There are two ways of violating other people’s honor: backbiting and slander. Backbiting consists in saying evil of others, either deservedly or undeservedly; but when undeservedly, and especially when one knows it to be so, backbiting becomes slander. Backbiting may arise from ill-will or thoughtlessness, and slander is the work of baseness and perfidy.
Backbiting which consists in saying evil of others deservedly, is not in itself an injustice: there is to be recognized the right and jurisdiction of public opinion. The honest man should be held in greater esteem than the rogue, even though the latter cannot be reached by the law. Nevertheless, backbiting becomes an injustice through the abuse that is made of it. It is not a question of severe judgments touching actions deserving blame and contempt. It is a question of thoughtless and unkind judgments, and which we are all too easily and readily inclined to pronounce upon others, forgetting that we deserve ourselves as many and severer ones. How shall we conciliate, however, the just severity which vice deserves, with the spirit of kindness which charity and brotherly love demand of us? On the one hand, an excess of kindness seems to weaken the horror of evil, to put on the same level the honest man and the rogue; on the other, the habit of speaking evil weakens the bonds of human society, sets men against each other, and is always, in a certain measure, a shortcoming of sincerity; for one hardly ever tells to people’s faces the evil one says of them in their absence. It is not easy to find the just medium between these two extremes.
It may be laid down as a principle that, except the case where notorious vices, contrary to honor, comes into question, it is better absolutely to abstain from speaking evil of others. For, either the question is of persons one does not know, or knows imperfectly, and then one is never sure not to be mistaken; and most of the time one judges people on the testimony of others only, or one speaks of persons whom one knows, and with whom one stands in more or less friendly relations; and then backbiting becomes a sort of treason. Even deserved blame should not be a favorite subject of conversation: it is an unwholesome and ungenerous pleasure to lay any stress upon the weakness of others. If, at least, one accepted with it the right of others to judge us with the same severity, such reciprocal liberty might prove of some utility; but the backbiter nowise admits that he may be himself the subject of backbiting; and at the very moment when he criticises others, he would himself be very much offended if he learned that the same persons had, on their side, been doing the same in regard to him.
As to slander, it is not necessary to say much on the subject to show to what degree it is cowardly and criminal. What makes it, above all, cowardly is that it is always very difficult to combat and refute slander. Often, and for a long time, it is not known: at the moment when one hears of it, it has taken roots which nothing can destroy. One does not know who spread it, nor whom to answer. It is, besides, often impossible to prove a negative thing: namely, that one has done no harm, that one has not committed such and such an action, and said such or such a word. One always confronts the well-accredited saying: “There is no smoke without fire.”
The wrong done by slander will be better understood by the description Beaumarchais has given of it:
“Slander, sir—you hardly know how great a thing you hold in contempt: I have seen the best of people crushed by it. Believe me, there is no flat malice, no hateful story, no absurd tale which a skillful mischief-maker cannot make the idlers of a large town believe.... At first, a slight report, just grazing the ground as a swallow does before the storm: murmuring pianissimo, and spinning away, it launches in its course the poisoned arrow. A certain ear is open to take it in, and it is deftly whispered piano, piano, to the next. The harm is done; it sprouts, crawls, makes its way; and rinforzando from mouth to mouth, goes like wildfire; then all at once, you scarcely know how, you see the slander rise before you, whistling, blowing, growing while you look at it. It starts, takes its flight, whirls about, envelops, pulls, carries everything along with it, bursts and thunders, and becomes a general cry, a public crescendo, a universal chorus of hatred and proscription.[40]
57. Rash judgments.—We call rash judgments ill-natured remarks made about others without sufficient knowledge of facts. It is through rash judgments one becomes often the accomplice of slander, without knowing it and without wishing it. Nicole, in his Essais de Morale, has thoroughly treated the question of rash judgments. We have but to give here a short résumé of his Treatise on this subject.
1. Rash judgments are a usurpation of God’s judgment.
Rash judgments being always accompanied by ignorance and want of knowledge, are a manifest injustice and a presumptuous usurpation of God’s authority.
2. This sin has degrees according to the quality of its object, the causes from which it springs, and the effects it produces.