Men have a natural disposition to believe what they are told. This disposition is particularly obvious in young children; it is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and, as Adam Smith observes, they very seldom teach it enough.[1] Even people who are themselves pre-eminent liars are often deceived by the falsehoods of others.[2] When detected a deception always implies a conflict between two irreconcilable ideas; and such a conflict gives rise to a feeling of pain,[3] which may call forth resentment against its volitional cause, the deceiver.
[1] Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, vi. 24, p. 430 sqq. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 494 sq. Dugald Stewart, Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, ii. 340 sq.
[2] Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 106 (Mpongwe).
[3] Lehmann, Hovedlovene for det menneskelige Følelseliv, p. 181. Cf. Bain, Emotions and the Will, p. 218.
But men are not only ready to believe what they are told, they also like to know the truth. Curiosity, or the love of truth, is coeval with the first operations of the intellect; it seems to be an ultimate fact in the human frame.[4] In our endeavour to learn the truth we are frustrated by him who deceives us, and he becomes an object of our resentment.
[4] Dugald Stewart, op. cit. ii. 334, 340.
Nor are we injured by a deception merely because we like to know the truth, but, chiefly, because it is of much importance for us that we should know it. Our conduct is based upon our ideas; hence the erroneous notion as regards some fact in the past, present, or future, which is produced by a lie or false promise, may lead to unforeseen events detrimental to our interests. Moreover, on discovering that we have been deceived, we have the humiliating feeling that another person has impertinently made our conduct subject to his will. This is a wound on our pride, a blot on our honour. Francis I. of France laid down as a principle, “that the lie was never to be put up with without satisfaction, but by a base-born fellow.”[5] “The lie,” says Sainte-Palaye, “has always been considered the most fatal and irreparable affront that a man of honour could receive.”[6]
[5] Millingen, History of Duelling, i. 71.
[6] Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie, i. 78.
How largely the condemnation of falsehood and bad faith is due to the harm suffered by the victim appears from the fact that a lie or breach of faith is held more condemnable in proportion to the magnitude of the harm caused by it. But even in apparently trifling cases the reflective mind strongly insists upon the necessity of truthfulness and fidelity to a given word. Every lie and every unfulfilled promise has a tendency to lessen mutual confidence, to predispose the perpetrator to commit a similar offence in the future, and to serve as a bad example for others. “The importance of truth,” says Bentham, “is so great, that the least violation of its laws, even in frivolous matters, is always attended with a certain degree of danger. The slightest deviation from it is an attack upon the respect we owe to it. It is a first transgression which facilitates a second, and familiarises the odious ideal of falsehood.”[7] Contrariwise, as Aristotle observes, he who is truthful in unimportant matters will be all the more so in important ones.[8] Similar considerations, however, require a certain amount of reflection and farsightedness; hence intellectual development tends to increase the emphasis laid on the duties of sincerity and good faith. At the earlier stages of civilisation it is frequently considered good form to tell an untruth to a person in order to please him, and ill-mannered to contradict him, however much he be mistaken,[9] for the reason that farther consequences are left out of account. The utilitarian basis of the duty of truthfulness also accounts for those extreme cases in which a deception is held permissible or even a duty, when promoting the true interests of the person subject to it.