Comes the chieftain once so proud.
On his pale brow, on his cheek,
Death hath set his signet bleak,
And the dead alone doth crave
Rest and silence in the grave.
Sound the trumpet, roll the drum,
Bear his ashes to the tomb!
What is Truth?
Truth is conformity to fact, in a statement or representation. If I say that London is the largest city in the world, my statement conforms to fact, and is therefore true. If I say that Boston has more inhabitants than New York, my statement does not conform to fact, and therefore is not true. There is one thing more to be considered, which is, that the statement must conform to fact in the sense in which it is meant to be understood. If I say a thing which is literally true, but which is not true in the sense in which I mean it to be understood, then I am guilty of falsehood, because I intend to deceive. The following story will illustrate this.
Two boys, who had been studying geography, were walking together one evening, when one of them exclaimed, “How bright the sun shines!” The other boy immediately replied that, as it was evening, the sun did not shine. The first boy insisted that it did shine; whereupon a dispute arose, one of the boys insisting that the sun did shine, the other that it did not. At last, they agreed to leave the point to their father, and accordingly they went to him and stated the case. They both agreed that it was nine o’clock at night; that the stars were glittering in the sky; that the sun had been down for nearly two hours; and yet John, the elder of the boys, maintained that, at that moment, the sun was shining as bright as at noon-day.