And it is the truth in the lie that gives it its power, that makes honest men so often accept, love, and help it. Their conscious design is to work for the truth's sake. It is the truth in the lie that makes so many logic shafts, so many rhetoric arrows glance off, as from the hide of a rhinoceros.
And the bigger the lie the bigger also the truth. That is another bit of science. If Mrs. Tattle tells Mrs. Tittle a lie about Mrs. Jenkins, she knows very well Mrs. Tittle will not believe her unless her lie has some spice of fact to go on, unless it has vraisemblance, truth-likeness, an appearance of foundation at least. Mean little lies, like those she sets going, do not need much salt of truth to keep them from spoiling; still they require their due modicum, and they usually have it. As for instance, she says, with a long face, to Mrs. Tittle: 'Mrs. Jenkins, the widow Jenkins, you know, it's awful. She went over to Pinkins's last evening; I saw her go, and I do believe she stayed till twelve, and Mrs. Pinkins is away, you know. Isn't it terrible?' and she raises her eyes in pious horror at the depravity of the world, and of handsome young widows in particular. That is the lie. Now here is the truth. Mrs. Jenkins did go across the way to Pinkins's, because one of his little ones was suddenly taken with some baby ailment, and the poor fellow, in his wife's absence, was scared out of his few wits in consequence. He sent for the kind-hearted widow, and begged her help for Johnny. She came, nursed the young scamp like a mother, and returned at nine, with her conscience glowing under the performance of a kindly and neighborly act.
Now, without this much of truth, the amiable Mrs. Tattle would never have manufactured this particular lie. All liars understand the principle. They scarcely ever, until they become blind and stupid liars, invent a falsehood out of mere fancy. They pay tribute to humanity's instinct for truth so far as to tell as much of it as possible without ceasing to lie. They get in as great an amount of truth as convenient, to save their lie from swift, sure death.
But a rousing big lie!—not one of these small neighborhood affairs, that buzz about like wasps in every community—but a grand and magnificent lie, imposed on a nation, imposed maybe on half a world, must have a corresponding truth to make it prosper. It takes less salt to cure the small pig, more to cure the large hog. So, the greater the weight of dead lie, the greater the amount required of preserving truth.
Mohammed imposed a lie on half a continent. That lie has lived and, in some sort, prospered to this day. All sorts of babblement have been written and spoken about that wonderful fact. The truth is, Mohammed's great lie was founded on, and propagated with, an equally great truth, a truth amply sufficient to carry it. In the midst of abominable idolatry, of stupid polytheism, Mohammed proclaimed: 'There is no God but God!' His wild and foolish fictions were based on that grand, unalterable truth. That truth is big enough to bear up more lies than even he ventured to cover it with. The human heart leaped up to grasp the great fact that props the Universe—'GOD IS!'—and, in its love for that, accepted also the falsehoods woven into its proclamation.
In all the universe the evil roots itself into the good. Evil never has an independent life. Like an idol, 'it is nothing in the world.' An evil nature is a good nature, only turned from its aim. Death exists only because there is life. Disease feeds on rosy health. Devils are, by nature, angels. The foulest fiend is only the loftiest seraph spoiled. The evil is always a parasite. All things were made 'very good.' An evil thing is only one of those good things corrupted. The lie, therefore, grows out of the truth. The clearest heaven's truth, half told, distorted, patched upon, is the vilest lie thenceforth.
Now, when one wants to kill lies successfully, he must remember all this. He may turn, as many have done, to the work of proving Mohammedanism a cheat. He sees it is. He wants to get others to see it. He brings his logic artillery and the rifle brigades of his flashing rhetoric to the battle. But, let him not be surprised if his heavy shot is powdered, and his Minié bullets glance harmless, as from a Monitor's turret, for beneath lies the iron truth that 'God is God,' and that saves the lie that 'Mohammed is His prophet.' He is not to rush, like a madman, at the lie, and try to maul it to death by sheer force of arm and hand. There is a hard truth beneath it, and he will only lame his knuckles. Let him go at the thing scientifically. They say of slander, which is one kind of lie, that, if left alone, it will sting itself to death. It is so somewhat with all falsehood. One should pay less attention to the lie and more to the truth. And the best way to destroy the false is to teach simply the true, and leave the false no room to stand on.
It is possible to destroy one lie by another. They are cannibals, and eat each other. Voltaire tried to conquer the lie of a corrupt church by establishing the greater lie of the denial of any church. That is a very unfortunate process, and yet it is common enough. The best way is to set out the truth, plain, and simple, and whole, and so kill lies in flocks. Positive teaching will be found the most effective teaching. The man who takes up the business of combating error, may originate quite as many errors as he destroys. There are a hundred prominent examples. Negative teaching is barren business at best. Better show what is the truth than worry oneself to show what is not it.
For, as I have shown, all lies have some truth in them. That is why they kick, and struggle, and die so hard. Now, take the truth, tear away the lies patched about it, tell it all, and you have quenched that particular lie that worried you, do you not see? and every lie that roots itself in that given truth, or lives on its distortion. Declare your one truth convincingly, clearly, warmly as if you loved it, and the work is done. All that does not agree with that is, of course, false, without further breath wasted.
I might spend one day in proving that two and three are not four, another in proving that nine and six are not four, and so on ad infinitum. How much more sensible to prove that two and two are four, and so end the thing! How much simpler to show what is the truth than, laboriously, to expose the claims of a thousand pretenders that are not it! Here are five hundred John Smiths. They each pretend to be our John, the man we know and esteem so highly. I could set to work with infinite labor, and, by having commissions appointed all over the world to take evidence, and by employing a hundred or so of my friends the lawyers, I might, after a lifetime of investigation, prove the negative, that four hundred and ninety-nine of them are not John. But how much easier to walk out the real John at once, prove the positive, and let the rest pack! By proving that one truth, you see, I kill four hundred and ninety-nine lies—a good day's work that.