elves with the subsequent
consciousness of cowardice or lack of self-respect. And hence,
whatever inconvenience or annoyance it may cost them, they tell the
naked truth, rather than stand convicted to themselves of a want of
courage or dignity."

[Footnote 1: _Principles of Morals_, II., 159-161.]

"Veracity, though this was by no means always the case," Professor
Fowler continues, "has become the point of honor in the upper ranks of
modern civilized societies, and hence it is invested with a sanctity
which seems to attach to no other virtue; and to the uninstructed
conscience of the unreflective man, the duty of telling the truth
appears, of all duties, to be the only duty which never admits of
any exceptions, from the unavoidable conflict with other duties."
He ranges the moral sense of the "upper ranks of modern civilized
societies," and "the uninstructed conscience of the unreflective man,"
against any tolerance of the "lie of necessity," leaving only the
locality of Muhammad's coffin for those who are arrayed against the
rigid moralists on this question.

While he admits the theoretical possibility of the "lie of necessity,"
Professor Fowler concludes as to its practical expediency: "Without
maintaining that there are no conceivable circumstances under which a
man will be justified in committing a breach of veracity, it may at
least be said that, in the lives of most men, there is no case likely
to occur in which the greater social good would not be attained by the
observation of the general rule to tell the truth, rather than by the
recognition of an exception in favor of a lie, even though that lie
were told for purely benevolent reasons." That is nearer right than
the conclusions of many an inconsistent intuitionist!

Leslie Stephen, a consistent agnostic, and a believer in the slow
evolution of morals, in his "Science of Ethics,"[1] naturally holds,
like Herbert Spencer, to the gradual development of the custom of
truthfulness, as a necessity of society.[2] The moral sense of
primitive man, as he sees it, might seem to justify falsehood to an
_enemy_, rather than, as Rothe and Smyth would claim, to those who are
_wards of love_. In illustration of this he says: "The obligation to
truthfulness is [primarily] limited to relations with members of the
same tribe or state; and, more generally, it is curious to observe how
a kind of local or special morality is often developed in regard to
this virtue. The schoo