ons. He stands on a safe platform to begin with; but
he is an unsafe guide when he walks away from it. His arguments in
this case are an illustration of his own declaration: "An adept in
logic may be a very poor reasoner."

Dr. Thornwell's "Discourses on Truth"[1] are a thorough treatment of
the obligation of veracity and the sin of lying. He is clear in his
definitions, marking the distinction between rightful concealment as
concealment, and concealment for the purpose of deception. "There are
things which men have a right to keep secret," he says, "and if a
prurient curiosity prompts others officiously to pry into them, there
is nothing criminal or dishonest in refusing to minister to such
a spirit. Our silence or evasive answers may have the effect of
misleading. That is not our fault, as it was not our design. Our
purpose was simply to leave the inquirer as nearly as possible in the
state of ignorance in which we found him: it was not to misinform him,
but not to inform him at all.

[Footnote 1: In Thornwell's _Collected Writings_, II., 451-613.]

"'Every man,' says Dr. Dick, 'has not a right to hear the truth when
he chooses to demand it. We are not bound to answer every question
which may be proposed to us. In such cases we may be silent, or we may
give as much information as we please, and suppress the rest. If the
person afterward discover that the information was partial, he has no
title to complain, because he had no right even to what he obtained;
and we are not guilty of a falsehood unless we made him believe, by
something which we said, that the information was complete.'" "The
_intention_ of the speaker, and the _effect_ consequent upon it, are
very different things."

Dr. Thornwell recognizes the fact that the moral sense of humanity
discerns the invariable superiority of truth over falsehood. "If we
place virtue in sentiment," he says, "there is nothing, according to
the confession of all mankind, more beautiful and lovely than truth,
more ugly and hateful than a lie. If we place it in calculations of
expediency, nothing, on the one hand, is more conspicuously useful
than truth and the confidence it inspires; nothing, on the other, more
disastrous than falsehood, treachery, and distrust. If there be then a
moral principle to which, in every form, humanity has given utterance,
it is the obligation of veracity." "No man ever tells a lie without a
certain degree of violence to his nature."

Dr. Thornw