fit by misleading.

Another ground, taken in defending certain untruths, _ex justa
causa_, as if not lies, is that veracity is for the sake of society,
and, if in no case we might lawfully mislead others, we should
actually be doing society great harm.

Another mode of verbal misleading is equivocation or a play upon
words; and it is defended on the view that to lie is to use words in
a sense which they will not bear. But an equivocator uses them in a
received sense, though there is another received sense, and
therefore, according to this definition, he does not lie.

Others say that all equivocations are, after all, a kind of lying,
faint lies or awkward lies, but still lies; and some of these
disputants infer, that therefore we must not equivocate, and others
that equivocation is but a half measure, and that it is better to say
at once that in certain cases untruths are not lies.

Others will try to distinguish between evasions and equivocations;
but they will be answered, that, though there are evasions which are
clearly not equivocations, yet that it is difficult scientifically to
draw the line between them.

To these must be added the unscientific way of dealing with lies,
viz. that on a great or cruel occasion a man cannot help telling a
lie, and he would not be a man, did he not tell it, but still it is
wrong and he ought not to do it, and he must trust that the sin will
be forgiven him, though he goes about to commit it. It is a frailty,
and had better not be anticipated, and not thought of again, after
it is once over. This view cannot for a moment be defended, but, I
suppose, it is very common.

And now I think the historical course of thought upon the matter has
been this: the Greek Fathers thought that, when there was a _justa
causa_, an untruth need not be a lie. St. Augustine took another
view, though with great misgiving; and, whether he is rightly
interpreted or not, is the doctor of the great and common view that
all untruths are lies, and that there can be _no_ just cause of
untruth. In these later times, this doctrine has been found difficult
to work, and it has been largely taught that, though all untruths are
lies, yet that certain equivocations, when there is a just cause, are
not untruths.

Further, there have been and all along through these later ages,
other schools, running parallel with the above mentioned, one of
which says that equivocations, etc. after all _are_ lies, and another