idered
as a moral being singly (owed to the humanity subsisting in his
person), is a departure from truth, or lying."[1] And when a man
like Fichte,[2] whom Carlyle characterizes as "that cold, colossal,
adamantine spirit, standing erect like a Cato Major among degenerate
men; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed
of beauty and virtue in the groves of Academe," declares that no
measure of evil results from truth-speaking would induce him to tell a
lie, a certain moral weight attaches to his testimony. And so with
all the other philosophers. No attempt at exhaustiveness in their
treatment is made in this work. But the fullest force of any fresh
argument made by them in favor of occasional lying is recognized so
far as it is known.

[Footnote 1: See Semple's _Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics_, p. 267.]

[Footnote 2: See Martensen's _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, sec. 97.]

One common misquotation from a well-known philosopher, in this line,
is, however, sufficiently noteworthy for special mention here. Jacobi,
in his intense theism, protests against the unqualified idealism of
Fichte, and the indefinite naturalism of Schelling; and, in his famous
Letter to Fichte,[1] he says vehemently: "But the Good what is it?
I have no answer if there be no God. As to me, this world of
phenomena--if it have all its truth in these phenomena, and no more
profound significance, if it have nothing beyond itself to reveal
to me--becomes a repulsive phantom, in whose presence I curse the
consciousness which has called it into existence, and I invoke against
it annihilation as a deity. Even so, also, everything that I call
good, beautiful, and sacred, turns to a chimera, disturbing my spirit,
and rending the heart out of my bosom, as soon as I assume that it
stands not in me as a relation to a higher, real Being,--not a mere
resemblance or copy of it in me;--when, in fine, I have within me an
empty and fictitious consciousness only. I admit also that I know
nothing of 'the Good _per se_,' or 'the True _per se_,' that I even
have nothing but a vague notion of what such terms stand for. I
declare that it revolts me when people seek to obtrude upon me the
Will which wills nothing, this empty nut of independence and freedom
in absolute indifference, and accuse me of atheism, the true and
proper godlessness, because I show reluctance to accept it."

[Footnote 1: F.H. Jacobi's _Werke_, IIIter Band, pp. 36-38.]

Insisti