3.15. A DILEMMA.
We are led by this discussion of secession straight between the horns of
a moral dilemma. We have come to two conclusions; to secede is a grave
sin, but to lie is also a grave sin.
But often the practical alternative is between futile secession or
implicit or actual falsehood. It has been the instinct of the aggressive
controversialist in all ages to seize upon collective organizations and
fence them about with oaths and declarations of such a nature as to bar
out anyone not of his own way of thinking. In a democracy, for example,
to take an extreme caricature of our case, a triumphant majority in
power, before allowing anyone to vote, might impose an oath whereby the
leader of the minority and all his aims were specifically renounced. And
if no country goes so far as that, nearly all countries and all churches
make some such restrictions upon opinion. The United States, that land
of abandoned and receding freedoms, imposes upon everyone who crosses
the Atlantic to its shores a childish ineffectual declaration against
anarchy and polygamy. None of these tests exclude the unhesitating liar,
but they do bar out many proud and honest minded people. They "fix" and
kill things that should be living and fluid; they are offences against
the mind of the race. How is a man then to behave towards these test
oaths and affirmations, towards repeating creeds, signing assent to
articles of religion and the like? Do not these unavoidable barriers to
public service, or religious work, stand on a special footing?
Personally I think they do.
I think that in most cases personal isolation and disuse is the greater
evil. I think if there is no other way to constructive service except
through test oaths and declarations, one must take then. This is a
particular case that stands apart from all other cases. The man who
preaches a sermon and pretends therein to any belief he does not truly
hold is an abominable scoundrel, but I do not think he need trouble his
soul very greatly about the barrier he stepped over to get into the
pulpit, if he felt the call to preach, so long as the preaching be
honest. A Republican who takes the oath of allegiance to the King and
wears his uniform is in a similar case. These things stand apart; they
are so formal as to be scarcely more reprehensible than the falsehood of
calling a correspondent "Dear," or asking a tiresome lady to whom one is
being kind and civil, for the pleasure of dancing with her. We ought to
do what we can to abolish these absurd barriers and petty falsehoods,
but we ought not to commit a social suicide against them.
That is how I think and feel in this matter, but if a man sees the
matter more gravely, if his conscience tells him relentlessly and
uncompromisingly, "this is a lie," then it is a lie and he must not be
guilty of it. But then I think it ill becomes him to be silently
excluded. His work is to clamour against the existence of the barrier
that wastes him.
I do not see that lying is a fundamental sin. In the first place some
lying, that is to say some unavoidable inaccuracy of statement, is
necessary to nearly everything we do, and the truest statement becomes
false if we forget or alter the angle at which it is made, the direction
in which it points. In the next the really fundamental and most
generalized sin is self-isolation. Lying is a sin only because
self-isolation is a sin, because it is an effectual way of cutting
oneself off from human co-operation. That is why there is no sin in
telling a fairy tale to a child. But telling the truth when it will be
misunderstood is no whit better than lying; silences are often blacker
than any lies. I class secrets with lies and cannot comprehend the moral
standards that exonerate secrecy in human affairs.
To all these things one must bring a personal conscience and be prepared
to examine particular cases. The excuses I have made, for example, for a
very broad churchman to stay in the Church might very well be twisted
into an excuse for taking an oath in something one did not to the
slightest extent believe, in order to enter and betray some organization
to which one was violently hostile. I admit that there may be every
gradation between these two things. The individual must examine his
special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility
of co-operation. I do not see how there can be a general rule. I have
already shown why in my own case I hesitate to profess a belief in God,
because, I think, the misleading element in that profession would
outweigh the advantage of sympathy and confidence gained.
