Unfortunately—most unfortunately—we have no record of the meeting of the World’s First Liar with the World’s Second Liar; but from what we know of their descendants to-day, they were probably of opposite sexes, married at once, and begat a numerous progeny. For there is no doubt that Mankind suffered much and early from this same vice of lying. One sees that in the enormous value attached by the most primitive civilizations to the practice of telling the Truth; and the extravagant praise awarded, mostly after death, to individuals notorious for the practice.
Now the amount of Truth open to Mankind has always been limited. Substantially, it comes to no more than the axiom quoted by the Fool in Twelfth Night, on the authority of the witty Hermit of Prague, “That that is, is.” Conversely, “That that is not, isn’t.” But it is just this Truth which Man most bitterly resents being brought to his notice. He will do, suffer, and permit anything rather than acknowledge it. He desires that the waters which he has digged and canalized should run uphill by themselves when it suits him. He desires that the numerals which he has himself counted on his fingers and christened “two and two” should make three and five according to his varying needs or moods. Why does he want this? Because, subconsciously, he still scales himself against his age-old companions, the beasts, who can only act lies. Man knows that, at any moment, he can tell a lie which, for a while, will delay or divert the workings of cause and effect. Being an animal who is still learning to reason, he does not yet understand why with a little more, or a little louder, lying he should not be able permanently to break the chain of that law of cause and effect—the Justice without the Mercy—which he hates, and to have everything both ways in every relation of his life.
In other words, we want to be independent of facts, and the younger we are, the more intolerant are we of those who tell us that this is impossible. When I wished to claim my independence and to express myself according to the latest lights of my age (for there were lights even then), it was disheartening to be told that I could not expect to be clothed, fed, taught, amused, and comforted—not to say preached at—by others, and at the same time to practise towards them a savage and thorny independence.
I imagine that you, perhaps, may have assisted at domestic conferences on these lines; but I maintain that we are not the unthinking asses that our elders called us. Our self-expression may have been a trifle crude, but the instinct that prompted it was that primal instinct of independence which antedates the social one, and makes the young at times a little difficult. It comes down from the dumb and dreadful epoch when all that Man knew was that he was himself, and not another, and therefore the loneliest of created beings; and you know that there is no loneliness to equal the loneliness of youth at war with its surroundings in a world that does not care.
I can give you no great comfort in your war, but, if you will allow me, I will give you a scientific parallel that may bear on the situation.
Not once upon a time, but at many different times in different places and ages, it came over some one Primitive Man that he desired, above everything, to escape for a while from the sight and sound and the smell of his Tribe. It may have been an excellent Tribe, or it may have been an abominable one, but whichever it was he had had enough of it for a time. Knowing no more than the psychology of his age (whereas we, of course, know the psychology of all the ages), he referred his impulse to the direct orders, guidance, or leading of his Totem, his Guardian Spirit, his Disembodied Ancestor, or other Private God, who had appeared to him in a dream and inspired his action.
Herein our ancestor was as logical as a man taking his Degree on the eve of a professional career—not to say as practical as a Scot. He accepted Spirits and Manifestations of all kinds as part of his highly organized life, which had its roots in the immemorial past; but, outside that, the amount of truth open to him was limited. He only knew that if he did not provide himself with rations in advance, for his proposed excursion away from the Tribe, he would surely starve.