AS APPLIED TO MAN. 353 



ages and countries, falsehood has been thought allow- 

 able in love, and laudable in war ; while, at the present 

 day, it is held to be venial by the majority of mankind, 

 in trade, commerce, and speculation. A certain amount 

 of untruthfulness is a necessary part of politeness in 

 the east and west alike, while even severe moralists 

 have held a lie justifiable, to elude an enemy or prevent 

 a crime. Such being the difficulties with which this 

 virtue has had to struggle, with so many exceptions 

 to its practice, with so many instances in which it 

 brought ruin or death to its too ardent devotee, how 

 can we believe that considerations of utility could 

 ever invest it with the mysterious sanctity of the 

 highest virtue, could ever induce men to value 

 truth for its own sake, and practice it regardless of 

 consequences ? 



Yet, it is a fact, that such a mystical sense of wrong 

 does attach to untruthfulness, not only among the 

 higher classes of civilized people, but among whole 

 tribes of utter savages. Sir Walter Elliott tells us 

 (in his paper " On the Characteristics of the Popula- 

 tion of Central and Southern India," published in 

 the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, 

 vol. i., p. 107) that the Kurubars and Santals, barbar- 

 ous hill-tribes of Central India, are noted for veracity. 

 It is a common saying that " a Kurubar always speaks 

 the truth; " and Major Jervis says, " the Santals are 

 the most truthful men I ever met with." As a re- 

 markable instance of this quality the following fact is 

 given. A number of prisoners, taken during the 



2 A 



