As to Polite Lying.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 936, 7 February 1890, Page 4

As to Polite Lying.

Some of the English people welcome Bishop Huntington’s appeal for truthfulness, by which he means the abandonment of what he considers the fictions of polite society. It is propable that we shall hear of a truthtelling society on the other side, the m ei b* bers of which will be pledged upt to say * not at home ’ wfien they do nqt wish to sea a caller, or i charmed to see you ■ when they do not want to see you, or ‘ do call again 1 when they dp not want you to call—persons who will pledge themselves to tell the plain and exact truth at all times. Such a society, we can believe, would break up'in a row in a month. The members would hate each other and a black eye or a bloody nose might be a proper badge of membership. We should like to see Bishop Huntington himself undertake to tell the naked truth, only, on all occasions. We can imagine one of his sermons beginning : ‘ My gelfishmostly and 3e»p;c a ‘ble hearers—l §h<?Vlld ’‘Ae to call your attention to my text, but I know most of you aye ihjnkihg about other matters apdf that s£u "dad'not Gorge heye tft learn pietyy buFrAthe.r to show souV good clothes and' maintain' a social position.' 1 - Only Ruskin is allowed to apeak with such brutal fraDkhess. Thsse social fictions, which are not, after all, fictions, are necessary to tolerable 'exists ence. Politeness‘is not lying, ssjy that you are charmed to, sea s person whom you dp. noy like personally and whom you had rather not see, is to use a phrase 'which meads that the' social institutions compel you to be charmed to the extent of words. To say that you are ‘not at home ’ when in fact you are at home, ii not to lie, ‘At home ’ has oome to mean visibility, simply. No matter what these words may have

meant, in the social world they mean only that you are not visible and the change of meaning is due to tho goodness of the human heart, to kindly consideration for others’ fee ings. What Bishop Huntington calls a lie is eimply a phraseology, a form of words, meaning and understood as meaning the acknowledgment of a social, a human obligation. Jt is amiable. Since we are not yet in that noble condition where we can jsincerely feel fraternity with all mankind, in which we can be really pleased to meet whoever has a human form, it is necessarv and admirable that we should at least adopt the forms of expression that belong to that nobler state. A palace of truth would be a pig-sty in the present imperfection of mankind, if by truth we mean a disregard of those forms of intercourse which imply kindliness which we are not always able to feel.