xxiv HIS NATURAL TENDENCY TO VERACITY 439 



was of opinion that they ought to know ' the mythology 

 of their time and country," otherwise one would at the best 

 tend to make young prigs of them ; but as they grew up, 

 their questions should be answered frankly.* 



The natural tendency to veracity, strengthened by the 

 observation of the opposite quality in one with whom he 

 was early brought into contact, received its decisive impulse, 

 as has been told before, from Carlyle, whose writings con- 

 firmed and established his youthful reader in a hatred of 

 shams and make-believes equal to his own. 



In his mind no compromise was possible between truth 

 and untruth, f Against authorities and influences he pub- 

 lished Man's Place in Nature, though warned by his friends 

 that to do so meant ruin to his prospects. When he had 

 once led the way and challenged the upholders of conven- 

 tional orthodoxy, others backed him up with a whole 

 armoury of facts. But his fight was as far as possible for 

 the truth itself, for fact, not merely for controversial victory 

 or personal triumph. Yet, as has been said by a repre- 

 sentative of a very different school of thought, who can 

 wonder that he should have hit out straight from the shoul- 

 der, in reply to violent or insidious attacks, the stupidity 

 of which sometimes merited scorn as well as anger? 



In his theological controversies he was no less careful to 

 avoid any approach to mere abuse or ribaldry such as some 

 opponents of Christian dogma indulged in. For this reason 

 he refused to interpose in the well-known Foote case. Dis- 

 cussion, he said, could be carried on effectually without 

 deliberate wounding of others' feelings. 



* The wording of a paragraph in Professor Mivart's "Reminis- 

 cences" (Nineteenth Century, December 1897, p. 993), tends, I think, to 

 leave a wrong impression on this point. 



f As he once said, when urged to write a more eulogistic notice of 

 a dead friend than he thought deserved, "The only serious tempta- 

 tions to perjury I have ever known have arisen out of the desire to be 

 of some comfort to people I cared for in trouble. If there are such 

 things as Plato's 'Royal Lies' they are surely those which one is 



tempted to tell on such occasions. Mrs. is such a good devoted 



little woman, and I am so doubtful about having a soul, that it seems 

 absurd to hesitate to peril it for her satisfaction." 



