Chapter III (2)

Hereupon we find the mental conditions of the Grand Man--the human race at large--precisely analogous to those of the small man--the individual person. And by exhibiting the mental conditions with principles of government properly related, which rule in one sphere, we infallibly present the corresponding conditions and forms in the other sphere.

The human mind, then, is a three-fold form, each fold having its own distinct character, in consequence of which it is broadly and very definitely individualized. Childhood, youthhood, and manhood, constitute this triple form. The slightest consideration will readily confirm one as to the propriety of this analysis; for, one cannot fail to see that the distinct characteristics of each are broad and marked, and therefore necessarily discriminate to any completeness of thought upon this subject. Childhood is a form of total inexperience and unlimited dependence. Youthhood is a form of growth from the helplessness of the child to the strength and completeness of the man; involving the trials of experimental endeavor, attended with the numerous buffs and rebuffs so surely the witness of vital efforts toward fulness. Manhood is the form of fulness, completeness, maturity. It is the form of luscious juices ultimated in the perfectly rounded and glowing fruitage; juices that pressed the tender bud into the thousand charms of floral beauty, and thence moulded and urged the growing form to its crowning excellence.

Childhood, therefore, is a form in which activities are commanded from without; as the parent commands the child, knowing that the child's best interests--the ultimate realization of true, manly freedom--are only to be realized through such arbitrary tutelage. Youthhood is a form of rational freedom, wherein the subject's moral freedom is stimulated under various forms of appeal in behalf of right doing. Here the careful parent keeps the reins firmly in hand, but still slackens them to allow the plunging steed to determine his own career; overjoyed if he choose rightly and make his course with vigor and safety; sad and anxious if forced to draw rein and urge anew the proper direction. It is evident that the subject's activities here are partly self-determined or free, and partly coerced or outwardly imposed.

Manhood is a form that repudiates all methods of external appliances, scales the bounds of parental dictation, and finds only life's fulness in a freedom all aglow with the soul's adoration. It knows no law but that of attraction; feels no impulse but that of love. Its activities are perfectly free or spontaneous. The human mind thus falling under this triple order of development, inevitably projects governmental forms strictly proportioned or related thereto. And this is true regarding any of its organized forms, from the individual to the human race at large: hence the infantile condition of a people or a nation demands a perfectly absolute, arbitrary, or commanding form of government; while the youthful condition demands a mixed form; wherein the ruled are partly free or self-determined, and partly subject or directed by the reigning authority; and the manly condition demands a system of pure self-government, wherein the law is written on the heart.

It must be borne in mind that government is solely instrumental or ministerial to human use; being designed to mould and fashion unfolding human powers to higher and still higher social conditions, tending all to that perfect ultimate wherein life and law are both spontaneous and exactly balanced, and nothing detrimental to the dearest interests of manhood can by possibility exist.

Government, then, of whatever kind, must always be administered with strict regard for the interests of the governed; and it is the endeavor to subvert and overcome this legitimate principle of government, through the mistaken selfishness of ruling powers, which attempt to administer in behalf of their own lusts and in violation of universal ends, which has kept and is keeping up now the convulsions that shake and try civil institutions to their utmost.

The theory or declaratory form of our Government stands out, boldly and distinctly, as that of the highest order. In theory it is the form proportionate to full manhood; planting and fostering institutions tending to promote the free play of all that is great and glorious in human character. It does not thus far practically realize its theory, because, without regard to this incongruous system of inhumanity, which, by its very nature, can find no harmony nor peace in connection, nations themselves wear the human form, and must, therefore, realize the various states of infancy, youthfulness, and manhood--of germ, growth, and fruitage. This is true of whatever national form. Nationalities founded upon the principles of absolutism, embody and express the same laws and conditions. Their principle of supreme external authority is first a condition of germination, then of growth or labored effort toward maturity, and lastly of fruitage, in which the whole form is matured in perfectly organic completeness, manifesting despotism in government, in orderly or scientific proportions.

Our nation, then, has not realized its highest conditions, because it is as yet only germinal, or the national child-man; or, at best, is but the vigorous blade, or national youth-man; while the corn, fully ripe in the ear--the national man-man--is reserved unto the glory of the approaching future, whose rays already dawn upon us and illustrate the clouds, that have hitherto hung over us and darkened our way, with the power and great glory of the coming of the Son of Man.

Let us now try to draw nearer to the mark at which we principally aimed in projecting this article. We said that the 'let-them-alone' system, concerning the nation's 'freedmen,' is not the system of sound statesmanship. Why not? Because they are a people in a state of infantile weakness and inexperience; whom, from the irrepressible laws and conditions of the human mind, we _must_ govern and control, either wisely and beneficently or otherwise. To unloose the chains that have bound them, and set them adrift to contend and compete under our methods of individualism or isolated interests, is to doom them to conditions hardly to be preferred to those from which they are about to escape. This is certainly true with respect to a large majority. Witness the state of our weakest white laborers, particularly in all our large cities, and some few years back. See them by thousands and tens of thousands imploring for employment, and only too happy if they may find it at the most repulsive and unwholesome labor, sufficient to stay their famished frames and adjourn for a time the pangs of hunger and frosts. Driven in despairing hordes to beggary, prostitution, and crimes of every kind, how fearfully threatening are the neglected duties and obligations that confront us in their behalf! What, then, shall we say to those who propose to swell the frightful tide by turning loose millions more, weaker and more incompetent, it may be, besides being subject to the evils of the reigning prejudices against color? No, no; it must not be done. The Government must become the visible providence of these weak children. It must organize and direct their efforts and interests. It must, at least, organize them into industrial legions, and carefully direct all their educational interests. This work, too, must assume paternal form. Government is rightfully the foster parent of all its tender, weak, or by any means incompetent children; and unless it acknowledge and fulfil its functions as such, it is not Divinely administered, and stands accountable before Supreme Wisdom for all remissness. To meet all the demands, an especial commission must be established, and organized with a completeness that will meet all the educational and industrial needs of these dependent children. This commission must have a wise head and _tender heart_. It must be fully alive to the great issues involved, and must be healthy and vigorous in its extremities, where will come the immediate points of contact with, the great power it is to operate--the organized freedmen. The expense of this commission must not be a tax upon the Government, nor must Government derive any profit therefrom. Such an organized directory, with extremities all complete, may be amply paid from the freedmen's labors; at the same time, those labors being doubly remunerative to themselves, in consequence of the wise adjustment of the organized machinery of such a commission. For the weak and uneducated to be in complete subjection to the stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen may be organized and directed upon such humane and economical principles and according to the strictest method and order--an order amounting to definite science--will be practically demonstrated when the Government, in the full consciousness of its mission, calls to its aid competent men for this commission, and moves vigorously in the work. The principles of government which we have briefly suggested as the basis of movement in this matter, based upon the laws and consequently applying to the needs of the human mind, enable us infallibly to estimate the whole relations of Government and people. Our Government being in its theory the highest form--the form proportioned to manhood, or the human mind so matured as to have the intelligence to perceive and the virtue to execute the right--proceeds, of course, upon the declaration that 'all _men are created_ free and equal;' but in the only practical sense of free or self-government, which, in its very nature, can only rest upon the virtue and intelligence of its subjects, men cannot be regarded as 'created' until they are made whole or complete in the crowning intelligence and virtue of the loftiest human attributes. But as government, of whatever kind, follows the laws of the human mind, is first a germ, then a growth, and then a fruitage--shoot, blade, and ear--our Government can only realize this greatness and perfection (unlimited intelligence and virtue) in its matured or organic state; when the declared principles of its form shall have become livingly combined or organized in institutions of unlimited excellence and power--institutions that will perpetually embody and express the exalted human force that inspired them. That our Government has thus far failed to exhibit such completeness, only argues that it has heretofore been in a formative condition--a condition of laborious trial, tuition, and growth, fitting it to realize ultimately its fullness, wherein it will stand related to previous conditions as the grand, symmetric beauty of the ear of grain stands related to its various formative states.

If now our Government is, as we fondly hope, approaching its third degree, its matured condition, with a race of dependent children emerging from the lowest condition, that of chattel slavery, it is plain enough what the relation of these people and the Government should be. They are simply minors, subjects of the Government, but not a part of the Government. The right of suffrage is not to be extended to them, because, from the nature and spirit of the Government, they are necessarily excluded from the _highest_ prerogatives of citizenship. Their education and whole training are to proceed with a view to their becoming ultimately a function in the government.

If the principles thus stated amount to a _science_ of government--and we unhesitatingly aver that they do--then it is clear enough that self-government--the highest form--does by no means necessitate, under all conditions, _universal_ suffrage. In truth, its orderly development strictly forbids it. A government, founded and only healthily operated on virtue and intelligence, must apply itself studiously to develop these conditions in its subjects; thus, and only thus, may these subjects become a part of the governmental power in its full, harmonious development. Self-government must recognize the principle of universal suffrage, because it proceeds upon, and, in its ripest form, must come to that; but, as it is an operation or analytic before it is an ordered form or synthetic in its character, it will, while forming or growing, both restrict the rights of suffrage, and permit its subjects to a part in government when they are not fully qualified therefor. Our freedmen, then, are neither to be subjected contrary to the demands of their own highest good, nor are they to become an element in government in detriment to the public good. Hence they must not be controlled in _any form_ of servitude to interested and selfish superiors, nor must they, by partaking of the elective franchise, become, at present, active participants in the government.

Our current national history must be regarded as singularly marked by beneficent Providential design. At the same time that a people hitherto despised and oppressed are emancipated from a dreadful thraldom, the conditions attending such emancipation are forcing upon the nation a system of industrial organization which we trust will not only prove effective in all that pertains to their future welfare, but will, at the same time, become the example of an organization that shall emancipate and enthrone labor everywhere and in all conditions. Seeing thus the light of day streaming in with unmarred radiance, dispelling every trace of darkness and gloom, we cannot but thank God for His wise dispensations, and with renewed hope and energy press onward toward the glowing east to greet the rising sun.

OUT OF PRISON.

From crowds that scorn the mounting wings,
The happy heights of souls serene,
I wander where the blackbird sings,
And over bubbling, shadowy springs,
The beech-leaves cluster, young and green.

I know the forest's changeful tongue
That talketh all the day with me:
I trill in every bobolink's song,
And every brooklet bears along
My greeting to the chainless sea!

The loud wind laughs, the low wind broods;
There is no sorrow in the strain!
Of all the voices of the woods,
That haunt these houseless solitudes,
Not one has any tone of pain.

In merry round my days run free,
With slender thought for worldly things:
A little toil sufficeth me;
I live the life of bird and bee,
Nor fret for what the morrow brings.

Nor care, nor age, nor grief have I,
Only a measureless content!
So time may creep, or time may fly;
_I_ reck not how the years go by,
With Nature's youth forever blent.

They beckon me by day, by night,
The bodiless elves that round me play!
I soar and sail from height to height;
No mortal, but a thing of light
As free from earthly clog as they.

But when my feet, unwilling, tread
The crowded walks of busy men,
Their walls that close above my head
Beat down my buoyant wings outspread,
And I am but a man again.

My pulses spurn the narrow bound!
The cold, hard glances give me pain!
I long for wild, unmeasured ground,
Free winds that wake the leaves to sound,
Low rustles of the summer rain!

My senses loathe their living death--
The coffined garb the city wears!
I draw through sighs my heavy breath,
And pine till lengths of wood and heath
Blow over me their endless airs!

LIES, AND HOW TO KILL THEM.

'I said, in my haste, all men are liars.'--KING DAVID.

'Ye said it in your _haste_, did ye, David? Hech, mon, were ye
leevin now, ye might say it at your _leisure_.'--DOMINIE
McPHAIL.

The Dominie was right. It's a lying world. It does not improve with age either. The habit has become chronic, and the worst of all is, that the world has told some lies so often, that it actually now believes them itself. The wretched family propagates, too, at a terrible rate. Lies breed, like other vermin, rapidly, and they are not at all modest about intruding in any company.

I meet them in the gossiping circle, and I meet them in the courts of justice. I find lies in politics and lies in religion, lies in the pulpit, 'nail't wi' Scripture,' lies in the counting room railed with false entries, religious lies, told by Deacon Longface, for the advancement of what the Deacon calls 'the gospel,' and irreligious lies told by Bill Snooks, and clenched with an oath, lies in good books, and lies in bad ones, lies written, and printed in the newspapers, and lies whispered in the ear, and any number of lies sent by telegraph! And then, there's the walking lies, going about on two legs, saying what they do not believe, professing what they do not feel, the most scandalous sort of lies extant.

I meet them often, too, in 'the best society.' They are very impudent, you know. I suppose they force their presence on people. At all events, I know I find them in respectable company, and they seem quite at home there.

My friend Jones has just built what the newspapers call 'an elegant mansion.' I was invited to the house-warming. Mrs. Jones's set is very exclusive, and I was greatly complimented, of course. I went. Jones has taste. I noticed the plaster walls. Jones had them colored to marble. The wainscoting of the library was pine, but the pine lied itself into a passable walnut. The folding doors of the parlor were pine, too, when I came near. They pretended to be solid oak while I stood at the other end of the room. Jones had succumbed to the demands of his time, and had made his dwelling among lies. His 'elegant mansion' was a big, staring lie from top to bottom. From the plated door-knob to the grained railing round the garret stairs, he had 'made lies his refuge.' I was bewildered that evening. It was impossible to say what was real. Miss Seraphina Jones had a lovely color. Was it _done_ like the folding doors? Mrs. Smythe had the whitest of teeth when she smiled. Were they only a pretence at teeth? Mrs. Robinson had beautiful masses of that chestnut hair around her handsome neck. The bewildering 'mansion' of my friend made me half doubt even that splendid hair. Tom Harris's magnificent whiskers, I _knew_, were not colored by fancy to that depth of darkness. At last I actually began to doubt the sincerity of everybody present. Their warm expressions of delight with Jones's new house, their pleasure in each other's society, their earnest inquiries after each other's welfare, all began to affect me with a sense of unreality, owing to that masquerading 'mansion.' I began to think, in such a house, there might be more shams than the marbled plaster or the grained pine.

Jones's church is not better. I occupied a seat in his 'eligible pew' last Sunday. The lath and plaster walls pretended to be Caen stone. The cheap deal was all 'make-believe' oak. The brick pillars were 'blocked off,' and unblushingly claimed to be granite. As I entered, I observed that the pulpit stood under the arch of a recess, roofed with carved stone, with clustered columns rising on the sides and spreading into graceful arches overhead. As I walked up the broad aisle, the recess shifted strangely, and the clustered columns of 'carven stone' ran in and out, at hide and seek. At last the truth flashed on me. The chancel was only painted on the flat rear wall of the building! I don't know what the sermon was about. It doesn't matter. How _could_ a man preach truth, framed in such a staring lie? I have no doubt he tried to, for, I believe, he is an excellent man; but what a place to put him, Sunday after Sunday, with that painted cheat behind him, mocking all he says!

But lies are venerable as well as respectable. There are old, gray lies that men half worship. The more toothless and drivelling, often the more venerable. They have imposed their solemn emptiness on men for generations. They have awed the souls of the fathers. They make the children tremble. Men chant their praises, call them great names, and tell each other the old scarecrows are better than any truths--they are so ancient, so venerable, you see; and all the old women, male and female, believe them.

Then, there are powerful lies. Think on the wars men have fought for lies, on the millions of followers lies have had--how from their lofty seats they govern empires, convulse continents, and drive patient nations mad. Think on the money they have made, the mouths they have filled, the backs they have warmed, the houses they have built, the reputations they have created, the systems they have propped, the books they have sent out, the presses they have kept busy. Think of the Donation of Constantine, the Forged Decretals, the South Sea Scheme, the Mississippi Bubble, of Wild Cat Banks, and Joyce Heth! He is certainly a bold man who will rashly measure his strength with this mighty family.

As the world goes, the Father of Lies crowns himself and claims the sovereignty. 'All these things will I give thee'--riches, honor, power. It is the old Temptation of the Desert forever repeated. He lies when he makes the offer. They were never his to give. But it's a lying world. There are millions of us cheated. They take the old scoundrel at his word.

You and I, reader, do not, let us hope. We agree in believing that, under any circumstances, lies are not good; that, at all times, they are unsafe, unwholesome, and in every way bad, very bad; that, on the whole, it is not safe to trust them, or go with them. That is a good creed. It appears to me the only creed, on this subject, that will stand.

For this is, after all, a very solemn sort of life. It has a very serious ending. A great universe whirls away with its ebon-faced mysteries piled from central caves to highest heavens--a universe, with all its mysteries, of hardest reality and baldest truth. A man, looking up to the cold, clear, unswerving stars, out yonder in the wintry night, or down at the grave that lies, somewhere, for the digging across his path, must feel that a lie for him, knowing his place, knowing himself, that a lie for him is accursed.

We want the truth always--clear-eyed, sharp-cut, marble-faced truth. We want to know the facts and realities of our position, just as they are. The mariner sails away into the lonely sea. The mystery of the unfathomed deep sways miles down beneath his passing keel. The mystery of the overarching heavens swims far above with mazy constellation and revolving sphere. Between the mystery of the sky and the mystery of the sea he steers right on, in calm and tempest confident, in night and noonday secure. For he there, on the trackless wastes that girdle in the great wide world, alone with the silence of Nature and God, _knows_ the facts of his position, the realities of his place. The charts lie spread before him. Island, continent, lone sea-rock, hidden shoal, they are all mapped to his eye. The faithful needle points due north. The true sun rises where he always has. The faithful, changeless stars look down at midnight. The truth saves him, rocked in the arms of the wild sea. The reality holds him secure. Ask him, looking out, in the night watch, over the black sea and up to the inky deeps, and down to the dim-lighted compass before him, ask him his opinion of _a lie_! What his honest notion may be about a false light on yonder headland, a false latitude on his chart for this island or that shoal, a mistaken measurement of depth across this bay or through yonder straits! Ask him the nature and effects of _a lie_ in the chart he sails by!

And we are all sailors. We want true charts. The false chart is our ruin. The false beacon on the headland is kindled by the fiends. It leads to death--a wreck-strewn sea, dashing white up the black cliffs, and bubbling cries, rising above the tempest's roar and the surges' boom, as, one by one, the swimmers sink to darkness through the foam!

Nay, for us, sailors over life's seas, sailors into eternity's dimness, the lie wears its Father's likeness. And the liar, the man who makes a lie, or helps a lie to success, a lie of word or deed, a lying boast merely, or a bad, vile, lying system, is my enemy, your enemy, humanity's enemy. He has deserted God's army, has denied his human brotherhood so far, has gone over, soul and body, to Satan. He is God's enemy and man's thenceforward.

That, I say, is, I trust, our creed about lies and liars too. We know where the lie comes from. We know whither it tends. We have made up our minds that it, and all its belonging, were best swept clean away and pitched into the Big Fire. Blessed be the man, we say, who successfully kills lies! He is a man to be honored and loved, no matter how rough he is in the process. It is never very smooth business. It is not a thing that can be well done in gloves. Let us not quarrel with how the champion does it. The main end is to get the lies well choked somehow.

But the one great difficulty in the way of such a man is, that so many people believe in lies. My eager young friend, Philalethes, supposes that, if he can only expose this falsehood, show up this sham, or sound the emptiness of this piece of cant or pretence, he will do the state some service, that men will thank him and call him benefactor. He does the work, and lo! to his amazement, many excellent men count him their deadly enemy.

These good souls see what he sees, that lies, and shams, and cheats in business, in science, in politics, in religion, in social life, are often very successful and very powerful, and they come to _their_ conclusion, which is not his by a great deal. He thinks the lie ought to be hated, with a hatred the more intense because of its success. They conclude that lies, in this world at least, are necessary. They have seen, with their own eyes, how powerful, venerable, or respectable lies are, and they act on their knowledge. They take the lie into sleeping partnership--Quirk and _Co_.

There are men who do not believe plain truth can walk alone in this world. She needs a pair of lies for crutches! Men will actually write and print lies for the truth's sake. Men have piously written down and copyrighted lies (I have their books on my shelves) for the sake of religion! They have so little faith in God, they think they must wheedle Satan over on His side, or the truth and the right will fail. It is very easy to believe in God for the other world, but very hard to believe in Him for this. He will be omnipotent lord and master there, but here, now, in this bewildering world, in this confused and wretched time, where wrong seems so prosperous and lies so strong, is He omnipotent here? Hereaway, is not the Devil mightier? Can we get along without a little of his help?

Now lies can never end till this ends. While men think them necessary to truth, in business, in politics, in social order, even in religion, they will stand. People must be got to see that they are evil, that under no circumstances can they be anything else, that there can be no alliance between truth and falsehood, that the false thing must, in the end, be the corrupting thing, Satanic and vile utterly. They must know that, just so far as anything is incorporate with a lie, so far is it foul to the nostrils of all angels, and ought to be to the nostrils of all men.

Weave a lie into your social polity. It may prosper for a while, but soon or late your social polity runs mad. Take a lie into your business, as sleeping partner, try to live and prosper in that connection, and, some time, you and your business will go to the dogs together. Adopt a lie in your religion, make up your mind, piously as you think, to believe what you do not believe and cannot believe, attempt to sanctify falsehood and lie yourself into a faith, and your sham creed and your lying religion will do you no good in this world or in the other.

Because a lie is a respectable lie, believed and patronized by respectable people, shall you respect it? Because some venerable sham has imposed its emptiness on a score of generations, shall we go on reverencing it, and pass the scarecrow and its trumpery trappings on for the reverence of our children? Shall we, for any cause, that is, turn liars ourselves, and use the tongues God gave us to speak honest truth and simple meaning with, to deceive, in small matter or great, one human brother of ours, and make him think Satan's black lie as good as the Lord's white truth?

It may be strong preaching, but how can one help it? Never yet did a true-hearted, clear-headed reformer set to work to clear away some old cankering sore of falsehood from a people's life that he did not meet with opposition. And never yet did that opposition come from those who loved the lie for the lie's sake or the bad for the bad's sake. It came from those who love Truth, but who could not trust her, who loved Good, but had no faith in its success, who wanted to see the right side triumph, but had no confidence in the right--who really believed, that is to say, that Satan was almighty and the Lord's cause could not prosper, in this world at least, without his help! The opposition came from those who would deal gently with respectable lies, not because they are lies, but because they are respectable; who trembled before powerful lies, not because they were lies, but because they were powerful; who, seeing shams and cheats so prosperous, so venerable, so strong, got the notion into their poor cowardly hearts that they are strongest, and wanted the reformer to come humbly, cap in hand, and ask them to let a little truth live, a little modest, humble, unaggressive truth--it will be very orderly, very quiet, very deferential, if they, the powerful, the venerable, the respectable lies will let it stay here, in some corner, out of charity!

These are the men who, in all ages, have built barriers against heaven, the cowards, the faithless, the unbelieving. They dare not trust truth because it is truth, and good because it is good, leaving consequences with Him whose special business it is to take care of consequences. No, it is not love for the lie, but want of faith in the truth, that blocks the chariot wheels of the golden year.

For men do not love the lie after all. There's comfort in that. They do not like being cheated. They never get quite used to it, as, they say, eels do to skinning. They sometimes turn on the man, or the system, that tries it on them, in a very terrible and savage manner, with fury as of a mad lion, and take swift, fearful vengeance. The big, dumb heart of humanity, in the long, run, can be trusted. It is often imposed upon, its blind trust shamefully abused. Scoundrels exist and prosper on its patience and credulity. But only for a time. There is a reckoning for all such deceptions, if need be, in blood and fire. The dull heart throbs, the dull eyes open, the great brain stirs in its sleep, and humanity, true to its origin, rises to crush the lie with its million arms of power. And earth-born Briareus, when his thousand hands turn to right his wrongs, is not delicate in their handling. The echoes of a French Revolution will ring for some generations yet.

The man who turns to combat error needs the assurance of the true instincts of his race, for he enters on a task that must seem hopeless often.

'Truth crushed to earth will rise again;'

so Mr. Bryant tells him, and he is much obliged to Mr. Bryant. But will not error do just the same? He killed a lie yesterday, and buried it decently. He finds it alive again and prosperous to-day. Cut a man's head off, and he dies. There's no help for it, unless he is a St. Denis, and then he can only take a walk with his head in his hand. But, if he is not a St. Denis, he dies. That is the law. Cut the head off a lie, it does not die at all. It rather seems to enjoy the operation. You will meet it, like fifty St. Denises, on every morning walk, during your lifetime. They have a marvellous vitality. I meet lies every day that, to my certain knowledge, were put to death a hundred years ago, by master hands at the business, too. They ought, in decency at least, to look like pale ghosts 'revisiting the glimpses of the moon,' but they don't. They are smug, comfortable, and somewhat portly, as from good, solid living.

Now this is discouraging somewhat. But there is no good in shutting one's eyes to the fact. That is what I am going against. It is best to know that lies die hard. They will bear at least as many killings as a cat, and that's _nine_. Still, much depends upon the manner of the operation. How is it best performed? Knowledge is needed in all pursuits. There is a science undoubtedly in killing lies. If you wish to go into the business, and I trust most honest men do, you need to study it somewhat. Otherwise you will waste much effort, and get few results. It is not easy to kill one wolf with a stick, but, call science to your aid, and an ounce of strychnine, well administered, will do the business for a pack. Instead of going into a rough-and-tumble fight with some coarse, rude, vile lie, and mauling it to death by sheer force of muscle, it is better to use science and put it to death neatly, cleanly, and delicately, with unsoiled hands. Let us see if we can find the science of killing lies.

'The greater the lie the greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on _nothing_. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is _nothing_, the very definition of nothing. It is what _is not_. So, of course, no pure and simple lie exists. It always builds itself on some truth. It always roots itself into some fact. And there is the secret of its vitality. You batter the lie with your logic, but the blows rebound from the iron truth beneath. You assail it with the flashing darts of your rhetoric, the points fly harmless from the marble reality below. There is truth there somewhere. That is why your rhetoric and your logic fail. That, too, is why one so often sees that most bewildering and despairing sight, men clinging to a lie, honoring it, trusting it, defending it, in all sincerity, against all assailants. It is not the lie they defend, but the truth in the lie. What a relief it was when I first made that discovery! I was ready to think meanly of my kind, to distrust humanity's instincts for truth. The lookout was on despair. But, when I understood the nature of the lie, I learned to think better of my brethren, I learned to have more hope in their Maker. No, there is no building on nothing. Every lie has a substratum of truth. In fact, look closer, and is not a lie only a distorted truth?--a truth torn from its connections, its features twisted out of all symmetry, its outlines battered out of all shape?

A man tells a true story to-day, in the hearing of one who has this distorting power, an essentially untrue soul. He hears the same story to-morrow, the very same, but so deformed, so mangled, so patched, that it is, now, every inch a lie--the truth gone crazy. That is, a truth half told is a lie, a truth added to is a lie, a truth distorted is a lie, a truth with its due proportions changed is a lie. And a lie may always be defined as a lame, deformed, or crazy truth.

And it is the truth in the lie that gives it its power, that makes honest men so often accept, love, and help it. Their conscious design is to work for the truth's sake. It is the truth in the lie that makes so many logic shafts, so many rhetoric arrows glance off, as from the hide of a rhinoceros.

And the bigger the lie the bigger also the truth. That is another bit of science. If Mrs. Tattle tells Mrs. Tittle a lie about Mrs. Jenkins, she knows very well Mrs. Tittle will not believe her unless her lie has some spice of fact to go on, unless it has _vraisemblance_, truth-likeness, an appearance of foundation at least. Mean little lies, like those she sets going, do not need much salt of truth to keep them from spoiling; still they require their due modicum, and they usually have it. As for instance, she says, with a long face, to Mrs. Tittle: 'Mrs. Jenkins, the widow Jenkins, you know, it's _awful_. She went over to Pinkins's last evening; I saw her go, and I do believe she stayed till twelve, and Mrs. Pinkins is away, you know. Isn't it terrible?' and she raises her eyes in pious horror at the depravity of the world, and of handsome young widows in particular. That is the _lie_. Now here is the _truth_. Mrs. Jenkins _did_ go across the way to Pinkins's, because one of his little ones was suddenly taken with some baby ailment, and the poor fellow, in his wife's absence, was scared out of his few wits in consequence. He sent for the kind-hearted widow, and begged her help for Johnny. She came, nursed the young scamp like a mother, and returned at nine, with her conscience glowing under the performance of a kindly and neighborly act.

Now, without this much of truth, the amiable Mrs. Tattle would never have manufactured this particular lie. All liars understand the principle. They scarcely ever, until they become blind and stupid liars, invent a falsehood out of mere fancy. They pay tribute to humanity's instinct for truth so far as to tell as much of it as possible without ceasing to lie. They get in as great an amount of truth as convenient, to save their lie from swift, sure death.

But a rousing big lie!--not one of these small neighborhood affairs, that buzz about like wasps in every community--but a grand and magnificent lie, imposed on a nation, imposed maybe on half a world, must have a corresponding truth to make it prosper. It takes less salt to cure the small pig, more to cure the large hog. So, the greater the weight of dead lie, the greater the amount required of preserving truth.

Mohammed imposed a lie on half a continent. That lie has lived and, in some sort, prospered to this day. All sorts of babblement have been written and spoken about that wonderful fact. The truth is, Mohammed's great lie was founded on, and propagated with, an equally great truth, a truth amply sufficient to carry it. In the midst of abominable idolatry, of stupid polytheism, Mohammed proclaimed: 'There is no God but God!' His wild and foolish fictions were based on that grand, unalterable truth. That truth is big enough to bear up more lies than even he ventured to cover it with. The human heart leaped up to grasp the great fact that props the Universe--'GOD IS!'--and, in its love for that, accepted also the falsehoods woven into its proclamation.

In all the universe the evil roots itself into the good. Evil never has an independent life. Like an idol, 'it is nothing in the world.' An evil nature is a good nature, only turned from its aim. Death exists only because there is life. Disease feeds on rosy health. Devils are, by nature, angels. The foulest fiend is only the loftiest seraph spoiled. The evil is always a parasite. All things were made 'very good.' An evil thing is only one of those good things corrupted. The lie, therefore, grows out of the truth. The clearest heaven's truth, half told, distorted, patched upon, is the vilest lie thenceforth.

Now, when one wants to kill lies successfully, he must remember all this. He may turn, as many have done, to the work of proving Mohammedanism a cheat. He sees it is. He wants to get others to see it. He brings his logic artillery and the rifle brigades of his flashing rhetoric to the battle. But, let him not be surprised if his heavy shot is powdered, and his Minié bullets glance harmless, as from a Monitor's turret, for beneath lies the iron truth that 'God is God,' and that saves the lie that 'Mohammed is His prophet.' He is not to rush, like a madman, at the lie, and try to maul it to death by sheer force of arm and hand. There is a hard truth beneath it, and he will only lame his knuckles. Let him go at the thing scientifically. They say of slander, which is one kind of lie, that, if left alone, it will sting itself to death. It is so somewhat with all falsehood. One should pay less attention to the lie and more to the truth. And the best way to destroy the false is to teach simply the true, and leave the false no room to stand on.

It is possible to destroy one lie by another. They are cannibals, and eat each other. Voltaire tried to conquer the lie of a corrupt church by establishing the greater lie of the denial of any church. That is a very unfortunate process, and yet it is common enough. The best way is to set out the truth, plain, and simple, and whole, and so kill lies in flocks. Positive teaching will be found the most effective teaching. The man who takes up the business of combating error, may originate quite as many errors as he destroys. There are a hundred prominent examples. Negative teaching is barren business at best. Better show what _is_ the truth than worry oneself to show what is _not_ it.

For, as I have shown, all lies have some truth in them. That is why they kick, and struggle, and die so hard. Now, take the truth, tear away the lies patched about it, tell it all, and you have quenched that particular lie that worried you, do you not see? and every lie that roots itself in that given truth, or lives on its distortion. Declare your one truth convincingly, clearly, warmly as if you loved it, and the work is done. All that does not agree with that is, of course, false, without further breath wasted.

I might spend one day in proving that two and three are not four, another in proving that nine and six are not four, and so on _ad infinitum_. How much more sensible to prove that two and two are four, and so end the thing! How much simpler to show what is the truth than, laboriously, to expose the claims of a thousand pretenders that are _not_ it! Here are five hundred John Smiths. They each pretend to be _our_ John, the man we know and esteem so highly. I could set to work with infinite labor, and, by having commissions appointed all over the world to take evidence, and by employing a hundred or so of my friends the lawyers, I might, after a lifetime of investigation, prove the negative, that four hundred and ninety-nine of them are not John. But how much easier to walk out the real John at once, prove the positive, and let the rest pack! By proving that one truth, you see, I kill four hundred and ninety-nine lies--a good day's work that.

There is altogether too much of this negative style in all our defences of truth, too much attempt to destroy what is wrong, and too little to build what is right. And, after all, the business of the destructive, though many times very necessary and very useful, is not the highest style of work. You are never sure of your ground till, on the ruins of the towers of injustice and wrong, you erect the fortresses of justice and right.

The wise way is to let truth fight her own battles. She will render a good account of all her foes. Our humble duty is to stand by her, merely as seconds in the strife, to help her to her feet should she fall, to burnish her armor if the rust come to dim its brightness or spoil the keenness of her weapon's edge, knowing that she, as with the sword of the cherubim, will scatter, at the last, the evil legions and their dark array, as the whirlwind scatters the chaff.

I have written of a war that, as far as this world is concerned, is endless. As long as the world exists lies will exist. Truths will always be half told, half learned, half understood. The man who girds himself to do battle with falsehood and wrong should understand that 'there is no discharge in this war.' It will last his life out. He must accept the inevitable condition of his place, and must be content to do his best, hopefully and bravely, in this world-work, though he surely know that it shall be said of him, as of those faithful ones who saw only in vision the coming Christ: 'These all died in hope, not having obtained the promise.' I have attempted here some hints for the truth-lover. I warn him, on the start, that his work is endless, his discouragements many and great. Often and often it will seem that the evil is omnipotent, the false all-conquering. Again and again his heart must sink in half despair before the world's triumphant wrongs, before its overwhelming lies. In many a dark time the heavens will seem brass and the earth iron, and the evil victorious over all. He must be prepared for this. There is no good in cheating men with false hopes. In a world that crowns its saviors with thorns, such things are, and it is just as well to know it.

But there are encouragements too. The conviction is perennial among men, that, on the whole, the false must go down. That is one strong encouragement. This is another, that, after all, men are truth-lovers. The true instincts of the race will give themselves voice some time, and when they speak they shake the world. On the whole, they are for the right thing and the true thing. All history, I believe, will bear them that testimony.

But the great encouragement is, that the Lord is King, that a true God owns creation, that He is on the side of truth, and armed against every lie. I think, between ourselves, that is encouragement enough. The side that Jehovah is on is a pretty strong side, no matter who is on the other. In the long run it will be the safe side, and the successful side.

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

_PART THE LAST._

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one _lives_
it!--to not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is
interesting.'--GOETHE.

'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished
or intended.'--WEBSTER'S _Dictionary_.