ople by
leading them to suppose that both his legs are genuine--while it would be
wrong; for him to assert in words that this limb was not an artificial one.
It is right to put a chalk egg in a hen's nest to deceive the hen, when, if
the hen could understand language, and if we were to suppose hens "to have
any rights that we are bound to respect," it would be wrong to _tell_ her
that it was a real egg. It would be right for a person, when his house
was entered by a robber at night, to point an empty gun at the robber to
frighten him away by leading him to think that the gun was loaded; but it
would be wrong, as I think--though I am aware that many persons would think
differently--for him to say in words that the gun was loaded, and that he
would fire unless the robber went away. These cases show that there is a
great difference between deceiving by false appearances, which is sometimes
right, and doing it by false statements, which, as I think, is always
wrong. There is a special and inviolable sacredness, which every lover of
the truth should attach to his spoken word.

5. We must not allow the leniency with which, according to the views here
presented, we are to regard the violations of truth by young persons,
while their mental faculties and their powers of discrimination are yet
imperfectly developed, to lead us to lower the standard of right in their
minds, so as to allow them to imbibe the idea that we think that falsehood
is, after all, no great sin, and still less, to suppose that we consider it
sometimes, in extreme cases, allowable. We may, indeed, say, "The truth is
not to be spoken at all times," but to make the aphorism complete we must
add, that _falsehood_ is to be spoken _never_. There is no other possible
ground for absolute confidence in the word of any man except the conviction
that his principle is, that it is _never, under any circumstances, or to
accomplish any purpose whatever,_ right for him to falsify it.

A different opinion, I am aware, prevails very extensively among mankind,
and especially among the continental nations of Europe, where it seems to
be very generally believed that in those cases in which falsehood will on
the whole be conducive of greater good than the truth it is allowable to
employ it. But it is easy to see that, so far as we know that those around
us hold to this philosophy, all reasonable ground for confidence in
their statements is taken away; for we never can know, in re