Think of
that, O Earnest Clergyman, my friend! No. Lying is like Nature, you
may expel her with a fork, but she will always come back again.
Lying is like the poor, we must have it always with us. The question
is, How much, when, where, to whom and under what circumstances is
lying right? For, once admit that a plover may pretend to have a
broken wing and yet be without sin if she have pretended well enough,
and the thin edge of the wedge has been introduced so that there is
no more saying that we must never lie. *
It is not, then, the discovery that a man has the power to lie that
shakes my confidence in him; it is loss of confidence in his
mendacity that I find it impossible to get over. I forgive him for
telling me lies, but I cannot forgive him for not telling me the same
lies, or nearly so, about the same things. This shows he has a
slipshod memory, which is unpardonable, or else that he tells so many
lies that he finds it impossible to remember all of them, and this is
like having too many of the poor always with us. The plover and the
spider have each of them their stock of half a dozen lies or so which
we may expect them to tell when occasion arises; they are plausible
and consistent, but we know where to have them; otherwise, if they
were liable, like self-deceivers, to spring mines upon us in
unexpected places, man would soon make it his business to reform
them--not from within, but from without.
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