He felt that he could not manifest otherwise
the feeling in him that was so deep. By sound or by silence, let it be
only the conviction of our heart we venture to offer to spirits before
whom the meaning of all things is unveiled!
But _private conversation_ is the great sphere of sympathetic lying. Our
antipathies doubtless often tempt to falsify. We stretch the truth,
trying, in private quarrels, to make out our case, or holding up our end
in party-controversies. Anger, malice, envy, and revenge make us often
break the ninth commandment. But concession, compromise, yielding to
others' influence, and indisposition to contradict those whom we love or
the world respects, generate more deceit than comes from all the evil
passions, which, as Sterne said of lust, are too serious to be
successful in cunning play. How it would mortify most persons to have
brought back to them at night exact accounts of the divers opinions they
have expressed to different persons, with facile conformity to the mood
of each one during the course of a single day! How the members of any
pleasant evening-company might astonish or amuse each other by narrating
together the contradictory views the same voluble discourser has
unfolded to them successively during the passage of one hour! so easily
we bend and conform, and deny God and ourselves, to gratify the guest we
converse with.
Pages:
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214