the habit of concealing the truth. In Eastern Africa, says Livingstone, falsehood is a vice prevailing among the free, but still more among the slaves; "one can scarcely induce a slave to translate anything truly: he is so intent on thinking of what will please." "

113

"5

Hardly anything has been a greater inducement to falsehood than oppression. Whilst the old Makololo were truthful, this is not the case with their sons, “who, having been brought up among the subjected tribes, have acquired some of the vices peculiar to a menial and degraded race. The Wanyoro, who are described as "splendid liars," exercised deception chiefly to evade the intolerable exactions of their own chiefs, whereas they are fairly truthful in contact with Europeans who attempt to treat them justly. The duplicity and cunning of the Malagasy are "the natural result of centuries of superstition, ignorance, and submission to the rule of tyrannical despots, with whom the spy system has always been a necessity." In Morocco the independent Jbâla, or mountaineers of the North, are more to be trusted than the Arabs of the plains, who have long been suffering from the extortions of rapacious officials. The duplicity of Orientals is very largely due to their despotic form of government. In India, Mr. Percival observes, "despotism in one form or other that has so long prevailed, and the consequent oppression attendant thereon, must have rendered it difficult to make way without fraud. Deception and arts of cunning, under such circumstances, being the only means at the command of the inferior portions of the community for gaining their ends, and securing the plainest rights, they would resort to them as the only way of avoiding certain ruin." The Chinese habit of lying has

1 Euripides, Phanissa, 392. Cf. Burton, Arabian Nights, i. 176, n. 1.

2 Livingstone, Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 309. See also Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, ii. 59.

Livingstone, Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 283.

* Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, ii.

591.

5 Little, Madagascar, p. 72.

6

Vámbéry, Der Islam im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, p. 231.

7 Percival, Land of the Veda, p. 288. Cf. Malcolm, Memoir of Central India, ii. 171; Hodgson, Miscellaneous Essays, i. 152.

been attributed partly to the truckling fear of officers.1 In China and many other parts of the East, says Sir J. Bowring, "there is a fear of truth as truth, lest its discovery should lead to consequences of which the inquirer never dreams, but which are present to the mind of the person under interrogation." "

The regard for truth displays itself not only in the condemnation of falsehood, but in the idea that, under certain circumstances, it is a person's duty to inform others of the truth, although there is no deception in withholding it. This duty is limited by utilitarian considerations, and it is less insisted on than the duty of refraining from falsehood; positive commandments, as we have seen, are generally less stringent than the corresponding negative commandments. But to disclose the truth for the benefit of others, when it is attended with injurious consequences for the person who discloses it, can hardly fail to evoke moral approval, and may be deemed a merit of the highest order.

"4

The regard for truth goes a step further still. It may be obligatory or praiseworthy not only to spread the knowledge of truth, but to seek for it. The possession of knowledge, of some kind or other, is universally respected. A Wolof proverb says, "Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse." In the moral and religious systems of the East knowledge is one of the chief pursuits of man. Confucius described virtue as consisting of knowledge, magnanimity, and valour. The ancients, he says, "wishing to rectify their hearts, . . . first desired to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.' Knowledge is to be pursued not for theoretical, but for

* Wells Williams, The Middle King, i. 835.

3

Bowring, Siam, i. 105 sq.

Supra, i. 303 sqq.

• Burton, Wit and Wisdom from

West Africa, p. 6.

5 Chung Yung, xx. 8. Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 105.

6 Ta Hsio, 4.

5

moral purposes; the Master said, "It is not easy to find a man who has learned for three years without coming to be good." The Hindus maintain that ignorance is the greatest of evils, and that the sole and ultimate object of life should be to give and receive instruction. It is said in the Laws of Manu, "A man is not therefore considered venerable because his head is gray; him who, though young, has learned the Veda, the gods consider to be venerable.' According to the Mahabharata, it is by knowledge that a creature is liberated, by knowledge that he becomes the Eternal, Imperceptible, and Undecaying.+ Buddhism regards sin as folly and delusion as the cause of crime; "the unwise man cannot discover the difference between that which is evil and that which is good, as a child knows not the value of a coin that is placed before And the highest of all gifts, the source of abiding salvation, is the knowledge of the identity between the individual and God, in whom and by whom the individual lives, and moves, and has his being." According to one of the Pahlavi texts, wisdom is better than wealth of any kind; through the power of wisdom it is possible to do every duty and good work; the religion of the Mazda-worshippers is apprehended more fully by means of the most perfect wisdom, and "even the struggle and warfare of Iran with foreigners, and the smiting of Aharman and the demons it is possible to effect through the power of wisdom." 10 A strong dash of intellectualism is a prominent feature in the Rabbinic religion. The highest virtue lies not only in the fulfilment but in the study of the law. There is a special merit bound up in it that will assist man both in this world and in the world to come; and it is said that even a bastard who is learned in

1 Lun Yu, viii. 12. Cf. Faber, Digest of the Doctrines of Confucius, p. 60; de Lanessan, La morale des philosophes chinois, p. 27.

2 Percival, Land of the Veda, p.

263.
Laws of Manu, ii. 156.

4 Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, v.

5 Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures on the History of Buddhism, p. 208. 6 Hardy, Manual of Budhism, p. 505.

Rhys Davids, op. cit. p. 209. 8 Dina-i Mainôg-i Khirad, xlvii. 6. 9 Ibid. i. 54.

10 Ibid. lvii. 15 sq.

the law is more honoured than a high-priest who is not.1 Among Muhammedans, also, great respect is shown to men of learning. Knowledge, the Prophet said, "lights the way to Heaven"-"He dies not who gives life to learning "With knowledge the servant of God rises to the heights of goodness and to a noble position "—" The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr." 3

5

In Christianity the knowledge of truth became a necessary requirement of salvation. But here, as in the East, the truth which alone was valued was religious truth. All knowledge that was not useful to salvation was, indeed, despised, and science was regarded not only as valueless, but as sinful.4 "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." If it happened that any one gave himself to letters, or lifted up his mind to the contemplation of the heavenly bodies, he passed instantly for a magician or a heretic. So also every mental disposition which is essential to scientific research was for centuries stigmatised as offensive to the Almighty; it was a sin to doubt the opinions which had been instilled in childhood before they had been examined, to notice any objection to those opinions, to resolve to follow the light of evidence wherever it might lead. Yet we are told, even by highly respectable writers, that the modern world owes its scientific spirit to the extreme importance which Christianity

1 Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 495. Deutsch, Literary Remains, P. 35.

Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, p. 301 sq.

3 Ameer Ali, Ethics of Islam, pp.

47, 49.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 185. von Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanhauung, pp. 128-130, 589 sqq.

1 Corinthians, iii. 19. Cf. Lactantius, Divine Institutiones, iii. 3 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus,

vi. 354 9.); St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, vii. 10 (Migne, xli. 234).

6 Chapelain, De la lecture des vieux romans, p. 20. As late as the middle of the seventeenth century a powerful party was rising in England who said that all learning was unfavourable to religion, and that it was sufficient for everyone to be acquainted with his mother-tongue alone (Twells, Life of Pocock, p. 176). The Duke de Saint Simon, who in 1721 and 1722 was the French ambassador in Madrid, states (Mémoires, xxxv. 209) that in Spain science was a crime, and ignorance and stupidity the chief virtues.

Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ii. 87 sq.

assigned to the possession of truth, of the truth.1 According to M. Réville, "it was the orthodox intolerance of the Church in the Middle Ages which impressed on Christian society this disposition to seek truth at any price, of which the modern scientific spirit is only the application. The more importance the Church attached to the profession of the truth-to the extent even of considering involuntary error as in the highest degree a damnable crime-so much the more the sentiment of the immense value of this truth arose in the general persuasion, along with a resolve to conquer it wherever it was felt not to be possessed. How otherwise," M. Réville asks, "can we explain that science was not developed and has not been pursued with constancy, except in the midst of Christian societies?" This statement is characteristic of the common tendency to attribute to the influence of the Christian religion almost anything good which may be found among Christian nations. But, surely, the patient and impartial search after hidden. truth, for the sake of truth, which constitutes the essence of scientific research, is not congenial to, but the very opposite of, that ready acceptance of a revealed truth for the sake of eternal salvation, which was insisted upon by the Church. And what about that singular love of abstract knowledge which flourished in ancient Athens, where Aristotle declared it a sacred duty to prefer truth to everything else,3 and Socrates sacrificed his life on its altar? It seems that the modern scientific spirit is only a revival and development of a mental disposition which was for ages suppressed by the persecuting tendencies of the Church and the extreme contempt for learning displayed by the barbarian invaders and their descendants. Even when they had settled in the countries which they had conquered, the

1 Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. 172. Cf. Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures on National Religions and Universal Religions, p. 290.

2 Réville, Prolegomena of the History of Religions, p. 226.

3 Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, i. 6. 1. Prof. Ritchie argues (op. cit. p. 172

sq.) that a devotion to truth as such was in the ancient world known only to a few philosophers. Prof. Fowler is probably more correct in saying (Principles of Morals, ii. 45, 220 sq.: Progressive Morality, p. 114) that it was more common amongst the Greeks than amongst ourselves.