[87] Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 141.
[88] Cf. Iliad, iii. 277; Ovid, Metamorphoses, iv. 172; Darmesteter, Essais orientaux, p. 107; Usener, Götternamen, p. 177 sqq.
[89] Grotius says (De jure belli et pacis, ii. 13. 12) that even he who swears by false gods is bound, “because, though under false notions, he refers to the general idea of Godhead, and therefore the true God will interpret it as a wrong to himself if perjury be committed.”
Owing to its invocation of supernatural sanction, perjury is considered the most heinous of all acts of falsehood.[90] But it has a tendency to make even the ordinary lie or breach of faith a matter of religious concern. If a god is frequently appealed to in oaths, a general hatred of lying and unfaithfulness may become one of his attributes, as is suggested by various facts quoted above. There is every reason to believe that a god is not, in the first place, appealed to because he is looked upon as a guardian of veracity and good faith, but that he has come to be looked upon as a guardian of these duties because he has been frequently appealed to in connection with them.
[90] Among various peoples perjury is punished even by custom or law. Thus among the Gaika tribe of the Kafirs a person may be fined for taking a false oath in a law case (Brownlee, in Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs, p. 124). In Abyssinia a man convicted of perjury “would not only lose his reputation, and be for ever incapacitated from being witness even on the most trivial question, but he would likewise in all probability be bound and severely fined, and might indeed think himself fortunate if he got off with all his limbs in their proper places, or without his hide being scored” (Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia, ii. 258 sq.). The laws of the Malays punish perjury (Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 90). In India, according to the Laws of Manu (viii. 219 sq.), he who broke an agreement after swearing to it was to be banished, imprisoned, and fined. Mediæval law-books punished perjurers with the loss of the right hand, by which the oath was sworn (Wilda, Das Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 983 sq.; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. ii. 541). In a Danish law of 1537 it is said that the perjurer shall lose the two offending fingers so as to appease the wrath of God (Stemann, Den danske Retshistorie indtil Christian V.’s Lov, p. 645). In other cases, again, no civil punishment is affixed to a false oath—for instance, among the Rejangs (Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 240) and Bataks of Sumatra (Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 86), the Ossetes (Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine, p. 324), Persians (Polak, Persien, ii. 83), and, as it seems, the ancient Hebrews (Keil, Manual of Biblical Archæology, ii. 348; Greenstone, ‘Perjury,’ in Jewish Encyclopedia, ix. 640), Greeks (Rohde, Psyche, p. 245, note), and Teutons in early times (Wilda, op. cit. p. 982; Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 681). Cicero says (De legibus, ii. 9) that “the divine punishment of perjury is destruction, the human punishment infamy”; but though perjury per se was not punished in Rome, the law appears from very early times to have contained provisions for punishing false testimony (Hunter, Roman Law, p. 1063; see also Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 681). However, the fact that perjury is not treated as a crime by no means implies that it is not regarded as a sin. The punishment of it is left to the offended deity (Marsden, op. cit. p. 219; Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 86; Crawfurd, op. cit. iii. 90 [Javanese]).
It seems that sometimes the habit of oath-taking has, in another respect also, made it prudential for men to speak the simple truth in all circumstances. Sir W. H. Sleeman observes that among the woods and hills of India the cotton and other trees are supposed by the natives to be occupied by deities who are vested with a local superintendence over the affairs of a district, or perhaps of a single village. “These,” he says, “are always in the view of the people, and every man knows that he is every moment liable to be taken to their court, and to be made to invoke their vengeance upon himself or those dear to him, if he has told a falsehood in what he has stated, or tells one in what he is about to state. Men so situated adhere habitually, and I may say religiously, to the truth; and I have had before me hundreds of cases in which a man’s property, liberty, or life, has depended upon his telling a lie, and he has refused to tell it to save either.”[91] On the other hand, there are peoples among whom a person’s word can hardly be trusted unless confirmed by an oath.[92] And one of the arguments adduced by the Quakers against the taking of oaths is that, if on any particular occasion a man swear in addition to his yea or nay, in order to make it more obligatory or convincing, its force becomes comparatively weak at other times when it receives no such confirmation.[93]
[91] Sleeman, op. cit. ii. 111 sq.
[92] See, besides supra, Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 414; Chanler, Through Jungle and Desert, p. 186 sq. (Wamsara).
[93] Gurney, Views and Practices of the Society of Friends, p. 327.
Modes of conduct which are recommended by prudence tend on that account in various ways to be regarded as morally compulsory or praiseworthy. This subject will be discussed in connection with duties and virtues which are called “self-regarding,” but in the present place it is necessary to remind ourselves of the share which early education has in making prudence a matter of moral consideration. Few duties owe so much to the training of parents and teachers as does veracity. Children easily resort to falsehood, in self-defence or otherwise, and truthfulness is therefore enjoined on them with particular emphasis.[94]