is, at best,
but a feeble passion and therefore to be treated with the care due an
invalid. It is impossible to be quite candid in conversation with a
man; and with a woman it is absolutely necessary that your speech
should be candied.

"Truth, then, is the least desirable of acquaintances.

"But even if one wished to know the truth, the desire could scarcely
be fulfilled. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, a prominent lawyer of
Elizabeth's time, who would have written Shakespeare's plays had his
other occupations not prevented it, quotes Pilate as inquiring, 'What
is Truth?'--and then not staying for an answer. Pilate deserves all
the praise he has never received. Nothing is quite true. Even Truth
lies at the bottom of a well and not infrequently in other places. No
assertion is one whit truer than its opposite."

A mild buzz of protest rose about him. Kennaston smiled and cocked his
head on one side.

"We have, for example," he pointed out, "a large number of proverbs,
the small coin of conversation, received everywhere, whose value no
one disputes. They are rapped forth, like an oath, with an air of
settling the question once and forever. Well! there is safety in
quotations. But even the Devil can cite Shakespeare for his purpose.
'Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day' agrees ill with
'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof'; and it is somewhat
difficult to reconcile 'Take care of the pence, and the pounds will
take care of themselves' with the equally familiar 'Penny-wise,
pound-foolish.' Yet the sayings are equally untrue; any maxim is,
perforce, a general statement, and therefore fallacious, and therefore
universally accepted. Art is long, and life is short, but the
platitudes concerning them are both insufferable and eternal. We must
remember that a general statement is merely a snap-shot at flying
truth, an instantaneous photograph of a moving body. It may be the way
that a thing is; but it is never the way in which any one ever saw
that thing, or ever will. This is, of course, a general statement.

"As to present events, then, it may be assumed that no one is either
capable or desirous of speaking the truth; why, then, make such
a pother about it as to the past? There we have carried the
investigation of truth to such an extreme that nowadays very few of us
dare believe anything. Opinions are difficult to secure when a quarter
of an hour in the library will prove either side of any question.