Your ShelfYour Projects

The Plight of the Liar

3%

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 27, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 21.

Read the full edition

The Plight of the Liar

By Orison Swett Marden

The moment we attempt to express that which is not true, we are crippled, for we are doing an unnatural thing, and are not reenforced by the consent of all our faculties. The best thing in us, the divine thing, protests against the false.
No man can be really strong when in the wrong. Everything within rebukes him; everything tells him of his cowardice. Truth is man's normal state; deception is a cultivated, abnormal thing. There is no substitute for the right. Cunning can not take its place, nor can education. A person may have great ability and a college education; but if he does not ring true, if there is any evidence of counterfeit about him, he never gets our confidence, our order, our business, or our patronage.
There is always a question-mark in our minds when we have dealings with a man who is not perfectly honest. We are not sure of him. On the other hand, a person may lack education, culture, even refinement; but if he has an honest heart, if he rings true every time, we believe in him, we trust him.
No man can look honest, and long give the impression of honesty, when he is a habitual scoundrel. It is only a question of time when something will happen to tear off his mask and reveal the real man.
Just look at the man who has practised deceit and lying all his life. There is not a line of truth in his face. His very expression is false. He radiates dishonesty from every pore. He may attempt to deceive with his smooth, honeyed diplomacy, but we instinctively feel that he is a liar in every part of his being.
It does not matter how he tries to cover up his rottenness by appearances of respectability, his clothes, his money; he can not long continue to cheat the heart. What he says about himself contradicts what we feel.
A perfectly truthful man regards his honor first; his interest comes later. Truth is everything to him. Justice must be done, no matter if it goes against his own interests.
Man is constructed along the lines of truth, and he can not violate his nature without showing it by the loss of the best thing in him. The liar's deception destroys his self-respect, and with it goes his confidence; and what can a man accomplish who can not respect himself or believe in himself?
Why is it that a single man without wealth or position has so often exerted marvelous power in the world?—Simply because he was supported by principle; because one man with the right is always a majority, and can stand against the world for principle—is invincible. One man in the right has often been more than a match for tens of thousands in the wrong.
This was what made Lincoln such a giant. He always stood for truth and justice. He believed what he said, and he knew that the very structure of the universe was backing him.
He would never take a case unless he believed that his side was in the right. He knew that the advocate on the other side would always be placed at a disadvantage by trying to make others believe what he did not believe himself; that he would be weak at best, no matter how great an orator he might be. Lincoln knew there was something backing him that was greater than oratory, mightier than words, and which multiplied his natural ability a thousandfold.
Right speaks with the force of law. The world listens when truth speaks through a man like Lincoln, who was entrenched in principle, backed by the right. Not all of the mighty force which made him a giant among his fellows was generated in his own brain. There was a power back of him loaned from justice, from right, which made him invincible; a power which all men forfeit the moment they forsake truth, principle.
When a man feels that he is buttressed by the right, entrenched in truth, he does not feel weak, altho the whole world may be against him. He feels the everlasting arm about him, because he knows that nothing can stand against principle, nothing can be so mighty as the right.
One of the mysteries of the ages has been the marvel of men going to the stake smiling, without a tremor, standing calm and serene while the flames were licking the flesh from their bones. They were supported by a power back of the flesh, but not of it; by the conviction that they were in the right. They did not feel alone or weak, for they were entrenched in eternal principle. They believed that they were protected by the Almighty, and nothing could shake their confidence or disturb their faith. Their exalted mental condition lifted them even above the pain of physical torture.
The man who goes through the world sailing under false colors, trying to make black appear white, will always have a hard time of it. Nobody will long believe him, no matter how smooth his tongue, how long-headed or cunning he may be. Things are so planned that if a man is ever to get very far or to accomplish very much in this world, he must be honest; for the whole structure of natural law is pledged to defeat the lie, the sham. Only the right, ultimately, can succeed.
What would you think of a man who tries to defeat the laws of mathematics? He is a bigger fool who tries to get ahead of right, tries to defeat justice by lying and deceit. No man ever yet got around God, good, justice, right. It is true a man may get something in the wrong—so may a thief. But the wrong always defeats itself, because it has no principle in it. A man in the wrong is out of place, for the same reason that discord is out of place in the presence of harmony.
Not long since, nine students were suspended at Brown University for cribbing in their examinations. A great many well-intentioned students lie by cribbing in all sorts of ways in their recitations and examinations. They put formulae and figures and suggestions and all sorts of helps upon their cuffs and shirt bosoms, finger nails and paper rolls, to help them during their recitations or examinations, thus laying foundations for future forms of deceit and dishonesty on a large scale, which may ultimately ruin them.
Many prosperous business men who are very conscientious about telling verbal lies are consummate liars in the deceits they work into their manufactures, their commodities. I know a man who is always talking to his sons about telling the truth, yet he has for nearly half a century been selling lies in his store—boxes of lies, barrels of lies, lies in “foreign” silks made in New Jersey, and all sorts of “imported” articles.
American liars in high places have recently had the flash-light of public scrutiny turned upon them. Men who not long ago stood high in the American regard are worse than nobodies to-day, for they are despised by their fellow men.
Does it pay to sell one's birthright for a little mess of pottage?
Veracity to a man should be as priceless as virtue to a woman. When he has lost truthfulness and the reputation for it, he is a burned-out man, a mere shell, like one of our great sky-scrapers gutted by fire.
Can any amount of money or any temporary satisfaction compensate for the contempt of one's better self, for the awful isolation which one feels when condemned by his fellow men and exiled from his own self-respect because of his own self-inflicted infamy? Money and all the luxuries and splendor which it can purchase are powerless to bring happiness to a soul self-condemned.
Think of the terrible suffering which must come to Dr. Cook, if he is sane, for having deceived the whole world! When Aristotle was asked what a person would gain by telling a falsehood he replied, “Not to be credited when he shall tell the truth.” Is it not a pitiable sight, a most lamentable thing, when a man who is supposed to represent the highest state of the world's civilization should propose to call upon a semisavage Eskimo to convince his fellow men that he is telling the truth?
Think of the position of this man, who, but a few months ago, received the plaudits of men all over the world, but who is now the butt of ridicule, the subject of jest and caricature in the press the world over! Wherever Dr. Cook goes, he will meet with the contempt of the world. Whichever way he turns, he can not escape his worst accuser, which is within him, and which is constantly upbraiding him for selling out the best thing in him for the sake of three months of admiration and the divided worship of mankind.
When a man turns traitor to himself, there is no power in wealth or fame to still the accuser within which is ever reminding him of his infamy and taunting him for his treason against himself.
Does it pay to take such chances with one's reputation? Nothing can compensatethe lily for a smirch upon its whiteness; nothing can compensate the rose for the loss of its perfume and beauty.
What is a man good for when the best thing in him is rotten, when all that makes him a man, all that marks him from the brute, is decayed?
The time will come when the liar will be despised and ostracized by all decent people. The liar is a mere burlesque of a man, a perverted human being. We might as well call a composition full of discordant notes, played on an instrument jangled out of tune, by the name of music, as to call him a man who has violated the fundamental principles of his God-given nature. Just in proportion as a man departs from the law on which he was made—truth—he approaches the brute, and should be so classified by all decent people. Is there a sadder sight in America to-day than that of so many young men gambling with their reputations, taking chances with their good names, for the sake of a few more dollars or a little notoriety, with as little thought as they would bet on a race-horse?
What use is a fortune so gained that wherever the owner goes he will be pointed out as a man who has “sold out”—sold out his honor, his good name, his friends—everything that a manly man holds dear?—Orison Swett Marden.