The next day, having made myself ready to execute this resolve, the first idea that came to me on beginning to meditate, was that of a piece of frightful deceit done in my early youth} the memory of which has troubled me all my life, and comes, even in my old age, to sadden my heart, already broken in so many other ways. This deceit, which was a great crime in itself, must have been an even greater one by its effects which I have never known, but which remorse has made me suppose as cruel as possible. However, merely con- sidering the state of mind in which I was in doing it, this deceit was nothing but a fruit of false shame; and very far from its Starting as an intention to work harm on her who was the victim, I can swear in the face of Heaven that at the same instant when this unconquerable shame drove me towards it, I would have given all my blood with joy to turn the effect of it upon myself alone; it was a delirium which I cannot explain except by saying, as I believed I felt it, that in this infant my natural timidity overcame all the desires of my heart, The remembrance of this unhappy a¢t, and the inex- tinguishable regrets which it left me, have inspired me with a horror for deceit which has preserved my heart from this vice for the rest of my life. When 1 took my 1 Rousseau is here referring to the episode of the servant girl Marion and the theft of a ribbon, narrated in Book IJ of the “ Confessions.”
79 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY motto, I felt myself made to merit it, and I did not doubt that I was worthy of it, when, at the remark of the Abbé Royou, I commenced to examine myself more seriously, Then, in analysing myself with more care, I was very much surprised with the number of things of my own invention which I remember having declared as true in the time when, proud in myself of my love for truth, I sacrificed to it my safety, my interests, my person, with an impartiality of which I know no other example amid men.
What surprised me the most was that in recalling to myself these fabrications, I did not feel any true repentance. I whose horror for falsehood has nothing in my heart which balances it, I who would brave the scaffold if it could only be avoided by an att of deceit, by what strange inconsequence did I lie thus in gaiety of heart without need, without profit; and by what inconceivable contradiftion did I not feel the least regret, I whom the remorse of a deceit has not ceased to affliG for fifty years? 1 was never hardened to my faults; the moral instinét has always conduéted me, my conscience has kept its first integrity; and even if it should be altered by bending to my interests, how,retaining all its uprightness on the occasions when man, forced by his passions, could at least excuse himself on the grounds of weakness, should it be lost only in indifferent matters when one has no excuse for vice? I saw that the solution of this problem depends 80 FOURTH PROMENADE on the ptecision of judgment that I have to make in this point upon myself; and after having well examined it, here is the way in which I succeeded in explaining it to myself, I remember having read in a philosophical book that to lie is to conceal a truth that one should display. It follows from this definition that to be silent about a truth that one is not obliged to speak is not to lie; but he who, not content in such a case to conceal the truth, says the contrary, does he lie or does he not lie? Ac- cording to the definition, one cannot say that he lies; because if he gives false money to a man to whom he owes nothing, he deceives this man without doubt, but he does not rob him.
There occur here two questions to examine, the one and the other very important—the first, when and how one owes truth to another, because one does not always owe it; the second, if there is a case in which one can innocently deceive. This second question is very often decided, I know well; negatively in books, where the mos austere morality costs nothing to the author; affirmatively in society, where the morality of books passes for a chatter impossible to practice. Let me leave, then, these authorities which contradi& them- selves, and let me seek, by my own principles, to resolve these questions for myself.
General and abétra& truth is the moét precious of all goods: without it man is blind; it is the eye of reason. It is through this that man learns to conduc 8r S REVERIES OF A SOLITARY himself, to be that which he should be, to do that which he should do, to tend towards his true end. Particular and individual truth is not always a good; it is sometimes an evil, very often an indifferent thing. The things which it imports a man to know, and of which the knowledge is necessary to his happiness, are not perhaps in great number; but in whatever number they are, they are a good which belongs to him, which he has the right to reclaim wherever he finds it, and of which he cannot be deprived without committing the most iniquitous of all robberies, because this good is of the nature of 2 good common to all, to communicate which does not deprive the giver of that which he gives.
As for the truths which have no sort of utility, neither for instruétion, nor for practice, how should they be an owed good, since they are not even a good? And since property is only founded upon utility, where there is no possible point of utility, there cannot be property. One can reclaim a piece of land however sterile, because one can at least inhabit the ground: but that a useless faét, unimportant in all respects and without value for anyone, should be true or false, does not interest anyone, In the moral order nothing is useless, any more than in the physical order; nothing can be due of that which is not good for anything: that a thing should be due, it is necessary that it is or may be useful. Thus the truth that is due is that which interests justice; and it 82 FOURTH PROMENADE is to profane the sacred name of truth to apply it to vain things the existence of which is indifferent to all, and the knowledge of which is useless for everything. Truth, deprived of every species of possible utility, cannot be a thing due, and in consequence he who is silent about it, or disguises it, does not lie.
But are there any truths so perfectly sterile that they are in every respect useless to all? This is another matter to discuss, and to which I shall return imme-+ diately. For the present, let us pass to the second question.
Not to say that which is true, and to say that which is false, are two very different things, but from which the same effect can nevertheless result, because this result is assuredly the same every time that the effeét is null, Wherever truth is indifferent, the contrary error is indifferent also: whence it follows that in the same case he who deceives in speaking the contrary of truth is no more unjust than he who deceives in not declaring it; because, in the matter of useless truths, error has nothing worse about it thanignorance. That I believe the sand which is at the bottom of the sea to be white or red, does not matter to me more than not knowing what colour it is. How could one be unjust in not injuring anyone, because injustice only consists in the wrong done to another?
But these queStions, so summarily decided, cannot furnish me with any sure application in practice, without many preliminary explanations necessary to 83 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY make with justice this application in all the cases which may present themselves; because if the obliga- tion to speak the truth is only founded upon its utility, how should I constitute myself judge of this utility? Very often the advantage of the one makes for the prejudice of the other; private interest is almoét always in opposition to public interest. How should one conduét oneself in such a case? Is it necessary to sacrifice the utility of the absent person to that of the person who is speaking? Is it necessary to keep silent or to say the truth, that, profiting the one, hurts the other? Is it necessary to weigh all that one can say in the unique balance of the public good, or in that of distributive justice? And am I assured of knowing sufficiently all the relationships of things 80 as not to expend the knowledge I dispose of except according to the rules of equity? What is more, in examining that which one owes to others, have I sufficiently examined that which one owes to oneself, that which one owes to truth for its own sake? If I do no harm to another in deceiving him, does it follow that I do no harm to myself, and does it suffice never to be unjust in order to be always innocent?
‘What an embarrassing discussion, of which it would be easy to extricate oneself by saying: Let us be always true at the risk of everything that might result, Justice itself is in the truth of things; deceit is always iniquity, error is always imposture, when one gives that which is not for the rule of that which one should do or 84 FOURTH PROMENADE believe; and whatever effect results from the truth, one is always blameless when one has said it, because one has put nothing of one’s own to it.
But this is to cut the question short, rather than to resolve it: we are not concerned with pronouncing whether it is good always to speak the truth, but whether it is always equally obligatory to speak it; and according to the definition of truth which I have examined, supposing that the answer is negative, to distinguish the cases when truth is rigorously due from those in which one may be silent without injustice, and disguise it without deceit; because I have found that such cases really exist. What concerns us is, then, to seek a sure rule to know these cases and to determine them, But whence shall we draw such a rule, and the proof of its infallibility? In all questions of morality as difficult as this, I have always found the way to resolve them by the diftation of my conscience, rather than by the lights of my reason; never has the moral instinct deceived me; it has retained up to now this purity in my heart sufficiently for me to yield myself to it: and if it is silent sometimes in face of my passions in my condu¢t, itresumes its power over them in my memory; it is there that I judge myself with perhaps as much severity as I shall be judged by the sovereign Judge after this life.
To judge of the speeches of men by the effects they produce is often to appreciate them wrongly. Apart from the fact that these effets are not always felt and 85 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY easy to understand, they vary as infinitely as the cir- cumstances in which the discourses are held; but it is solely the intention of him who holds them that gives them value and determines their degree of malice or good will. To speak falsely is not to lie except from the intention of deceiving, and the intention itself of deceiving, far from being always joined with that of in- juring, has often a goal entirely contrary; but to render a deceit innocent it does not suffice that the intention of injuring should not be deliberate, it is necessary as well that the error into which one casts those to whom one speaks cannot injure them or anyone, in any way whatever. It is rare and difficult to have this certainty; thus it is difficult and rare that a deceit should be perfectly innocent. To lie for one’s own advantage is imposture, to lie for the advantage of another is fraud, to lie in order to do harm is calumny —it is the worst kind of deceit: to lie without profit or prejudice to oneself or another is not to lie; it is not a deceit, it is fiction, The fictions which have a moral object are called apologues or fables; and as their object is not or should not be anything except to envelop useful truths under sensible and agreeable forms, in such a case one does not attempt to hide the deceit of fact, which is nothing but the habit of truth; and he who puts forth a fable only as a fable does not lie in any fashion.
There are other fiGtions purely useless, such as the greater part of novels and romances, which, without FOURTH PROMENADE containing any true instrudtion, have no obje& but amusement. These, deprived of all moral utility, cannot be estimated except by considering the intention of him who invented them; and when he brings them out affirming them to be real truths, one can scarcely affirm that these are not real deceits. Nevertheless, who has ever made a great point of such deceits, and who has made a serious reproach to those who create them? If there is, for instance, any moral objeé&t in the “Temple of Cnidus,”! this objec is entirely obscured and spoilt by voluptuous details and lascivious images. What has the author done to cover these with a varnish of modesty? He has pretended that his work was the translation of a Greek manuscript, and he has told the story of the discovery of this manuscript in the way most likely to persuade his readers of the truth of his recital. If this is not a positive piece of deceit, let someone tell me what is lying? Nevertheless, who is there who has decided to make a crime of this deceit in the author, and to treat him on this account as an impostor?
One may say in vain that all this is only a pleasantry; that the author, in affirming his work to bea translation, has not wished to persuade anyone; that he has not persuaded anyone in fat, and that the public has not doubted for a moment that he was the author of the supposed Greek work of which he claimed to be the translator. I shall reply that such a pleasantry 2 By Montesquieu. 87 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY without any obje& could be nothing but a foolish piece of childishness; that a liar does not lie less when he affirms, although he does not persuade; that it is necessary to detach from the instruéted public the multitudes of simple and credulous readers upon whom the history of the manuscript, told by a serious author with an air of good faith, has really imposed, and who have drunken without fear, in a cup of ancient form, the poison which they would be at least on their guard againgt if it were presented in a modern vase.
That these diStin@tions be found or not in books, they are none the less made in the heart of every man who acts in accordance with good faith, who does not permit himself anything of which his conscience can reproach him; because to say a false thing to one’s own advantage is not less to lie than if one said it to the prejudice of another, although the deceit is less criminal, To give the advantage to whoever ought not to have it is to disturb the order of justice; to attri- bute falsely to oneself or to another an aét from which praise or blame, inculpation or disculpation may result is to do an unjust thing: hence all that which, contrary to the truth, injures justice in any fashion whatever isadeceit. This is the exaét limit: but all that which, contrary to truth, does not interest justice in any way is nothing but a fi€tion, and I declare that whoever reproaches himself for a pure fiction as a deceit has a conscience more delicate than I.
‘That which one calls deceits are true deceits, because 88 FOURTH PROMENADE to impose them either to the advantage of another, or to one’s own, is not less unjust than to impose them to one’s detriment; whoever praises or blames contrary to truth lies as soon as it concerns a real being. Ifa man is discussing an imaginary being, he can say all that he wishes without lying, at least so far as he does not judge of the morality of the fa&ts which he is inventing, and so far as he does not judge falsely; for then if he does not lie in fact, he lies against the moral truth, a hundred times more respe€table than that of facts, T have seen some of those people whom are called truthful in the world; all their veracity was exhausted in tedious conversations which faithfully cited the places, the times, the people; who did not permit themselves any fiction, or to embroider upon any circumstance, and who exaggerated nothing. In all that did not touch upon their interest, they were of the most in- violable fidelity in their narrations: but if it was a ‘question of treating some matter which concerned them, to narrate some fact which touched them, nearly all the colours were employed to present things under the light which was most advantageous; and if deceit is useful to them and they abstain from speaking it themselves, they will favour it cleverly and behave in such a way that it is adopted without being imputed to them. So prudence commands: farewell to truth!
The man whom I call truthful does just the contrary. In perfectly indifferent matters, the truth, which for the rest the other man respeéts so much, touches him 89 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY very little, and he scarcely makes a scruple of amusing a company by controverted fats, from which there results no unjust judgment, neither for nor against whoever may be living or dead: but every discourse which produces for anyone profit or injury, esteem or dislike, praise or blame, against justice and truth, is a deceit which never shall approach his heart, or his mouth, or his pen. He is solidly truthful, even against his interest, although he troubles himself little about being so in idle conversation: he is truthful in that he does not seek to deceive anyone, that he is as faithful to the truth which accuses him as to that which honours him, and that he does not ever impose for his advant- age, nor to injure his enemy. The difference, then, between my truthful man and the other is that he whom the world calls truthful is rigorously faithful to all truth which does not cost him anything, but not beyond that; while the man I call truthful never employs truth so faithfully as when it is necessary to immolate himself for her.
But, it may be said, how should one make this moral laxity accord with that ardent love for the truth with which I have glorified it? This love for truth then is false, because it suffers so much alloy? No; it is pure and true; but it is nothing but an emanation of the love of justice and does not ever desire to be false, although it may be often fabulous, Justice and truth are in such a man’s spirit two synonymous words, which he takes indifferently one for another; the holy truth that his go FOURTH PROMENADE heart adores does not consist in indifferent faGs and in useless names, but in rendering faithfully to each one whatever is owing to him in things that are inevitably his, in good or bad imputations, in retributions of honour or of blame, of praise or of disapproval; he is false neither against another, because his equity forbids and he does not wish to injure a person unjustly, nor for his own advantage, because his conscience forbids him, and he cannot appropriate what is not his own, It is above all of his own self-respect that he is watchful; this is the good which he can least afford to lose, and he would feel a real loss in acquiring that of others at the expense of this good. He lies, then, sometimes in indifferent matters without scruple and without thinking it a lie, never for the injury or for the profit of another or for himself: in all that depends upon hiftoric truths, in all that concerns the conduét of men, or sociability, or useful knowledge, he will preserve both himself and others from error, as much as it depends upon him, Every deceit apart from this, according to him, is none. Ifthe “ Temple of Cnidus ” is a useful work, the history of the Greek manuscript is nothing but a very innocent fidtion; it is a deceit very punishable if the work is dangerous, Such were my rules of conscience upon deceit and upon truth; my heart followed mechanically these rules before my reason had adopted them, and the moral inStin@& alone made the application. The criminal deceit of which poor Marion was the victim has left me gi REVERIES OF A SOLITARY with ineffaceable remorse, which has preserved me for the rest of my life not only from deceits of this kind, but from all those which, in whatever fashion they exist, might touch the interest and the reputation of another. In generalising thus upon the exclusion, I have dispensed myself from weighing exaétly the advantage and the prejudice, and from marking the precise limits of the harmful deceit and of the officious deceit; in regarding the one and the other as culpable, I have forbidden myself both.
In this, as in all the rest, my temperament has had much influence upon my maxims, or rather upon my habits; because I have scarcely acted according to rule, or have scarcely followed other rules in anything except the impulses of my natural disposition, Never has a premeditated deceit approached my thought; never have I lied in my own interest; but often I have lied through shame in order to draw myself from embar- rassment in indifferent matters, or matters which did not interest any but myself, when, having to sustain a discussion, the slowness of my ideas and the dryness of my conversation forced me to have recourse to fictions in order to say something, When it was necessary to speak and when amusing truths did not present them- selves swiftly enough to my spirit, I made up fables in order not to remain silent: but in the invention of these fables I took care, as much as I could, that they should not be deceits; that is to say, that they did not wound either justice or truth, and that they were only FOURTH PROMENADE FOURTH PROMENADE fiGtions indifferent to al] the world and to myself. My desire was entirely to substitute at least for the truth of faéts a moral truth, that is to say to represent well the affe&tions natural to the human heart, and to make some useful instruction always emerge—to make, in a word, moral Stories, apologues; but there needed more pre- sence of mind than I have, and more facility in words, to know how to put to profit, for instruction, the babble of talk. Its progress, more rapid than that of my ideas, forcing me almost always to speak before think- ing, has often suggested to me foolish things and ineptitudes of which my reason disapproved, and which my heart disavowed at the moment they escaped from my mouth, but which, preceding my own judgment, could not be reformed by its censure.
It is Still by this first and irresistible impulse of my temperament, that in unforeseen and rapid moments, shame and timidity have often extorted from me deceits in which my will took no part, but which preceded it in some fashion by the necessity of responding upon the moment. The profound impression of the memory of poor Marion may well make me refrain from all those deceits that might be of harm to others, but not from those that might serve to draw me from embarrassment when it concerns myself alone— which is not less against my conscience and my principles than those deceits which might influence the lot of another.
I call the Heavens to witness that if I could the 93 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY moment after retra€t the deceit which excuses me, and say the truth which weighs upon me, without making a new insult by withdrawing it, I would do it with a good heart; but the shame of being taken thus myself at fault holds me still back, and I repent very sincerely of my fault, without nevertheless being able to make reparation. An example will explain better what I wish to say, and show that I lie neither through interest nor through self-love, even less from envy or from malignity, but solely through embarrassment and shame, knowing very well sometimes that this deceit is known as such, and cannot serve me at all.
Some time ago, Monsieur F. asked me, against my custom, to go with my wife to dine, in a sort of picnic, with him and Monsieur B, at the house of Mrs, Blank, the proprietor of a reStaurant, who with her two daughters would also dine with us. In the midé&t of the dinner, the eldest who had married some time ago, and was pregnant, decided to ask me, fixing her eyes upon me, if I had had children, I responded while blushing up to the eyes, that I had not had this hap- piness. She smiled maliciously and looked at the company: all this was not obscure, even for me.
It is clear at once that this response is not that which I should have wished to make; even if I should have had the intention of imposing it; because in the state of mind in which I saw the guests, I was sure that my response did not change anything in respect to their opinion on that point. They expected this FOURTH PROMENADE negative, they provoked it even, to enjoy the pleasure of having made me lie, I was not dolt enough to overlook this. Two minutes afterwards, the response that I should have made came to me of myself. “That is a very indis- creet question on the part of a young woman, to a man who has grown old as a bachelor.” In speaking so, without lying, I should have put the laughers on my side, and I should have read a little lesson to them, which naturally would make them a little less imperti- nent in questioning me. I did nothing of all this, and I did not say what I should have said, I said what was not necessary to say, and what could not help me in any respect. It is certain, thery ‘that neither my judgment nor my will di@ated m response, and that it was the mechanical effort of my embarrassment. Otherwise, I should not have had this embarrassment, and I should have made the avowal of my faults with more freedom than shame, because I did not doubt that no one saw what redeemed them and what I felt within myself; but the eye of malignity upset and disconcerted me: in becoming more unhappy, I have become more timid, and never have I lied except through timidity.
I have never better felt my aversion for the lie than in writing my “Confessions”; because it is there that the temptations were frequent and strong, however little my inclination carried me in that direction; but far from having been silent about anything, dissimulated anything that was at my own expense, by a turn of 95 REVERIES OF A SOLITARY mind that I have difficulty in explaining, and which comes perhaps from a dislike for all imitation, I felt myself rather drawn to lie in the contrary sense, and to accuse myself with too much severity rather than to excuse myself with too much indulgence; and my conscience assures me that one day I shall be judged less severely than I have judged myself. Yes, I say and I feel with a proud elevation of soul, in that book I have carried good faith, truth, frankness, as far, farther even (at least I believe) than any other man has done; knowing that the good surpassed the evil, Thad an interest in saying everything, and I have said everything. ben T have never sai®,css; I have said more sometimes, not in the facts, bit in the circumstances, and this species of deceit was more the effect of delirium of imagination than an aét of will: I was wrong in calling it deceit, because none of these additions was one. I wrote my “Confessions” already old and disgusted with the vain pleasures of life that I had picked to pieces, and of which my heart had felt the void. I wrote them from memory; this memory failed me often or did not furnish me with anything but imperfect sou- venirs, and I filled up the gaps with details which I imagined as a supplement to these memories, but which ‘were never contradiCtory to them. I loved to expatiate on the happy moments of my life, and I embellished them sometimes with the ornaments with which tender regrets came to furnish me. I spoke of things which FOURTH PROMENADE I had forgotten as it seemed to me they should have been, as they had been perhaps in fact; never to the contrary of that which I recalled they had been. I lent sometimes strange charms to truth, but never have I put deceit in its stead in order to palliate my vices, or to arrogate virtues to myself.
And if sometimes, without thinking, by an in- voluntary movement, I have hidden the deformed side, in painting myself only in part as I was, these reticences have been compensated for by other reticences much more bizarre, which have often made me be silent about the good no less than the evil. Thisis a singularity of my natural temperament, which it is very pardon- able in men not to believe, but which, unbelievable as it is, is not less real; I have often told the bad in all its baseness, I have rarely told the good in all its pleasant- ness, and often I have kept silent because it honoured me too much, and because, writing my “Confessions,” I should have seemed to be eulogising myself. I have described my young years without priding myself upon qualities with which my heart was gifted, and even with the suppression of faéts which made them too much in evidence, I here recall two faéts of my early youth which both returned to my memory in writing them, but which I have rejeéted for the sole reason I have mentioned, I went almost every Sunday to pass the day at Paquis, at the house of M. Fazy, who had married one of my aunts, and who had there a fattory of cotton REVERIES OF A SOLITARY prints. One day I was in the drying-house, in the room of the calendering machine, and I looked at the cylinders of lead; their shine pleased my eyes: I was tempted to touch them, and I stretched out my fingers to stroke the smooth side of the cylinder, when the young Fazy, having set himself at the wheel, gave it a half-turn so quickly that he did not take anything but the end of my two longest fingers, but this was enough to crush them at the end, and the two nails were torn out. I gave a piercing cry; Fazy stopped the wheel upon the instant; but the nails still remained between the cylinders, and the blood poured from my fingers, Fazy, frightened, cried out, left the wheel, embraced me, and begged me to hush my cries, adding that he was lost. In the midé of my pain, his own touched me; I was silent, we went to the carp-pond, where he helped me to wash my fingers and to staunch my blood with some moss. He begged me with tears not to accuse him; I promised and I kept my promise so well that twenty years after, no one knew by what adven- ture I had two of my fingers scarred; because they remained so always. I was kept in my bed more than three weeks, and for more than two months was unable to make use of my hand, saying always that a heavy stone, in falling, had crushed my fingers. “ Magnanimous deceit! wherever is the true So fair, that it has power to conquer you?”
This accident, however, was very deeply felt by me, under the circumstances, because it was the time of the 98 FOURTH PROMENADE military exercises, in which the townspeople took part, and we had formed a file of three other children of my age, with whom I was, in uniform, to do the exercises with the company of my quarter. I had the misfortune of hearing the drum of the company beating under my window for my three comrades while I was Sill in bed.
My other story is similar, but relates to a later age.