‘AS APPLIED TO MAN. 353. 
ages and countries, falsehood has been thought allow- 
able in love, and laudable in war ; while, at the present 
day, it is held to be venial by the majority of mankind, 
in trade, commerce, and speculation. A certain amount 
of untruthfulness is a necessary part of politeness in 
the east and west alike, while even severe moralists 
have held a lie justifiable, to elude an enemy or prevent 
a crime. Such being the difficulties with which this 
virtue has had to struggle, with so many exceptions 
to its practice, with so many instances in which it 
brought ruin or death to its too ardent devotee, how 
can we believe that considerations of utility could 
ever invest it with the mysterious sanctity of the 
highest virtue,—could ever induce men to value 
truth for its own sake, and practice it regardless of 
consequences ? 
Yet, it is a fact, that such a mystical sense of wrong 
does attach to untruthfulness, not only among the 
higher classes of civilized people, but among whole 
tribes of utter savages. Sir Walter Elliott tells us 
(in his paper “On the Characteristics of the Popula- 
tion of Central and Southern India,” published in 
the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, 
vol. i., p. 107) that the Kurubars and Santals, barbar- 
ous hill-tribes of Central India, are noted for veracity. 
Itis a common saying that ‘a Kurubar always speaks 
the truth; ” and Major Jervis says, ‘the Santals are 
the most truthful men I ever met with.’ As a re- 
markable instance of this quality the following fact is 
given. A number of prisoners, taken during the 
2a 
