For truth and tenderness are not, after all, incompatible; but
whoever is falsely fond alone proves himself in the end harsh and rough.
The sympathetic lie is of all things most unsympathetic, smoothing and
stroking the surface to haunt and kill at the very centre and core. The
proclamation from the house-top of what is told in the ear in closets
will give more pain than if it were fairly published at first. There is
a distinction here to be noted. All truth, or rather all matter of fact,
does not, of course, belong to everybody. There are private and domestic
secrets, whose promulgation, by no law of duty required, would make the
streets of every city and village run with blood. There is a style of
speaking, miscalled sincerity, which in mere tattling and tale-bearing,
minding others' business, interfering with their relations,
impertinently meddling with cases we can neither settle nor understand,
and eating over again the forbidden fruit of that tree of knowledge of
good and evil planted in the Garden of Eden, whose seed has been
scattered through the earth, though having less to do with truth than
with the falsehood, to promulgate which artful and malicious combination
of facts is one of the Devil's most skilful means, while truth is always
no mere fact or circumstance, but a spirit.
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