Such a soul,though to the eye he still keeps tumbling about in the Parliamentary element,and makes "motions,"and passes bills,for aught I k,--are we to define him as a living one,or as a dead?Partridge the Almanac-Maker,whose "Publications"still regularly appear,is kn to be dead!The dog that was drowned last summer,and that floats up and down the Thames with ebb and flood ever since,--is it dead?Alas,in the hot months,you meet here and there such a floating dog;and at length,if you often use the river steamers,get to k him by sight."There he is again,still astir there in his quasi-stygian element!"you dejectedly exclaim (perhaps reading your Morning Newspaper at the moment);and reflect,with a painful oppression of e and imagination,on certain completed professors of parliamentary eloquence in modern times.Dead long since,but resting;daily doing motions in that Westminster region still,--daily from Vauxhall to Blackfriars,and back again;and can get away at all!Daily (from Newspaper or river steamer)you may see him at some point of his fated course,hovering in the eddies,stranded in the ooze,or rapidly progressing with flood or ebb;and daily the odor of him is getting more intolerable:daily the condition of him appeals more tragically to gods and men.
Nature admits lie;most men profess to be aware of this,but few in any measure lay it to heart.Except in the departments of mere material manipulation,it seems to be taken practically as if this grand truth were merely a polite flourish of rhetoric.
What is a lie?The question is worth asking,once and away,by the practical English mind.
A voluntary spoken divergence from the fact as it stands,as it has occurred and will proceed to develop itself:this clearly,if adopted by any man,will so far forth mislead him in all practical dealing with the fact;till he cast that statement out of him,and reject it as an unclean poisos thing,he can have success in dealing with the fact.If such spoken divergence from the truth be involuntary,we lament it as a misfortune;and are entitled,at least the speaker of it is,to lament it extremely as the most palpable of all misfortunes,as the indubitablest losing of his way,and turning aside from the goal instead of pressing towards it,in the race set before him.If the divergence is voluntary,--there superadds itself to our sorrow a just indignation:we call the voluntary spoken divergence a lie,and justly abhor it as the essence of human treason and baseness,the desertion of a man to the Enemy of men against himself and his brethren.A lost deserter;who has gone over to the Enemy,called Satan;and can but be lost in the adventure!Such is every liar with the tongue;and such in all nations is he,at all epochs,considered.Men pull his e,and kick him out of doors;and by peremptory expressive methods signify that they can and will have trade with him.Such is spoken divergence from the fact;so fares it with the practiser of that sad art.
But have we well considered a divergence in thought from what is the fact?Have we considered the man whose very thought is a lie to him and to us!He too is a frightful man;repeating about this Universe on every hand what is ,and driven to repeat it;the sure herald of ruin to all that follow him,that k with his kledge!And would you learn how to get a mendacious thought,there is surer recipe than carrying a loose tongue.
The lying thought,you already either have it,or will soon get it by that method.He who lies with his very tongue,he clearly egh has long ceased to think truly in his mind.Does he,in any sense,"think"?All his thoughts and imaginations,if they extend beyond mere beaverisms,astucities and sensualisms,are false,incomplete,perverse,untrue even to himself.He has become a false mirror of this Universe;a small mirror only,but a crooked,bedimmed and utterly deranged one.But all loose tongues too are akin to lying ones;are insincere at the best,and go rattling with little meaning;the thought lying languid at a great distance behind them,if thought there be behind them at all.Gradually there will be e or little!How can the thought of such a man,what he calls thought,be other than false?
Alas,the palpable liar with his tongue does at least k that he is lying,and has or might have some faint vestige of remorse and chance of amendment;but the impalpable liar,whose tongue articulates mere accepted commonplaces,cants and babblement,which means only,"Admire me,call me an excellent stump-orator!"--of him what hope is there?His thought,what thought he had,lies dormant,inspired only to invent vocables and plausibilities;while the tongue goes so glib,the thought is absent,gone a wool-gathering;getting itself drugged with the applausive "Hear,hear!"--what will become of such a man?His idle thought has run all to seed,and grown false and the giver of falsities;the inner light of his mind is gone out;all his light is mere putridity and phosphorescence henceforth.
Whosoever is in quest of ruin,let him with assurance follow that man;he or one is on the right road to it.