CHAPTER III. OF PROMISES, CONTRACTS, AND TRUTH IN GENERAL. 1. CLOSELY connected with the subject of property, is the matter of Promises, Contracts, and Truth in general. He who violates a promise, or neglects to fulfil a contract, and to a certain extent, he who tells what is not true, is sure, in so doing, to inflict a pain of disappointment, and may inflict many other pains. 2. Promises or contracts, extorted by force or threats, are not held to be binding. The very `extortion of them was the infliction of an injury, and renders him who extorted them an object of malevolence and of moral disapprobation. The disappointment of such a man, instead of giving us pain, gives us pleasure. 3. Promises which cannot be fulfilled, without violating the rights of some third party, are held not to be binding. When the same motive operates with equal force to impel us, and to deter us, of course we remain inactive. Hence it is held, that no promise to do a wrong act is morally binding. 4. If a man comes to me to ask for information, and especially if I volunteer to give him information, generally speaking, to give him false information would be doing him an unprovoked injury. Hence all moral codes are agreed as to the moral obligation of telling the truth. 5. But suppose the information is asked with a design to use it as a means of inflicting injury upon me? It is sought to extort my secret, in order to use it to my harm. He who comes to me with such an intent, is himself a wrong-doer, an object of malevolence; and it is permissible for me to deceive him. 6. Suppose the party in question seeks the information with the design to use it as a means of inflicting injury upon others? Suppose that with an intention to commit murder, he asks me if his intended victim is here, or there? In such a case it is not only my right, but my duty, to deceive him; and, indeed, without waiting to be asked, to volunteer false information. 7. Such are the decisions of forensic morality; such are the practical decisions of all rational men. But the mystical moralists, in general, have decided otherwise. According to them, the reason why I am bound to keep my promises, and to tell the truth, is, because that course of conduct is pleasing to God. God has an abstract delight in truth. It has further been imagined that if I am adjured to tell the truth in God's name, that is, sworn to tell the truth; or if I call upon God to be the witness of my promise or my statements, in that case, no matter though the oath be extorted, and no matter what may be the nature of the promise, or the statement, my duty to God requires that I should keep the promise, or tell the truth, regardless of the consequences to myself or others. A little reflection is sufficient to convince us, that if truth be indeed pleasing to God merely in its character of truth, the circumstance of an oath can make no difference in the moral obligation of speaking the truth and fulfilling promises; and hence it has been concluded that to speak the truth at all times, is an absolute duty admitting of no exceptions; and that to deceive or even to conceal, for concealment is a sort of deception, can never be permissible. 8. Some forensic speculators upon morals, proceeding by a different route, have arrived at the same conclusions. The utility of truth, that is to say, the advantages which veracity and general fidelity to engagements confer upon society, are so immense that it has been thought impossible to go too far in inculcating this duty. The means has thus come to be looked upon as equivalent, or superior, to the end; and it has been zealously maintained that men are under a moral obligation to fulfil their promises, and to speak the truth, in all supposable cases, even in cases where nothing but evil seems likely to result from it. 9. It ought here to be observed, that what is called the love or admiration of the truth, and the eulogiums passed upon veracity, do not by any means originate entirely in the moral sentiment, whether from the perception of the general utility of truth to mankind at large, or of its utility in particular cases to particular individuals. Many sentiments purely selfish contribute to make truth so great a favorite. Knowledge is power. Every increase of our knowledge enlarges our power, and gatifies the desire of superiority. The perception that we have been deceived. or misled, is accompanied by a pain of inferiority. Men frequently insist upon the obligation of oaths and the duty of veracity, merely because they wish. to employ them as means of increasing their own power, and of binding and subjecting others to the fulfilment of their will; that is, as instruments of despotism. Thus the subscription to creeds as a condition of civil privileges and of the right to teach was first introduced by the Jesuits as a means of reëstablishing the Catholic faith. The Protestants soon followed the example; and both, of course, were very loud and very positive as to the binding obligation of such subscriptions. 10. When we detect a man in having told us what is not true, a painful feeling at the idea of having been deceived rises in our minds. To this is added another painful feeling, at perceiving that we can no longer rely upon that man's assertions, — a pain of anticipation at the idea of the future deceits. which he may put upon us. To these are added other painful feelings produced by the present pains to which this defect of veracity has exposed us, or by the idea of certain future pains, to which it is likely to expose us. All these pains thus inflicted upon us naturally excite a feeling of malevolence against the person who deceives; and, quite independently of any sentiment of moral disapprobation, serve to render a liar an odious character. 11. Mere falsehood, however, when unaccompanied with the intention to inflict some additional serious injury, of which the falsehood serves as an instrument, is a practice into which men so habitu ally and universally fall, that, however severely it may be condemned by professed moralists, in all practical codes of morals, it is reckoned among the more trivial offences. In a very large proportion of cases in which men deceive, they have no fixed deliberate intention of doing so. With the vast majority of men the imagination is so much an overmatch for the memory, the judgment is so sluggish, or so much under the influence of emotions, that it is impossible for them to report correctly what they have seen, or what they have heard. Hence that universal tendency to misrepresent, which leads all those who rely upon tradition or hearsay into infinite errors, even in those numerous cases where there is no intention to deceive. The same may be said of simple breach of promise, as, for instance, the nonpayment of debts, which, unless the debts were contracted with a predetermination not to pay, seems, in these days, to be reckoned hardly any offence at all. Even when there is a design to deceive, simple falsehood when it inflicts no positive injury, as, for instance, putting off a dun by promises to pay him, or denying ourselves to persons whom we do not wish to see, is practically regarded as a trivial matter. 12. The pain of inferiority at being detected in a falsehood, or a breach of contract, for the greater part of falsehoods proceed from fear, and the greater part of breaches of contract from inability, — has, in general, much more influence than the sentiment of benevolence in inducing men to tell the truth and to fulfil their engagements. There are many very |