488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Reference to the Reports on the Discovery of Peru of Xeres 

 and Pizarro (pp. 68-9, 85-6, 114-120), makes it manifest that 

 the general untruthfulness described was due to the intimidation 

 the Indians were subject to. So, too, respecting the Mexicans, 

 the Franciscan testimony was " They are liars, but to those who 

 treat them well they speak the truth readily." A clear conception 

 of the relation between mendacity and fear was given to Living- 

 stone by his experiences. Speaking of the falsehood of the East 

 Africans he says 



" Bnt great as this failing is among the free, it is much more annoying among the 

 slaves. One can scarcely induce a slave to translate anything truly : he is so 

 intent on thinking of what will please." 



And he further remarks that " untruthfulness is a sort of refuge 

 for the weak and oppressed." 



A glance over civilized communities at once furnishes verifi- 

 cation. Of European peoples, those subject to the most absolute 

 rule, running down from their autocrat through all grades, are 

 the Russians ; and their extreme untruthfulness is notorious. 

 Among the Egyptians, long subject to a despotism administered 

 by despotic officials, a man prides himself on successful lying, and 

 will even ascribe a defect of his work to failure in deceiving some 

 one. Then we have the case of the Hindus, who, in their early 

 days irresponsibly governed, afterwards subject for a long period 

 to the brutal rule of the Mahometans, and since that time to the 

 scarcely-less brutal rule of the Christians, are so utterly untruth- 

 ful that oaths in Courts of Justice are of no avail, and lying is 

 confessed to without shame. Histories tell like tales of a men- 

 dacity which, beginning with the ruled, infects the rulers. "Writ- 

 ing of the later feudal period in France, Michelet says : " It is 

 curious to trace from year to year the lies and tergiversations of 

 the royal false coiner"; but nowadays political deceptions in 

 France, though still practiced, are nothing like so gross. Nor has 

 it been otherwise among ourselves. If with the " universal and 

 loathsome treachery of which every statesman of every party 

 was continually guilty," during Elizabeth's reign, while monarchi- 

 cal power was still but little qualified, we contrast the veracity of 

 statesmen in recent days, we see a kindred instance of the rela- 

 tions between the untruthfulness which accompanies tyranny 

 and the truthfulness which arises along with increase of liberty. 



Hence such connections as we trace between mendacity and a 

 life of external enmity, and between veracity and a life of inter- 

 nal amity, are not due to any direct relations between violence 

 and lying and between peacefulness and truth-telling ; but are 

 due to the coercive social structure which chronic external enmity 

 develops, and to the non-coercive social structure developed by a 



