On the Decay of the Art of Lying

On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain

[Sameul Clemens]

ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE

HISTORICAL

AND ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR

THE

THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE.[*]

[*] Did not take the prize.

Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the _custom_

of lying has suffered any decay or interruption--no,

for the Lie, as a Virtue, A Principle, is eternal; the

Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need,

the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest

friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth

while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns

the decay of the _art_ of lying. No high-minded man, no

man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and

slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to

see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence

I

naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it

is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to

the mothers in Israel. It would not become to me to

criticise you, gentlemen--who are nearly all my

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elders--and my superiors, in this thing--if I should

here and there _seem_ to do it, I trust it will in most

cases be more in a spirit of admiration than

fault-finding; indeed if this finest of the fine arts

had everywhere received the attention, the

encouragement, and conscientious practice and

development which this club has devoted to it, I should

not need to utter this lament, or shred a single tear.

I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit

of just and appreciative recognition. [It had been my

intention, at this point, to mention names and to give

illustrative specimens, but indications observable

about me admonished me to beware of the particulars and

confine myself to generalities.]

No fact is more firmly established than that lying

is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction

that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.

No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without

careful and diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes

without saying that this one ought to be taught in the

public schools--even in the newspapers. What chance has

the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated

expert? What chance have I

against Mr. Per--against a lawyer? _Judicious_

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lying is what the world needs.

I sometimes think it were even better and safer not

to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward,

unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.

Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that

venerable proverb:

Children and fools _always_ speak the truth. The

deduction is plain--adults and wise persons

_never_speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, "The

principle of truth may itself be carried into an

absurdity." In another place in the same chapters he

says, "The saying is old that truth should not be spoken

at all times; and those whom a sick conscience worries

into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and

nuisances." It is strong language, but true. None of

us could _live_ with an habitual truth-teller; but thank

goodness none of us has to. An habitual truth-teller

is simply an impossible creature; he does not exist;

he never has existed. Of course there are people who

_think_ they never lie, but it is not so--and this

ignorance is one of the very things that shame our

so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day;

every hour;

awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his

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mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his

feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey

deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but that is

a platitude.

In a far country where I once lived the ladies used

to go around paying calls, under the humane and kindly

pretence of wanting to see each other;

and when they returned home, they would cry out with

a glad voice, saying, "We made sixteen calls and found

fourteen of them out"--not meaning that they found out

anything important against the fourteen--no, that was

only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not

at home--and their manner of saying it expressed their

lively satisfaction in that fact. Now their pretence

of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two whom

they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and

mildest form of lying which is sufficiently described

as a deflection from the truth. Is it justifiable?

Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for

its object is, _not_ to reap profit, but to convey a

pleasure to the sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger

would plainly manifest, or even utter the fact that he

didn't want to see those people--and he would be an ass,

and inflict totally unnecessary pain.

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And next, those ladies in that far country--but

never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of lying,

that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to

their intelligence and an honor to their hearts. Let the

particulars go.

The men in that far country were liars, every one.

Their mere howdy-do was a lie, because _they_ didn't

care how you did, except they were undertakers. To the

ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made no

conscientious diagnostic of your case, but answered at

random, and usually missed it considerably. You lied

to the undertaker, and said your health was failing--a

wholly commendable lie, since it cost you nothing and

pleased the other man.

If a stranger called and interrupted you, you said

with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said

with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the

cannibals and it was dinner-time." When he went, you said

regretfully, "_Must_ you go?" and followed it with a

"Call again;" but you did no harm, for you did not

deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth

would have made you both unhappy.

I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and

loving art, and should be cultivated. The highest

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perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice,

built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded

forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal

truth. Let us do what we can to eradicate it. An

injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie.

Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks

an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do

otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is

not strictly worth saving. The man who tells a lie to

help a poor devil out of trouble, is one of whom the

angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who

casts his own welfare in jeopardy to succor his

neighbor's;

let us exalt this magnanimous liar."

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so,

also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth--a

fact that is recognized by the law of libel.

Among other common lies, we have the _silent_

lie--the deception which one conveys by simply keeping

still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate

truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining

that if they _speak_ no lie, they lie not at all. In

that far country where I once lived, there was a lovely

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spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and pure,

and whose character answered to them. One day I was

there at dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that

we are all liars. She was amazed, and said, "Not _all_?"

It was before "Pinafore's" time. so I did not make

the response which would naturally follow in our day,

but frankly said, "Yes, _all_--we are all liars.

There are no exceptions." She looked almost offended,

"Why, do you include _me_?" "Certainly," I said. "I

think you even rank as an expert." She said "Sh-'sh!

the children!" So the subject was changed in deference

to the children's presence, and we went on talking

about other things. But as soon as the young people were

out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter

and said, "I have made a rule of my life to never tell

a lie; and I

have never departed from it in a single instance."

I said, "I don't mean the least harm or disrespect, but

really you have been lying like smoke ever since I've

been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain,

because I'm not used to it." She required of me an

instance--just a single instance.

So I said--

"Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank,

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which the Oakland hospital people sent to you by the

hand of the sick-nurse when she came here to nurse your

little nephew through his dangerous illness. This blank

asks all manners of questions as to the conduct of that

sick-nurse: 'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she

ever forget to give the medicine?' and so forth and so

on. You are warned to be very careful and explicit in

your answers, for the welfare of the service requires

that the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished

for derelictions. You told me you were perfectly

delighted with this nurse--that she had a thousand

perfections and only one fault: you found you never

could depend on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently

while he waited in a chilly chair for her to rearrange

the warm bed.

You filled up the duplicate of this paper, and sent

it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse. How

did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any

time guilty of a negligence which was likely to result

in the patient's taking cold?' Come--everything is

decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to ten

cents you lied when you answered that question." She said,

"I

didn't; _I left it blank!_" "Just so--you have told

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a _silent_ lie; you have left it to be inferred that

you had no fault to find in that matter." She said, "Oh,

was that a lie? And _how_ could I mention her one single

fault, and she is so good?--It would have been cruel."

I said, "One ought always to lie, when one can do good

by it; your impulse was right, but your judgment was

crude;

this comes of unintelligent practice. Now observe

the results of this inexpert deflection of yours. You

know Mr. Jones's Willie is lying very low with

scarlet-fever; well, your recommendation was so

enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him, and

the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound

asleep for the last fourteen hours, leaving their

darling with full confidence in those fatal hands,

because you, like young George Washington, have a

reputa--

However, if you are not going to have anything to

do, I will come around to-morrow and we'll attend the

funeral together, for, of course, you'll naturally

feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal

a one, in fact, as the undertaker."

But that was not all lost. Before I was half-way

through she was in a carriage and making thirty miles

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an hour toward the Jones mansion to save what was left

of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse.

All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick;

I had been lying myself. But that same day, all the same,

she sent a line to the hospital which filled up the

neglected blank, and stated the _facts,_ too, in the

squarest possible manner.

Now, you see, this lady's fault was _not_ in lying,

but in lying injudiciously. She should have told the

truth, _there,_ and made it up to the nurse with a

fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She

could have said, "In one respect this sick-nurse is

perfection--when she is on the watch, she never

snores." Almost any little pleasant lie would have taken

the sting out of that troublesome but necessary

expression of the truth.

Lying is universal--we _all_ do it. Therefore, the

wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to

lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good

object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage,

and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely,

not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully

and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily;

to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect,

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not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as

being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid

of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land;

then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and

worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature

habitually lies, except when she promises execrable

weather.

Then--But am I but a new and feeble student in this

gracious art; I cannot instruct _this_ club.

Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise

examination into what sorts of lies are best and

wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we _must_ all lie and

we _do_ all lie, and what sorts it may be best to

avoid--and this is a thing which I feel I can

confidently put into the hands of this experienced

Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard,

and without undue flattery, Old Masters.

End

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