B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The Utilitarians hold that motives of enlightened self-interest would be sufficient to make a man perfectly virtuous. With the conventional definition of “virtue,” that tenet might require certain qualifications; but it is more than probable that perfect prudence would insure a voluntary devotion to perfect truthfulness. In its most aggressive form the hatred of falsehood may imperil the temporary interests of the aggressor, but in every other sense the path of truth is the path of safety. All the ultimate tendencies of the moral and physical universe conspire to vindicate truth and discredit fraud. [[151]]
Assertions based on fact stand erect, upheld by the evidence of experience as an upright building by the law of gravity; deception, with all its props of plausible sophisms, is tottering like a wall out of plumb, or a rotten tree upheld by artificial supports which in their turn must yield to the test of time.
Even from a standpoint of purely secular considerations, truth, like honesty, is in the long run the best policy. Abstinence from insidious poisons is easier than temperance, and the lessons of experience have at all times convinced the most clear-sighted of our fellow-men that consistent abstinence from the vice of hypocrisy is preferable to any compromise with the interests of imposture. The non-clerical, and almost Agnostic, education of the American wilderness seems to favor that type of moral teetotalism, and among the hardy hill-farmers of our New England highlands, and Southern mountain states, one may find men almost constitutionally incapable of conscious deceit in deed or word, and practicing veracity without the least pretense to superior saintliness, in a quite untheological and often, indeed, decidedly profane medium of speech. They stick to truth from habit, rather than from moral principles, yet among their simple-hearted neighbors they enjoy a respect withheld from unctuous hypocrisy, and in emergencies can always rely on the practical value of a life-long reputation for candor. Their word is sufficient security; their denial of slanderous imputations is accepted without the aid of compurgators.
The simple religion of Mohammed has favored the development of a similar disposition, and on the [[152]]Austrian-Turkish frontier the word of a Mussulman generally carries the weight of a casting vote. On the Indian ocean, too, the verdict of international opinion favors a preference for Unitarian testimony. “Wish to heaven we could fall in with some Acheen fishermen,” Captain Baudissin heard his pilot mutter among the reefs of the Sunda Islands, “it’s no use asking such d—— liars as those Hindoos and Chinese.”
The love of truth compels the respect even of impostors and of professional hypocrites, as in the case of that curate mentioned by the German Freethinker, Weber (author of the philosophical cyclopedia, “Democritus”). Professor Weber passed his last years in the retirement of a small south-German mountain village, where his undisguised skepticism made him the bugbear of the local pharisees; yet on moonless evenings he was more than once honored by the visits of a neighboring village priest, who risked censure, and, perhaps, excommunication, for the sake of enjoying the luxury of a respite from the sickening cant of his colleagues, and devoting a few hours to intellectual communion with a champion of Secular science.
Lessing’s allegory of “Nathan” is founded on something more than fiction, and there is no doubt that even in the midnight of the Middle Ages the gloomy misery of the Hebrew pariahs was often cheered by the secret visits of some intelligent Christian whom the thirst for truth impelled to defy the vigilance of the heretic-hunter, and to prefer an intellectual symposium in the garret of a Jewish slum [[153]]alley to a feast in the banquet hall of a Christian prelate.
“It is lucky for you that your opponents have not learned to utilize the advantage of truth,” Mirabeau replied to the taunt of an insolent Jesuit; and in logic that advantage can, indeed, hardly be overrated. “They find believers who themselves believe,” and, as the philosopher Colton observes, a sort of instinct often enables the simplest countryman to distinguish the language of honest conviction from the language of artful sophistry. “Our jurymen seem to appreciate a first-class lie only from an artistic standpoint,” confessed a lawyer of my acquaintance, “for some of them privately hinted that they could tell it every time.”
Others, no doubt, lack that degree of acumen; but first-class orators, as well as first-class authors, have always recognized the wisdom of not relying on such mental defects of the public. Charles Darwin’s works, for instance, owe their popularity to their erudition and their grace of style, hardly more than to the absolute candor of the author, who reviews the evidence for and against his theories with the fairness of a conscientious judge, and by that very impartiality has succeeded in prevailing against the partisan arguments of his adversaries. For similar reasons our “Christian” temperance societies can date their triumphs only from the time when they frankly repudiated the sophisms of their predecessors, who hoped to reconcile the lessons of science with the teachings of the alcohol-brewing Galilean. For truth [[154]]prevails against half-truth, as well as against absolute untruth.