TRUTH is the
rock foundation of every great character. It is loyalty to the right as we see
it; it is courageous living of our lives in harmony with our ideals; it is
always—power.
Truth ever
defies full definition. Like electricity it can only be explained by noting its
manifestation. It is the compass of the soul, the guardian of conscience, the
final touchstone of right. Truth is the revelation of the ideal; but it is also
an inspiration to realize that ideal, a constant impulse to live it.
Lying is one of
the oldest vices in the world—it made its debut in the first recorded
conversation in history, in a famous interview in the garden of Eden. Lying is
the sacrifice of honor to create a wrong impression. It is masquerading in
misfit virtues. Truth can stand alone, for it needs no chaperone or escort.
Lies are cowardly, fearsome things that must travel in battalions. They are
like a lot of drunken men, one vainly seeking to support another. Lying is the
partner and accomplice of all the other vices.
Truth is the
oldest of all the virtues; it antedated man, it lived before there was man to
perceive it or to accept it. It is the unchangeable, the constant. Law is the
eternal truth of Nature—the unity that always produces identical results under
identical conditions. When a man discovers a great truth in Nature he has the
key to the understanding of a million phenomena; when he grasps a great truth
in morals he has in it the key to his spiritual re-creation.
For the
individual, there is no such thing as theoretic truth; a great truth that is
not absorbed by our whole mind and life, and has not become an inseparable part
of our living, is not a real truth to us. If we know the truth and do not live
it, our life is—a lie.
In speech, the
man who makes Truth his watchword is careful in his words, he seeks to be
accurate, neither understating nor over-coloring. He never states as a fact
that of which he is not sure. What he says has the ring of sincerity, the
hallmark of pure gold. If he praises you, you accept his statement as “net,”
you do not have to work out a problem in mental arithmetic on the side to see
what discount you ought to make before you accept his judgment. His promise
counts for something, you accept it as being as good as his bond, you know that
no matter how much it may cost him to verify and fulfill his word by his deed,
he will do it. His honesty is not policy. The man who is honest merely because
it is “the best policy,” is not really honest, he is only politic. Usually such
a man would forsake his seeming loyalty to truth and would work overtime for
the devil—if he could get better terms.
Truth means
“that which one troweth or believes.” It is living simply and squarely by our
belief; it is the externalizing of a faith in a series of actions. Truth is
ever strong, courageous, virile, though kindly, gentle, calm, and restful.
There is a vital difference between error and untruthfulness. A man may be in
error and yet live bravely by it; he who is untruthful in his life knows the
truth but denies it. The one is loyal to what he believes, the other is traitor
to what he knows. “What is Truth?” Pilate’s great question, asked of Christ
nearly two thousand years ago, has echoed unanswered through the ages. We get
constant revelations of parts of it, glimpses of constantly new phases, but
never complete, final definition. If we but live up to the truth that we know,
and seek ever to know more, we have put ourselves into the spiritual attitude
of receptiveness to know Truth in the fullness of its power. Truth is the sun
of morality, and like that lesser sun in the heavens, we can walk by its light,
live in its warmth and life, even if we see but a small part of it and receive
but a microscopic fraction of its rays.
Which of the
great religions of the world is the real, the final, the absolute truth? We
must make our individual choice and live by it as best we can. Every new sect,
every new cult, has in it a grain of truth, at least; it is this that attracts
attention and wins adherents. This mustard seed of truth is often
overestimated, darkening the eyes of man to the untrue parts or phases of the
varying religious faiths. But, in exact proportion to the basic truth they
contain do religions last, become permanent and growing, and satisfy and
inspire the hearts of men. Mushrooms of error have a quick growth, but they
exhaust their vitality and die, while Truth still lives.
The man who
makes the acquisition of wealth the goal and ultimatum of his life, seeing it
as an end rather than a means to an end, is not true. Why does the world
usually make wealth the criterion of success, and riches the synonym of
attainment? Real success in life means the individual’s conquest of himself; it
means ”how he has bettered himself” not “how he has bettered his fortune.” The
great question of life is not “What have I?” but “What am I?”
Man is usually
loyal to what he most desires. The man who lies to save a nickel, merely
proclaims that he esteems a nickel more than he does his honor. He who
sacrifices his ideals, truth and character, for mere money or position, is
weighing his conscience in one pan of a scale against a bag of gold in the
other. He is loyal to what he finds the heavier, that which he desires the
more—the money. But this is not truth. Truth is the heart’s loyalty to abstract
right, made manifest in concrete instances.
The tradesman
who lies, cheats, misleads and overcharges and then seeks to square himself
with his anemic conscience by saying, “lying is absolutely necessary to
business,” is as untrue in his statement as he is in his acts. He justifies
himself with the petty defense as the thief who says it is necessary to steal
in order to live. The permanent business prosperity of an individual, a city or
a nation rests finally on commercial integrity alone, despite all that the
cynics may say, or all the exceptions whose temporary success may mislead them.
It is truth alone that lasts.
The politician
who is vacillating, temporizing, shifting, constantly trimming his sails to
catch every puff of wind of popularity, is a trickster who succeeds only until
he is found out. A lie may live for a time, truth for all time. A lie never
lives by its own vitality, it merely continues to exist because it simulates
truth. When it is unmasked, it dies. When each of four newspapers in one city
puts forth the claim that its circulation is larger than all the others
combined, there must be an error somewhere. Where there is untruth there is
always conflict, discrepancy, impossibility. If all the truths of life and
experience from the first second of time, or for any section of eternity, were
brought together, there would be perfect harmony, perfect accord, union and
unity, but if two lies come together, they quarrel and seek to destroy each
other.
It is in the
trifles of daily life that truth should be our constant guide and inspiration.
Truth is not a dress-suit, consecrated to special occasions, it is the strong,
well-woven, durable homespun for daily living.
The man who
forgets his promises is untrue. We rarely lose sight of those promises made to
us for our individual benefit; these we regard as checks we always seek to cash
at the earliest moment. “The miser never forgets where he hides his treasure,”
says one of the old philosophers. Let us cultivate that sterling honor that
holds our word so supreme, so sacred, that to forget it would seem a crime, to
deny it would be impossible. The man who says pleasant things and makes
promises which to him are light as air, but to someone else seem the rock upon
which a life’s hope is built is cruelly untrue. He who does not regard his
appointments, carelessly breaking them or ignoring them, is the thoughtless thief
of another’s time. It reveals selfishness, carelessness, and lax business
morals. It is untrue to the simplest justice of life.
Men who split
hairs with their conscience, who mislead others by deft, shrewd phrasing which
may be true in letter yet lying in spirit and designedly uttered to produce a
false impression, are untruthful in the most cowardly way. Such men would cheat
even in solitaire. Like murderers they forgive themselves their crime in
congratulating themselves on the cleverness of their alibi. The parent who
preaches honor to his child and gives false statistics about the child’s age to
the conductor, to save a nickel, is not true.
The man who
keeps his religion in camphor all week and who takes it out only on Sunday, is
not true. He who seeks to get the highest wages for the least possible amount
of service, is not true. The man who has to sing lullabies to his conscience
before he himself can sleep, is not true.
The power of
Truth, in its highest, purest, and most exalted phases, stands squarely on four
basic lines of relation,— the love of truth, the search for truth, faith in
truth, and work for truth.
The love of
Truth is the cultivated hunger for it in itself and for itself, without any
thought of what it may cost, what sacrifices it may entail, what theories or
beliefs of a lifetime may be laid desolate. In its supreme phase, this attitude
of life is rare, but unless one can begin to put himself into harmony
with this view, the individual will only creep in truth, when he might walk
bravely.
The man who has
a certain religious belief and fears to discuss it, lest it may be proved
wrong, is not loyal to his belief, he has but a coward’s faithfulness to his
prejudices. If he were a lover of truth, he would be willing at any moment to
surrender his belief for a higher, better, and truer faith.
The man who
votes the same ticket in politics, year after year, without caring for issues,
men, or problems, merely voting in a certain way because he always has voted
so, is sacrificing loyalty to truth to a weak, mistaken, stubborn attachment to
a wornout precedent. Such a man should stay in his cradle all his life—because
he spent his early years there.
The search for
Truth means that the individual must not merely follow truth as he sees it, but
he must, so far as he can, search to see that he is right. When the Kearsarge
was wrecked on the Roncador Reef, the captain was sailing correctly by his
chart. But his map was an old one; the sunken reef was not marked down. Loyalty
to back-number standards means stagnation. In China they plow today, but they
plow with the instrument of four thousand years ago. The search for truth is
the angel of progress—in civilization and in morals. While it makes us bold and
aggressive in our own life, it teaches us to be tender and sympathetic with
others. Their life may represent a station we have passed in our progress, or
one we must seek to reach. We can then congratulate ourselves without
condemning them. All the truths of the world are not concentrated in our creed.
All the sunshine of the world is not focused on our doorstep. We should ever
speak the truth,—but only in love and kindness. Truth should ever extend the
hand of love; never the hand clenching a bludgeon.
Faith in Truth
is an essential to perfect companionship with truth. The individual must have
perfect confidence and assurance of the final triumph of right, and order, and
justice, and believe that all things are evolving toward that divine
consummation, no matter how dark and dreary life may seem from day to day. No
real success, no lasting happiness can exist except it be founded on the rock
of truth. The prosperity that is based on lying, deception, and intrigue, is
only temporary—it cannot last any more than a mushroom can outlive an oak. Like
the blind Samson, struggling in the temple, the individual whose life is based
on trickery always pulls down the supporting columns of his own edifice, and
perishes in the ruins. No matter what price a man may pay for truth, he is
getting it at a bargain. The lying of others can never hurt us long, it always
carries with it our exoneration in the end.
Work for the
interests and advancement of Truth is a necessary part of real companionship.
If a man has a love of truth, if he searches to find it, and has faith in it,
even when he cannot find it, will he not work to spread it? The strongest way
for man to strengthen the power of truth in the world is to live it himself in
every detail of thought, word, and deed—to make himself a sun of personal
radiation of truth, and to let his silent influence speak for it and his direct
acts glorify it so far as he can in his sphere of life and action. Let him
first seek to be, before he seeks to teach or to do, in any line of
moral growth.
Let man realize that Truth is
essentially an intrinsic virtue, in his relation to himself even if
there were no other human being living; it becomes extrinsic as he
radiates it in his daily life. Truth is first, intellectual honesty—the craving
to know the right; second, it is moral honesty, the hunger to live the right.
By William
George Jordan; : Individual Problems and Possibilities, 1902
