CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 55

slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain.

APHORISM 7. The guilt and harm of amiable and well meant lying.¹

We do not enough consider this; nor enough dread the slight and continual occasions of offence against her. We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the colour of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from the untruth, and we are little offended by it; turn it into praise, and we may be pleased with it. And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that do* the largest sum of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy;² the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces,³ as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert; happy, that the thirst for truth

* “Do,”-in the old edition, more grammatically, “does,”-but, as I get old, I like to make my own grammar at home. The sentence following, “they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered,” must be missed out of the aphorism. I did not know the world, when I wrote it, as well as Sandro Botticelli;4 but the entire substance of the aphorism is sound, nevertheless, and most useful. Calumny is, indeed, more invincible than praise; but, at its worst, less mischievous than lying praise, and that by a long way. [1880.]

¹ [The aphorism in the text, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “We are too much in the habit ...” down to “left the fountains of it.”]

² [The MS. has, “the innocent and amiable fallacy.”]

³ [Ed. 1 reads: “through which any man who pierces, we thank as we would ...”; and, in the next line, reads “happy in that.”]

⁴ [The reference is to Botticelli’s picture of “Calumny” (based on Lucian’s description of the work of Apelles) in the Uffizi at Florence. A description of the artist’s motive and a photographic reproduction of the picture will be found in A. Streeter’s Botticelli, 1903, pp. 122-126.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]