other mendacious creatures in the world than men.97 It is said that “lies are told, if not in speech yet in acts, by dogs”;98 but the instances reported of canine deceitfulness99 are hardly conclusive. As a cautious writer observes, the question is not whether there may be “objective deceitfulness” in the dog’s conduct, but whether the motive is deceit: and “the deceitful intent is a piece, not of the observed fact, but of the observer’s inference.”100 Nor is the child, strictly speaking, a born liar. M. Compayré even goes so far as to say that, if the child has not been subjected to bad influences, or if a discipline of repression and constraint has not driven him to seek a refuge in dissimulation, he is usually frankness and sincerity itself.101 Montaigne remarked that the falsehood of a child grows with its growth.102 According to M.
Perez, useful dissimulations are practised by children already at the age of two years, but generally it is only after they are three or four years old that fear of being scolded or punished will lead them into falsehood.103 We are even told that certain savages are too stupid or too ignorant to tell lies. A Hindu gentleman of the plains, in the valley of the Nerbudda, when asked what made the uncultured people of the woods to the north and south so truthful, replied, “They have not yet learned the value of a lie.”104 But as we know how readily truthful savages become liars when their social conditions change, we may conclude that their veracity was due rather to absence of temptation than to lack of intelligence. In a small community of savages living by themselves, there is no need for lying, nor much opportunity to practise it. There is little scope for those motives which most commonly induce people to practise falsehood—fear and love of gain, combined with a hope of success.105 Harmony and sympathy generally prevail between the members of the group, and deception is hardly possible since secrets do not exist.
The case is different when savages come into frequent contact with foreigners. To deceive a stranger is easy, and no scruple is made of doing so. On the contrary, as we have seen, he is regarded as a proper object of deception, and this opinion is only too often justified by his own behaviour. But when commonly practised in relation to strangers, falsehood easily becomes a habit which affects the general conduct of the man. Hamzé, the teacher of the Druses, said, “When a man once gets into the way of speaking falsely, it is to be apprehended that, in spite of himself, and by the mere force of habit, he will get to speak falsely towards the brethren”; hence it is advisable to speak the truth at all times and before all men.106 There is indeed abundant evidence that intercourse with strangers, and especially with people of a different race, has had a destructive influence on savage veracity.
This has been noticed among many of the uncivilised tribes of India. “Formerly,” says Mr. Man, “a Sonthal, as a rule, disdained to tell a falsehood, but the influences of civilisation, transfused through the contagious ethics of his Bengali neighbours, have somewhat impaired his truthfulness. In the last four or five years a great change for the worse has become evident, although even now, as a people, they are glorious exceptions to the prevailing idiosyncrasy of the lower class of natives in Bengal. With the latter, speaking the truth has been always an accident; with the Sonthal it was a characteristic principle.”107 Indeed, the Santals in Singbhúm, who live much to themselves, are still described by Colonel Dalton as “a very simple-minded people, almost incapable of deception.”108 The Tipperah, “where he is brought into contact with, or under the influence of the Bengallee, easily acquires their worst vices and superstitions, losing at the same time the leading characteristic of the primitive man—the love of truth.”109 Other tribes, like the Garos and Bhúmij, have likewise been partly contaminated by their intercourse with Bengalis, and acquired from them a propensity to lie, which, in former days, was altogether foreign to them.110 The Kakhyens are at the present time lazy, thievish, and untrustworthy, “whether their character has been deteriorated by knavish injustice on the part of Chinese traders, or high-handed extortion and wrong on the part of Burmese.”111 The Ladakhis are, in general, “frank, honest, and moral when not corrupted by communication with the
dissolute Kashmiris.”112 Of the Pahárias, who according to an earlier authority would sooner die than lie,113 it is now reported that “those who have most to do with them say they cannot rely on their word, and that they not only lie without scruple, but are scarcely annoyed at being detected.”114 The Todas, whilst they call falsehood one of the worst vices and have a temple dedicated to Truth, seem nowadays only too often to forget both the temple and its object;115 and we are told that the dissimulation they practise in their dealings with Europeans has been brought about by the habit of paying them for every insignificant item of information.116 According to an Indian civil servant quoted by Mr. Spencer, various other hill tribes, originally distinguished by their veracity, have afterwards been rendered less veracious by contact with the whites.117
Of the Andaman Islanders Mr. Man observes:—“It has been remarked with regret by all interested in the race, that intercourse with the alien population has, generally speaking, prejudicially affected their morals; and that the candour, veracity, and self-reliance they manifest in their savage and untutored state are, when they become associated with foreigners, to a great extent lost, and habits of untruthfulness, dependence, and sloth engendered.”118 Riedel makes a similar remark with reference to the natives of Ambon and Uliase.119 Mr. Sommerville believes that the natives of New Georgia, in the Solomon Islands, learned their practice of cheating from European traders.120
Among the Ostyaks increasing civilisation has proved injurious to their ancient honesty, and those who live in the neighbourhood of towns or large villages have become even more deceitful than the colonists.121 A similar change has taken place with other tribes belonging to the Russian Empire, for instance the Tunguses122 and Kamchadales.123
Source notes
91 Sleeman, op. cit. ii. 111 sq.
92 See, besides supra, Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 414; Chanler, Through Jungle and Desert, p. 186 sq. (Wamsara).
93 Gurney, Views and Practices of the Society of Friends, p. 327.
94Cf. Priestley, in ‘Essay III.’ introductory to Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind, p. xlix. sq.
95 von Jhering, Zweck im Recht, ii. 606.
96 Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy, ii. 28. Cf. Reid, op. cit. vi. 24, p. 428 sqq.; Dugald Stewart, op. cit. ii. 333.
97Cf. Schopenhauer, Essays, p. 145.
98 Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 405.
99 Romanes, Animal Intelligence, pp. 443, 444, 451.
100 Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 400.
101 Compayré, L’évolution intellectuelle et morale de l’enfant, p. 309. See also Sully, Studies of Childhood, p. 263 sq.
102 Montaigne, Essais, i. 9 (Œuvres, p. 16).
103 Perez, First Three Years of Childhood, pp. 87, 89.
104 Sleeman, op. cit. ii. 110.
105Cf. Sarasin, Forschungen auf Ceylon, iii. 543 (Veddahs).
106 Churchill, Mount Lebanon, iii. 225 sq.
107 Man, Sonthalia, p. 14. Cf. ibid. p. 20.
108 Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, op. cit. p. 217.
109 Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 216.
110 Dalton, op. cit. pp. 68, 177.
111 Anderson, Mandalay to Momien, p. 151.
112 Moorcroft and Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan, i. 321.
113 Shaw, quoted by Dalton, op. cit. p. 274.
114 Cumming, In the Himalayas, p. 404 sq.
115 Harkness, A Singular Aboriginal Race inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, p. 18.
116 Metz, Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, p. 13.
117 Spencer, Principles of Sociology, ii. 234. See also Hodgson, Miscellaneous Essays, i. 152. (Bódo and Dhimáls); Dalton, op. cit. p. 206 (Múndas).
118 Man, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 92.
119 Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 41.
120 Sommerville, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxvi. 394.
121 Castrén, op. cit. ii. 121.
122 Dall, Alaska, p. 518.