VERACITY. 203 



if we all ceased to believe in fair dealing, the deceiver's occupation 

 would be gone. As Mr. Leckj says, in industrial societies " veracity 

 becomes the first virtue in the moral type, and no character is re- 

 garded with any kind of approbation in which it is wanting. It is 

 more than any other the test distinguishing a good man from a bad 

 man. . . . This constitutes probably the chief moral superiority of 

 nations pervaded by a strong industrial spirit over nations like the 

 Italians, the Spaniards, or the Irish, among whom that spirit is want- 

 ing. The usual characteristic of the latter nations is a certain laxity 

 or instability of character, a proneness to exaggeration, a want of 

 truthfulness in little things, an infidelity to engagements, from which 

 an Englishman, educated in the habits of industrial life, readily 

 infers a complete absence of moral principle." We may even go 

 with him when he adds, " The promotion of industrial veracity is 

 probably the single form in which the growth of manufactures exer- 

 cises a favorable influence upon morals." 



It is important to note the almost entire absence of this kind of 

 veracity among the Greeks, because this fact shows us that truthful- 

 ness is not necessarily the result of a high state of civilization, but 

 only of a state of civilization accompanied by such life conditions as 

 tend to make truthfulness a habit. And if we inquire what such con- 

 ditions are, we shall probably find that they depend, more than upon 

 any other single cause, upon the gradual subsidence of the regime 

 of mutual antagonism, and the rise of the regime of mutual help.* 

 So far as industrialism has abated the struggle for existence among 

 individuals and nations, it has promoted veracity ; while to the extent 

 to which it only keeps this struggle alive under changed forms, it 

 merely perpetuates the untruthfulness which was from the first a 

 concomitant of such struggle. 



2. Political Veracity. — By this, still following Mr. Lecky, 

 we mean the spirit of impartiality which, in matters of controversy, 

 desires that all facts, arguments, opinions, should be freely and fully 

 stated — in a word, the spirit of fair play. We call it " political," 

 because it is undoubtedly to be interpreted as a growth, immediately, 

 out of developing freedom in political life. Democratic progress, 

 then, provided it be democratic in reality as well as in name, will 

 favor the spread of this particular form of truthfulness; coercive 

 rule (whether it come through the tyranny of the one or of the many) 

 will always prove hostile to it. It sufiices here to observe these con- 

 nections, without undertaking any analysis of the relations subsisting 

 between forms of government and social activities. A free platform 



* For evidence on this point, see Spencer's Principles of Ethics, Part II, chapter ix, 

 Mr. Spencer, of course, connects the growth of veracity, directly or indirectly, with the de- 

 cline of militancy and the spread of peaceful activities. 



