And I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.* WORDSWORTH. Alas! the pernicious influence of this lax morality extends from the nursery and the school to the cabinet and fenate. It is a common weakness with men in power, who have used diffimulation fuccessfully, to form a paffion for the use of it, dupes to the love of duping! A pride is flattered by these lies. He who fancies that he must be perpetually stooping down to the prejudices of his fellow-creatures, is perpetually reminding and reassuring himself of his own vast superiority to them. But no real greatness can long co-exist with deceit. The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to noble energies; and he who is not earneftly fincere, lives in but half his being, felf-mutilated, self-paralyzed. * I am informed, that these very lines have been cited, as a specimen of despicable puerility. So much the worfe for the citer. Not willingly in his prefence would I behold the sun setting behind our mountains, or listen to a tale of distress or virtue; I should be ashamed of the quiet tear on my own cheek. But let the dead bury the dead! The poet fang for the living. Of what value indeed, to a fane mind, are the likings or dislikings of one man, grounded on the mere affertions of another? Opinions formed from opinions- what are they, but clouds failing under clouds, which imprefs fhadows upon fhadows? Fungum pelle procul, jubeo; nam quid mihi fungo? I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure of the rosemary in old herbals : Apage, fus! Haud tibi fpiro. The latter part of the propofition, which has drawn me into this difcuffion, that, I mean, in which the morality of intentional falsehood is afferted, may fafely be trufted to the reader's own moral fenfe. Is it a groundless apprehenfion, that the patrons and admirers of fuch publications may receive the punishment of their indiscretion in the conduct of their fons and daughters? The fufpicion of Methodism must be expected by every man of rank and fortune, who carries his examination respecting the books which are to lie on his breakfast-table, farther than to their freedom from gross verbal indecencies, and broad avowals of Atheism in the title-page. For the existence of an intelligent First Cause may be ridiculed in the notes of one poem, or placed doubtfully as one of two or three poffible hypotheses, in the very opening of another poem, and both be confidered as works of safe promiscuous reading virginibus puerisque : and this, too, by many a father of a family, who would hold himself highly culpable in permitting his child to form habits of familiar acquaintance with a person of loose habits, and think it even criminal to receive into his houfe a private tutor without a previous inquiry concerning his opinions and principles, as well as his manners and outward conduct. How little I am an enemy to free inquiry of the boldest kind, and in which the authors have differed the moft widely from my own convictions and the general faith, provided only, the inquiry be conducted with that seriousness, which naturally accompanies the love of truth, and be evidently intended for the perusal of those only, who may be presumed capable of weighing the arguments,-I fhall have abundant occafion of proving in the course of this work. Quin ipfa philofophia talibus e difputationibus non nifi beneficium recipit. Nam fi vera proponit homo ingeniofus veritatifque amans, nova ad eam acceffio fiet: fin falfa, refutatione eorum priores tanto magis ftabilientur.* The affertion, that truth is often no less dan-/ gerous than falfehood, founds lefs offensively at the first hearing, only because it hides its deformity in an equivocation, or double meaning of the word truth. What may be rightly affirmed of truth, ufed as fynonimous with verbal accuracy, is tranfferred to it in its higher fenfe of veracity. By verbal truth we mean no more than the correspondence of a given fact to given words. In moral GALILEI Syft. Cofm. p. 42. Moreover, philofophy itself cannot but derive benefit from fuch difcuffions. For if a man of genius and a lover of truth brings juft pofitions before the public, there is a fresh acceffion to the stock of philofophic infight; but if erroneous pofitions, the former truths will by their confutation be established so much the more firmly. The original is in the following words : : La filofofia medefima non può fe non ricever benefizio dalle noftre difpute; perchè fe i noftri penfieri faranno veri, nuovi acquifti fi faranno fatti; se falfi, col ributtargli, maggiormente verranno confermate le prime dottrine. Dial. I. 44. Padov. 1774.-Ed. truth, we involve likewise the intention of the speaker, that his words fhould correspond to his thoughts in the sense in which he expects them to be understood by others: and in this latter import we are always supposed to use the word, whenever we speak of truth abfolutely, or as a poffible fubject of moral merit or demerit. It is verbally true, that in the facred Scriptures it is written: As is the good, fo is the finner, and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. A man hath no better thing under the fun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry. There is one event unto all: the living know they fhall die, but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward.* But he who should repeat these words, with this af furance, to an ignorant man in the hour of his temptation, lingering at the door of the alehouse, or hesitating as to the testimony required of him in the court of justice, would, spite of this verbal truth, be a liar, and the murderer of his brother's conscience. Veracity, therefore, not mere accuracy; to convey truth, not merely to say it, is the point of duty in dispute: and the only difficulty in the mind of an honest man arises from the doubt, whether more than veracity, that is, the truth and nothing but the truth-is not demanded of him by the law of conscience; whether it does not exact fimplicity; that is, the truth only, and the whole truth. If we can folve this difficulty, if we * Eccles. viii. 15; ix. 2, 5.—Ed. can determine the conditions under which the law of universal reafon commands the communication of the truth independently of consequences, we shall then be enabled to judge whether there is any fuch probability of evil confequences from fuch communication, as can justify the affertion of its occafional criminality, as can perplex us in the conception, or disturb us in the performance, of our duty. The conscience, or effective reason, commands the defign of conveying an adequate notion of the thing spoken of, when this is practicable: but at all events a right notion, or none at all. A fchoolmaster is under the neceffity of teaching a certain rule in fimple arithmetic empirically,—(do fo and fo, and the fum will always prove true);—the neceffary truth of the rule- that is, that the rule having been adhered to, the fum must always prove true-requiring a knowledge of the higher mathematics for its demonftration. He, however, conveys a right notion, though he cannot convey the adequate one. |