IT ALL DEPENDS.

Southland Times, Issue 17477, 5 April 1915, Page 4

IT ALL DEPENDS.

Wo are taught from our earliest years to love truth, and it is sometimes an excellent thing to love, but not always by any means. It all depends. Truth can bo brutal, and it can he base. It can be capable of stabbing innocence and of wrecking happiness. It can go about trampling people under its feet, and leaving a trail of agony behind it. Why should we love truth when it carries on like that? For our part, there are times when we have a feeling of hatred for Truth, and we turn with relief to Falsehood, for often it happens that Falsehood is our best friend. When we fly from Truth, shuddering with horror, it opens compassionate arms to receive us, and kisses away our fears. At such moments Falsehood is the true symbol of civilisation, and Truth is false to the heart. We could not live without Falsehood. It gives us so many of the graces of existence. From it we learn the whole art of politeness. Those delicate conventions which adorn our social intercourse are due to its promptings. So the morality that inculcates the love of Truth without reservation is no good to us, and wo laugh to scorn the indiscriminate condemnation of Falsehood. We have known Truth to behave like an unmitigated cad, and have seen it guilty of the most loathsome crimes. Wo can personally testify that Falsehood has given sanctuary to many a hunted soul, flying from TrutJi in terror, it all depends. Truth may be the vilest of mendacities, for it can falsify the kindly relations of humanity, and turn the blue of the heavens black. And Falsehood may be the highest of veracities, for it has power to set right that which was wrong, and make us live together as amicably as we ought to do. It seems to us, therefore, that we want a new system of ethics, one will refuse to call a thing true or false accordingly as it conforms or deviates from some unvarying standard of accuracy, but will take int > account the surrounding circumstances and the necessities of human happiness, and call that true which is conducive to the greatest good, and that false which carries mischief in its train. If that were done, what we now know as Truth' would often be execrated as a villainous lie; while Falsehood, so called in our ignorance, would

on occasion be honoured as a verity essential to our well-being. There Is no Truth that is always true. There is no Falsehood that is always false. It all depends.