Perhaps their great failure is principally to be attributed to the narrow defectiveness of the founder of their tribe. It is true, the worthy man’s name has not yet been definitely ascertained, but then this very ignorance has helped us out of our perplexities in searching for it. The writers and critics upon Junius, when unable to discover the author of the famous letters, very sagely conclude that he was a man who had made himself acquainted with the affairs of his time, and who was, withal, somewhat of a genius. So Voltaire has disposed of this query in a very summary manner, by assuring us that “the first rogue who met with the first block-head” was the inventor of soothsaying. Whilst this conclusion has been generally accepted as a very satisfactory one, it must be admitted that, though he may have been an acute rogue, he was none the less an indiscreet one, or he would not have attempted to confine this important privilege and practice of lying within so exclusive a circle.
There could be no lack of material in speech upon which to construct a system of scientific lying. Perhaps, by applying to it a term which has long since been banished from “ears polite,” on account of its harshness, I may be accused of a want of interest in so noble an enterprise. If so, I can only render as an excuse, that if lying can claim any one merit more than another, it is that of having ever maintained its own identity, no matter what efforts were made to increase its respectability by titles supposed to be more delicate. In this particular, it must be owned, it has always resembled its author, who, whether known as Satan or Beelzebub, Lucifer or Pluto, is nothing but the plain, common devil after all; and who, though you should call him an angel, would be the devil still. Thus sacrificing no merit which it can justly claim, the difficulties of reducing it to a science could be easily overcome.
An old maxim has it that “fools and children sometimes speak the truth.” If “maxims are the condensed good sense of nations,” as Sir James Mackintosh pithily observes, it would require excessive presumption to deny the wisdom of this one, so universally received and acted upon. The ancient moralists, after rearing a queer medley of truth and nonsense upon a few wise sayings, pronounced the heterogeneous mass the “Science of Morality.” This was at least generous, for it must be owned that a more convenient appellation for all who desired to sin according to moral law, could not have been invented by their philosophic magnanimity. “It is in the creed, sir,” would have answered every accusation, and put an end to all further contention. “Know thyself,” and “Too much of nothing,” proverbial sayings for ages, were so well received that the seven wise men of Greece consecrated them to Apollo, and inscribed them in letters of gold upon the door of his temple at Delphos. After so important a precedent of respect to maxims, notwithstanding the many changes wrought by time since the days of Thales and Solon, he who should seek to reduce the practice of lying to scientific rules, might claim equal consideration for the axiom given above, which he would of course so interpret as to make all wise men liars. If the wisest and the best who ever assumed the troublesome nature of man, could hang all the law and the prophets upon two commandments, surely the modern man of science might build a system upon a single maxim, whose object would be more to increase the dominion of Satan than the glory of a different kingdom. The service he would thus render to society would be incalculable, and forever perpetuate his name as one of its most worthy benefactors. By teaching the public, young and old, and without distinction of sex, to lie according to an approved system, our contempt would no longer be aroused by the fools now addicted to the practice, and who constantly exhibit a stupidity only equalled by that of the first liar of whom we have any record. Though we may have mules in the professions, who only make work for keener and shrewder knaves, and blunderers in the sciences, this should be no excuse for bunglers in this most worthy art of lying. Such, however, could readily be got rid of by elevating the habit to the dignity of a science, which each should be permitted to practice after being skilled in its rules. To secure the more general proficiency of those who desired to study the system, it should be made an indispensable antecedent requisite, that they be fully worthy of their Prince, and as honest as the Lombardian sect spoken of in the bull of Pope Adrian VI., who fully acknowledged the devil as their head, and promised obedience to him.
P. A.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Note.—The editor was at first inclined to believe that this old man could never have been within the circle of good society, but the developments of the times have removed this uncharitable opinion. When one half, or more, of the independent lay people of this country, together with perhaps one-third of the ministers of the Gospel, (for such is the general estimate,) can voluntarily connect themselves with a secret political organization, one of whose principles is universally felt to be the worst species of lying, it may not be long before it will be extremely difficult to find a man of real truth.—Ed.
A PAPER
FILED AWAY WITH THE FOLLOWING TALE.
The tale of the Alchemist was related at our meeting to a concourse of as drowsy listeners as I ever saw congregated around a cheerful fire. The individual who related it, however, manifested a deep interest in every incident of the story. Indeed, when he arrived at some of the more startling and mysterious passages in it, he gave them with a ghostly intonation of voice, slowly and cautiously, looking anxiously around him to discover what impression they made. He exerted all his powers to be interesting, and preserved a very serious air throughout; which caused me to greatly suspect him as one of those easy-natured creatures, who are ever willing to believe whatever they hear, without troubling their heads for philosophic reasons, or permitting their faith to be at all interfered with by measuring probabilities.