There are types that are scrupulously honest in that they will not take a penny of value not obtained in the orthodox way of buying, trading or earning, who will take advantage of necessity, whose moral code does not include that fine sense of honor that spurns taking advantage of adversity. These are the real profiteers, and in the last analysis they add to their dishonesty an essential cruelty, though often they are pillars of the church.
I have dwelt on the dishonest; the types of honest men and women who give full value in work and goods to all whom they deal with are of course more numerous. The industrial world revolves around those who resist temptation, who work faithfully, who give honest measure and seek no unfair advantage. But that business is no brotherhood is an old story, and poor human nature finds itself forced by necessity and competition into ways that are devious and not strictly honest. It's the system that is at fault, for men have formed a scheme of creating and distributing values that severely tries and often weakens their ideals.
Truth in the sense of saying what is true and truth in the sense of getting at ultimate relations are two different matters. The first kind of truth is the basis of social intercourse, the second kind the goal of philosophic efforts.
Speaking the truth invariably is not an easy matter and in the strictest sense is quite questionable as to value. The white lie, so-called, the pleasant, assumed interest, the untruth intended to smooth social relations are shock absorbers and are part of the courtesy technique.
In a more technical sense, the untruth told to obtain some advantage or to escape the disagreeable in one form or another is held to be dishonorable, but is very widely practiced. People are enraged at being deceived if the deception is the work of an outsider or one not liked; they are shocked if deceived, lied to, by one they love. The lie stands as the symbol of weakness, but to be "taken in" has more than the material hurt the lie inflicts; it wounds vanity and brings doubt and suspicion into social relations, all of which are very disagreeable. It is held by ethical teachers to be worse to lie about faults than to have committed the faults, though this may be modified to mean only the minor faults.
All judges and lawyers will testify that "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" is very seldom told in court.
Controversy is the enemy of truth, and when the fighting spirit is aroused, candor disappears. Where any great interest is involved, where the opponent is seeking to dispossess or to evade payment, or where legal punishment may be felt, the truth must be forced from most people. Moreover, passion blinds, and the natural and astonishing inaccuracy in observation and reporting[1] that every psychologist knows is multiplied wherever great emotions are at work. If perjury were really punished, the business of the courts would be remarkably increased.
[1] Not only is this true in law but in all controversy, whether theological, scientific, social or personal, the ego-feeling enters in its narrowest and blindest aspects to defeat honor, justice and truth.
All this is normal lying,--not habitual but occurring under certain circumstances. As clearly motivated is the lying of the braggart, the one who invents stories that emphasize his exceptional qualities. The braggart however is a mere novice as compared with the "pathological liar," who does not seem able to tell the truth, who invents continually and who will often deceive a whole group before he is found out. The motive here is that curious type of superiority seeking which is the desire to be piteously interesting, to hold the center of the stage by virtue of adverse adventures or misfortunes. Hence the wild white-slave yarns and the "orphan child" who has been abused.
Every police department knows these girls and boys, as does every social service agency.
I am afraid we all yield to the desire to be interesting or to make artistic our adventures. To tell of what happens to us, of what we have seen or said or done exactly as it was, is difficult, not only because of faulty memory, but because we like to make the tale more like a story, because, let us say, of the artist in us. Life is so incomplete and unfinished! We so rarely retort as we should have! And a bald recital of most events is not interesting and so,--the proportions are altered, humor is introduced, the conversation becomes more witty, especially our share, and the adventure is made a little more thrilling. And each who tells of it adds little or much, and in the end what is told never happened. "The Devil is the father of lies," runs the old proverb. If so, we have all given birth to some of his children.
Though direct lying is held to be harmful and socially disastrous, and evidence of either fear and cowardice or malevolence, the essential honesty of people is usually summed up in the term sincerity. The advance of civilization is marked by the appearance of toleration, the recognition that belief is a private right, especially as concerns religion, and that sincerity in belief is more important than the nature of belief.
