484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



considering that Jahveh set the example ; as when, to ruin Ahab, 

 he commissioned "a lying spirit" (1 Kings, xxii, 22) to deceive his 

 prophets ; or as when, according to Ezekiel, xiv, 9, he threatened 

 to use deception as a means of vengeance. 



" If the prophet he deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have de- 

 ceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy 

 him from the midst of my people Israel." 



Evidently from a race-character which evolved such a conception 

 of a deity's principles, there naturally came no great regard for 

 veracity. This we see in sundry cases ; as when Isaac said Re- 

 becca was not his wife but his sister, and nevertheless received 

 the same year a bountiful harvest : " the Lord blessed him " (Gene- 

 sis, xxvi, 12) ; or as when Rebecca induced Jacob to tell a lie to his 

 father and defraud Esau a lie not condemned but shortly fol- 

 lowed by a divine promise of prosperity ; or as when Jeremiah 

 tells a falsehood at the king's suggestion. Nor do we find the 

 standard much changed in the days of Christ and after : instance 

 the case of Paul, who, apparently rather piquing himself on his 

 " craft and guile," elsewhere defends his acts by contending that 

 " the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his 

 glory." (Romans, iii, 7.) 



Much regard for veracity was hardly to be expected among 

 the Greeks. In the Iliad the gods are represented not only as 

 deceiving men but as deceiving one another. The chiefs " do not 

 hesitate at all manner of lying." Pallas Athene is described as 

 loving Ulysses because he is so deceitful ; and, in the words of 

 Mahaff y, the Homeric society is full of guile and falsehood." * 

 Nor was it widely otherwise in later days. The trait alleged of 

 the Cretens " always liars " though it may have been more 

 marked in them than in Greeks at large, did not constitute an 

 essential difference. Mahaffy describes Greek conduct in the 

 Attic age as characterized by " treachery " and " selfish knavery," 



* Marvelous are the effects of educational bias. Familiarity with the doings of these 

 people, guilty of so many " atrocities," characterized by such " revolting cruelty of man- 

 ners," as Grote says, who were liars through all grades from their gods down to their slaves, 

 and whose religion was made up of gross and brutal superstitions, distinguishes one of our 

 leading statesmen ; and, joined to familiarity with the doings of other Greeks, is thought 

 by him to furnish the best possible preparation for life of the highest kind. In a speech at 

 Eton, reported in The Times, of 16 March, 1891, Mr. Gladstone said " If the purpose of 

 education is to fit the human mind for the efficient performance of the greatest functions, 

 the ancient culture, and, above all, Greek culture, is by far the best, the most lasting, and 

 the most elastic instrument that can possibly be applied to it." Other questions aside, one 

 might ask with puzzled curiosity which of Mr. Gladstone's creeds, as a statesman, it is 

 which we must ascribe to the influence of Greek culture whether the creed with which he 

 set out as a Tory when fresh from Oxford, or the extreme radical creed which he has 

 adopted of late years ? 



