However, deceit is not condemned merely because it is an injury to the party deceived and as such apt to arouse sympathetic resentment, but it is an object of disinterested, moral resentment also because it is intrinsically antipathetic. Lying is a cheap and cowardly method of gaining an undue advantage, and is consequently despised where courage is respected.[15] It is the weapon of the weak, the woman,[16] and the slave.[17] Fraud, says Cicero, is the property of a fox, force that of a lion; “both are utterly repugnant to society, but fraud is the more detestable.”[18] “To lie is servile,” says Plutarch, “and most hateful in all men, hardly to be pardoned even in poor slaves.”[19] On account of its cowardliness, lying was incompatible with Teutonic and knightly notions of manly honour; and among ourselves the epithets “liar” and “coward” are equally disgraceful to a man. “All … in the rank and station of gentlemen,” Sir Walter Scott observes, “are forcibly called upon to remember that they must resent the imputation of a voluntary falsehood as the most gross injury.”[20] Fichte asks, “Whence comes that internal shame for one’s self which manifests itself even stronger in the case of a lie than in the case of any other violation of conscience?” And his answer is, that the lie is accompanied by cowardice, and that nothing so much dishonours us in our own eyes as want of courage.[21] According to Kant, “a lie is the abandonment, and, as it were, the annihilation, of the dignity of a man.”[22]
[15] Cf. Schopenhauer, Die Grundlage der Moral, § 17 (Sämmtliche Werke, vi. 250); Grote, Treatise on the Moral Ideals, p. 254.
[16] Women are commonly said to be particularly addicted to falsehood (Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, ii. 497 sq. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, p. 56 sq. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, pp. 508, 514. Maurer, Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammmes, ii. 159 [ancient Scandinavians]. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 234 [ancient Greeks]. Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 219. Le Bon, La civilisation des Arabes, p. 433. Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren, i. 16 [Iroquois]. Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 307 sq. [Northern Indians]. Lyon, Private Journal, p. 349 [Eskimo of Igloolik]. Dalager, Grønlandske Relationer, p. 69; Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 175).
[17] See infra, [p. 129 sq.]
[18] Cicero, De officiis, i. 13.
[19] Plutarch, De educatione puerorum, 14.
[20] Scott, ‘Essay on Chivalry,’ in Miscellaneous Prose Works, vi. 58.
[21] Fichte, Das System der Sittenlehre, p. 370; English translation, p. 302 sq.
[22] Kant, Metaphysische Anfangungsgründe der Tugendlehre, p. 84.
But a lie may also be judged of from a very different point of view. It may be not only a sign of cowardice, but a sign of cleverness. Hence a successful lie may excite admiration, a disinterested kindly feeling towards the liar, genuine moral approval; whereas to be detected in a lie is considered shameful. And not only is the clever liar an object of admiration, but the person whom he deceives is an object of ridicule. To the mind of a West African native, Miss Kingsley observes, there is no intrinsic harm in lying, “because a man is a fool who believes another man on an important matter unless he puts on the oath.”[23] A Syrian proverb says, “Lying is the salt (goodness) of men, and shameful only to one who believes.”[24]