CHAPTER VII.
Knowledge.
What food is to the body, that knowledge is to the mind. It is the bread of intellectual life. Without knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic arts we should be unable to provide ourselves with food and clothing and houses and ships and roads and bridges. Without knowledge of natural science we should be strangers in the world in which we live, the victims of the grossest superstitions. Without knowledge of history and political science we could have no permanent tranquility and peace, but should pass a precarious existence, exposed to war and violence, rapine and revolution. Knowledge unlocks for us the mysteries of nature; unfolds for us the treasured wisdom of the world's great men; interprets to us the longings and aspirations of our hearts.
Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
THE DUTY.
The severity of truth.—Things exist in precise and definite relations. Events take place according to fixed and immutable laws. Truth is the perception of things just as they are. Between truth and falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact is so, or it is not. "Truth," says Ruskin, "is the one virtue of which there are no degrees. There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimation of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain." Truth does not always lie upon the surface of things. It requires hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the superficial crust of appearance to the solid rock of fact on which truth rests. To discover and declare truth as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of the scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what other people will be pleased to hear, not what will be popular or profitable; but what as the result of careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged reflection he has learned to be the fact;—this, nothing less and nothing more, the scholar must proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact; it plants itself upon reality; and hence it speaks with authority. The truthful man is one whom we can depend upon. His word is as good as his bond. "He sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." The truthful man brings truth and man together.
THE VIRTUE.
Veracity has two foundations: one reverence for truth; the other regard for one's fellow-men.—Ordinarily these two motives coincide and re-enforce each other. The right of truth to be spoken, and the benefit to men from hearing it, are two sides of the same obligation. Only in the most rare and exceptional cases can these two motives conflict. To a healthy, right-minded man the knowledge of the truth is always a good.
Apparent exceptions to the duty of truthfulness.—We owe truth to all normal people, and under all normal circumstances. We do not necessarily owe it to the abnormal. In sickness, when the patient cannot bear the shock of distressing news; in insanity, when the maniac cannot give to facts their right interpretation; in criminal perversity, when knowledge would be used in furtherance of crime, the abnormal condition of the person with whom we have to deal may justify us in withholding from him facts which he would use to the injury of himself or others. These are very rare and extreme cases, and are apparent rather than real exceptions to the universal rule of absolute truthfulness in human speech. For in these cases it is not from a desire to deceive or mislead the person, that we withhold the truth. We feel sure that the sick person, when he recovers; the insane person when he is restored to reason; the criminal, if he is ever converted to uprightness, will appreciate the kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed. To the person of sound body, sound mind, and sound moral intent, no conceivable combination of circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie anything but base, cowardly, and contemptible.