o the gates of
Hades, who hides one thing in his heart and utters another;" and it
is the straightforward Achilles, rather than "the wily and shiftful
Ulysses," who is the admired hero of the Greeks.[3] Plato asserts, and
argues in proof of his assertion, that "the veritable lie ... is hated
by all gods and men." He includes in the term "veritable lie," or
"genuine lie," a lie in the soul as back of the spoken lie, and he
is sure that "the divine nature is incapable of a lie," and that in
proportion as the soul of a man is conformed to the divine image,
the man "will speak, act, and live in accordance with the truth."[4]
Aristotle, also, while recognizing different degrees of veracity,
insists that the man who is in his soul a lover of truth will be
truthful even when he is tempted to swerve from the truth. "For the
lover of truth, who is truthful where nothing is at stake [or where it
makes no difference], will yet more surely be truthful where there is
a stake [or where it does make a difference]; for he will [then] shun
the lie as shameful, since he shuns it simply because it is a lie."[5]
And, again, "Falsehood abstractly is bad and blamable, and truth
honorable and praiseworthy; and thus the truthful man being in
the mean is praiseworthy, while the false [in either extreme,
of overstating or of understating] are both blamable, but the
exaggerating man more so than the other."[6]

[Footnote 1: Mahaffy's _Social Life in Greece_, pp. 27, 123. See also
Fowler's _Principles of Morals_, II., 219-221.]

[Footnote 2: _Hist_., Bk. I., sec. 139.]

[Footnote 3: Professor Fowler seems to be quite forgetful of this
fact. He speaks of Ulysses as if he had precedence of Achilles in the
esteem of the Greeks. See his _Principles of Morals_, II., 219.]

[Footnote 4: Plato's _Republic_, II., 382, a, b.]

[Footnote 5: Aristotle's _Eth. Nic_., IV., 13, 1127, a, b.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., IV.]

Theognis recognizes this high ideal of the duty and the beauty of
truthfulness, when he says: "At first there is a small attractiveness
about a lie, but in the end the gain it brings is both shameful and
harmful. That man has no fair glory, in whose heart dwells a lie, and
from whose mouth it has once issued."[1]

[Footnote 1: Theognis, 607.]

Pindar looks toward the same standard when he says to Hiero,
"Forge thy tongue on the anvil of truth;"[1] and when he declares
emphatically, "I will not stain speech with a lie."[2] So, again, wh