"SPLENDID MENDACITY."' TN the very touching little tale called "
Splendide Mendax," of which Mr. Stephen Gwynn has given us his version in the August number of the Carnival Magazine, we are told of an Irish woman who hearing from her daughter who had just been married in New York that her husband grudged the four dollars which she had been sending back month by month to her old mother in Ireland, insisted on a letter being written to inform the young wife of her mother's (imaginary)
death in order that she might remove finally this ground of disagreement between the young couple as a likely cause of gradual alienation between them. She preferred to take her chance of starving, and the certainty of being cut off entirely from the daughter she so fondly loved, to the risk of setting up an ill-feeling between the husband and wife whose happiness she so ardently desired. The story is told with great force and pathos, and is probably true, but it interests us less even as a story, touching as it is, than as suggesting one of the chief reasons why truthfulness varies immensely between race and race, counting for very little where one race predominates, and for almost everything where another race is in the ascendent. The old mother who, as Mr. Gwynn tells the story, is so splendidly mendacious, so eager to break .her own heart, as she does, rather than to endanger the domestic peace of her daughter, uses the power of speech for a totally different purpose from that for which a mother of a different stock would use it. To her, language is an instrument, and an instrument only, for operating, as she thinks beneficially, on the fate of those she loves. It is a sort of rhetorical gift for producing desirable impressions which she could not produce without it. It never even occurs to her that it is only bestowed for the purpose of producing true impressions, and that she is cot at liberty to use it for producing utterly false impressions, even though those false impressions are, as she thinks, likely to tend to the happiness of her daughter, while they may break her own heart. To many of the Celtic peoples -speech is a sort of magic spell of persuasiveness, for bringing other persons' minds into the condition in which,—whether for their sakes or your own,—you may wish to see it. It is wielded as if it were an available natural or even preternatural force iike that of steam, or electricity, or a fairy wand, just to increase your chance of moulding the universe to your will,—avail- able without any absolute conditions such as those which many of us regard as imposed on its exercise. And indeed it ie not fair to say that even the most scrupulously truthful races do regard the right of persuasion as always limited by the condition that it must be used only for the purpose of .bringing the minds of others into a more perfect correspond- ence with the realities of the universe, otherwise rhetoric would not be reckoned as sa enviable a gift as it actually is reckoned. There is hardly a good talker, much less a good orator, whose main object is not to bring round his audience to his own view rather than to a clearer view of the realities of life. Wherever there is no plain and conspicuous standard by which to measure truth, the chief use of rhetorical gifts, even amongst the most scrupulous of races, is as tools effectual to win support, to enlarge the personal influence of those who can sway the feelings of others as they choose. Where the talker or the orator has nothing to remind him of the exact facts -of the universe, he is held in esteem not for his power of inducing others to see things as they are, but for his power of inducing others to think and feel as he thinks and feels, .whether he may be right or wrong. With all races, however strictly truthful, speech is valued in great measure for its arbi- trary and sometimes almost magical effects even more than for its enlightening and illuminating power in opening the minds of men to the realities amidst which they live. We will not say -that among the more scrupulous races persuasion is valued as much for its power to blind others to what they would otherwise see, as it is for its power to awaken others to what they would -otherwise fail to see. For no doubt scrupulousness implies re- lactance to hoodwink men even for their own supposed good. But once let men be really uncertain as to what the facts of life are, so that they are not plainly blinding the eyes of others by their use of words, and there is not a race anywhere who will not value more highly the man who can charm others into taking his own view, than it will the man who can give mo more speciousness and plausibility to his own view than he can give to the views of those who differ from him. There are two uses of speech for every race, even the most devoutly wedded to truth,—the illuminating and the persuasive. The races which value the illuminating power of speech even at its highest, value the persuasive power of speech not a little. .And even the races which value the persuasive power of speech at its highest, value the illuminating power of speech not a little. Even the good Irish mother who was so splendidly men- dacious, when her object was to prevent her daughter from sending her any more money at the cost of her husband's affection, was eager enough to impress upon the mind of the man who wrote her letters for her, the true motive which made her so anxious to tell a great lie. She was quick enough to impress the truth on him, though her object was to get him to convey a pure falsehood to the mind of her daughter. The difference between the rhetorical races and the (relatively) scrupulous races is chiefly this,—that the former are quite as willing to delude their fellow-men into doing what they wish, as to persuade them by sound reasons to the same pur- pose, while the latter will not use plain falsehoods even for that purpose, though they do not hesitate to use persuasive& which are not conspicuously at variance with the truth, and which they may honestly conjecture to be consistent with it. Those who freely use deceptions to get their fellow-men to do what they believe to be right, think first of all like the Irish-woman of the good result in the individual case and very little of the mischievous means ; while the scrupulous races think a good deal of the general danger of breaking down the confidence of men in each other's word, and relatively at least, a good deal less of the particular end they hope to accomplish by that objectionable means.
The late Mr. W. G. Ward, "Ideal Ward" as he used to be called, was, in theory, a strong supporter of the principle that for a sufficiently important moral end, very tremendous falsehoods are not only justifiable, but obligatory. He used to tell his pupils that they should first make up their minds calmly and deliberately whether the end in view would justify lying ; and if it would, he recommended them to "lie like a trooper," instead of indulging in those petty evasions and white lies,—literal truths and moral falsehoods,—which only salve over falsehood to a conventional conscience, and so make lying more outwardly decent, but in no degree less hurt- ful. And yet Mr. Ward was, as the present writer believes, one of the most frankly truthful men of his generation. Not the less, however, do we hold that his theory made it much easier, not for himself, but for those who do not attach the true importance to those general considerations which sustain the confidence of men in each other's good faith, to use untruths freely, wherever untruths are needful for the purpose of inducing other people to do what they wish them to do. The enormous importance of not using words as mere levers to get various obstacles out of the way, is never ade- quately realised by such self-sacrificing old women as the "splendidly mendacious" Irishwoman who is the subject of Mr. Stephen Gwynn's touching story. For them the rhetorical instinct, as we may call it,—the impulse to use their fellow- creatures as they would use a tool to carry out a plan dear to their hearts,—is so predominant that they are almost in- capacitated for taking any account of the enormous break- down which this indifference to the use they make of speech causes in that mutual trust which is the bond of all human society. There is a story of an Irishman who after fencing with the County Court Judge for a long hour, at last explained the truth as it really was, and was asked why he had held back so long, when he replied, "Well, your honour, I suppose it was that I wished to keep the truth in reserve." That was precisely what we mean by using speech as a tool for ulterior purposes. And orators constantly keep the truth "in reserve." We doubt whether, even in the most scrupu- ions races of the world, it has ever occurred to a really great speaker, to ask himself whether the persuasive words which come unbidden to his lips should really be tried by the standard which he would, as a matter of course, apply to statements concerning ordinary facts. Great speakers think of speech for the moment only as the good old mendacious Irishwoman thought of it, as a means of effecting the disinterested end which they have in view, and they never dream of asking themselves,—" Will the attitude of mind to which I am anxious to bring those who listen to me, make them more or less likely to deserve the trust of their fellow- men, and will it strengthen their own trust in their fellow- men?" We smile at the Celtic races for attaching so much less importance to literal truth than the Saxon races, but we ourselves use speech, in the form of oratory, with almost equal indifference to its tendency to bind men together, and almost equal eagerness to use it as a pilot uses the helm of his ship, to turn our hearers' minds this way or that, without regard to any of its larger and deeper and more subtle influences.
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