VERACITY. 207 



play, and cultivates that liabit of equivocation, subterfuge, hair- 

 splitting, and forced interpretation, than which nothing can be more 

 disastrous in its influence on the intellectual life. 



We do not wonder, then, that in the " ages of faith " — in the days 

 when theology held undisputed sway — truth should have been so 

 little prized, and falsehood, provided only it were falsehood in a 

 good cause, held so venial. John Sterling's uncompromising words 

 on leaving the priesthood — " ISTo, I can not lie for God " — are very 

 far indeed from describing the mental attitude of the early and 

 medisBval Church. " By the fourth century," says Mosheim, " the 

 monstrous and calamitous error " had taken possession of the ecclesi- 

 astical world, " that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when, 

 by that means, the interests of the Church might be promoted." The 

 history of the Church and councils, and of the growth of Christian 

 doctrine, only too clearly shows to what extent this principle was 

 put into practice.* " This absolute indifference to truth," writes 

 Mr. Lecky, " whenever falsehood could subserve the interests of the 

 Church, is perfectly explicable, and was found in multitudes who, 

 in other respects, exhibited the noblest virtue. An age which has 

 ceased to value impartiality of judgment will soon cease to value 

 accuracy of statement; and when credulity is inoculated as a virtue, 

 falsehood will not long be stigmatized as a vice. When, too, men 

 are firmly convinced that salvation can only be found within their 

 church, and that their church can absolve from all guilt, they will 

 speedily conclude that nothing can possibly be wrong which is bene- 

 ficial to it. They exchange the love of truth for what they call the 

 love of the truth." f Thus, under the predominating influence of 

 theology, men came to care more for creed than for veracity; and 

 among the countless evils which followed as a matter of course, 

 the habit of persecution sprang up and grew apace. Strictly 

 logical, from the theological standpoint, this habit simply carried 

 accepted principles over from theory into practice. In attacking 

 opinions with the strong arm of civil authority, in punishing 

 them with bodily torture, men merely treated the quest of truth 

 as a social crime, when already it had been denounced as a reli- 

 gious sin. 



So far as philosophical veracity is concerned, therefore, we have 

 to conclude that its growth must depend almost wholly upon the 

 decline of the theological and the spread of the scientific spirit. 

 And, indeed, whatever else the expansion of science may do for men 

 in the years to come, it is probably just in this extremely important 



* On the mendacity of the early Church and the way in which it forged prophecies and 

 fabricated evidence, see, e. g., Lecky's History of Rationalism, vol. i, pp. 434, 435. 

 \ History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 213. 



