[7] Bentham, Theory of Legislation, p. 260.
[8] Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, iv. 7. 8.
[9] Besides statements referred to above, see Dobrizhoffer, Account of the Abipones, ii. 137; Hennepin, New Discovery of a Vast Country in America between New France and New Mexico, ii. 70; Dall, Alaska, p. 398 (Aleuts); Oldfield, in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. iii. 255 (West Australian natives). “The natives of Africa,” says Livingstone (Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 309), “have an amiable of desire to please, and often tell what they imagine will be gratifying, rather than the uninteresting naked truth.” An English sportsman, after firing at an antelope, inquired of his dark attendant, “Is it wounded?” The answer was, “Yes! the ball went right into his heart.” These mortal wounds never proving fatal, he asked a friend, who understood the language, to explain to the man that he preferred the truth in every case. “He is my father,” replied the native, “and I thought he would be displeased if I told him that he never hits at all.” The wish to please is likewise a fertile source of untruth in children, especially girls (Sully, Studies of Childhood, p. 256).
The detestation of falsehood is in a very large measure due to the motive which commonly is at the bottom of a lie. It is doubtful whether a lie ever is told simply from love of falsehood.[10] The intention to produce a wrong belief has a deeper motive than the mere desire to produce such a belief; and in most cases this motive is the deceiver’s hope of benefiting himself at the expense of the person deceived. A better motive makes the act less detestable, or may even serve as a justification. But the broad doctrine that the end sanctifies the means is generally rejected; and the principle which sometimes allows deceit from a benevolent motive has been restricted within very narrow limits by a higher conception of individual freedom and individual rights. Thus the emancipation of morality from theology has brought discredit on the old theory that religious deception is permissible when it serves the object of saving human souls from eternal perdition. The opinion that no motive whatsoever can justify an act of falsehood has been advocated not only by intuitional moralists, but on utilitarian grounds.[11] But it certainly seems absurd to the common sense of mankind that we should be allowed to save our own life or the life of a fellow-man by killing the person who wants to take it, but not by deceiving him.
[10] Dugald Stewart, op. cit. ii. 342.
[11] Macmillan, Promotion of General Happiness, p. 166 sq.
It is easy to see why falsehood is so frequently held permissible, praiseworthy, or even obligatory, when directed against a stranger. In early society an injury inflicted on a stranger calls forth no sympathetic resentment. On the contrary, being looked upon with suspicion or hated as an enemy, he is considered a proper object of deception. Among the Bushmans “no one dare give any information in the absence of the chief or father of the clan.”[12] “A Bedouin,” says Burckhardt, “who does not know the person interrogating him, will seldom answer with truth to questions concerning his family or tribe. The children are taught never to answer similar questions, lest the interrogator may be a secret enemy and come for purposes of revenge.”[13] Among the Beni Amer a stranger can never trust a man’s word on account of “their contempt for everything foreign.”[14] That even civilised nations allow stratagem in warfare is the natural consequence of war itself being allowed; and if good faith is to be preserved between enemies, that is because only thereby useless cruelty can be avoided and an end be put to hostilities.
[12] Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa, i. 76.
[13] Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 210.
[14] Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 337.