(At the offices of the Nuevo Mundo.)
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CHAPTER III
MORALITY AND CEREMONIAL
That it is a duty to speak the truth is a proposition practically unrecognised in Spain. This is chiefly, if not entirely, due to the influence of the Church, for, as a great historian says in reference to this question, “when credulity is inculcated as a virtue, falsehood will not long be stigmatised as a vice.”[6] I have heard the peasant’s creed on this point put into a nutshell, thus:
“Very often it is necessary to lie, either for your own or for some one else’s benefit. There is nothing wrong in that. But to tell an unnecessary lie is a sin.”
This sophism, which I have translated word for word, seems altogether too subtle to be instinctive, and we trace in it some echo of the Church’s teaching, instilled into the mind of the uneducated, who have come to adopt it as an axiom of common morality.
The honesty of the Spaniard is, according to our views, relative. It is very rare for a working man or woman to take cash which does not belong to him. But the same people—e.g., servants—who would consider it a disgrace to steal a peseta in coin, will have no hesitation in falsifying their accounts and cheating their employer out of ten or twenty times that amount.
In certain matters there is extreme sensitiveness to any suspicion of dishonesty, but it is not clear that any conscious religious principle underlies this feeling. It seems rather an instinct of self-protection; for when we learn that it is a common practice for employers to examine their servants’ boxes when they leave a situation, even although their good conduct has not been called into question, we see that the friendliest relations between master and man do not necessarily imply confidence in the honour of the latter. The result of assuming evil where there is none is to encourage its genesis. I have heard working-class Spaniards say bitterly: “The rich people believe that we are all thieves, so what is the use of being honest? Yet most of us are honest, even though we go hungry for being so.” Stealing is considered by the poor as a sin, but I am inclined to think that the degree of sinfulness depends in the criminal’s eyes upon the nature of the theft. Thus, while no respectable peasant will steal money or clothes, servants have no hesitation in appropriating sweets and wine, to which, indeed, they think they have a right, very possibly dating from the time when domesticated aliens were fed on the leavings of their masters’ table. It would be difficult to convince them that to drink their employer’s wine without permission is just as immoral as to steal his cash.
The instruction given by the Church on these points is hardly ambiguous, if one may judge by a parish leaflet in my possession. It contains the following questions of conscience resolved under the head of “Consultations.”