lity to result in false impressions on the
minds of those who have no right to an opinion in the case.

While a man would be justified in concealing, without falsehood, the
fact of a bodily lack or infirmity on his part which concerned himself
alone, he would not be justified in concealing the fact that he was
sick of a contagious disease, or that his house was infected by
a disease that might be given to a caller there. Nor would he be
justified in concealing a defect in a horse or a cow in order to
deceive a man into the purchase of that animal as a sound one, any
more than he would be justified in slightly covering an opening in the
ground before his house, so as to deceive a disagreeable visitor into
stumbling into that hole.

It would be altogether proper for a man with a bald head to conceal
his baldness from the general public by a well-constructed wig. It
would likewise be proper for him to wear a wig in order to guard his
shining pate against flies while at church in July, or against danger
from pneumonia in January, even though wide-awake children in the
neighboring pews deceived themselves into thinking that he had a fine
head of natural hair. But if that man were to wear that wig for the
purpose of deceiving a young woman, whom he wished to marry, as to his
age and as to his freedom from bodily defects, it would be quite a
different matter. Concealment for the mere purpose of concealment may
be, not only justifiable, but a duty. Concealment for the purpose of
deception is never justifiable.

It would seem that this is the principle on which God acts with
reference to both the material and the moral universe. He conceals
facts, with the result that many a man is self-deceived, in his
ignorance, as to the size of the stars, and the cause of eclipses, and
the processes of nature, and the consequences of conduct, in many an
important particular. But man, and not God, is responsible for man's
self-deception concerning points at which man can make no claim to a
right to know all the truth.

It is true that this distinction is a delicate one, but it is a
distinction none the less real on that account. A moral line, like a
mathematical line, has length, but neither breadth nor thickness.
And the line that separates a justifiable concealment which causes
self-deception on the part of those who are not entitled to know the
whole truth in the matter, and the deliberate concealment of truth for
the specific purpose