netrating
interpretation of one of the most amazing pieces of self-revelation in
the annals of literature._

TRUTH OF INTERCOURSE

Among sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly false upon
the face of them for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject
which is accidentally combined with error, one of the grossest and
broadest conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the
truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth
is one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered.
Even with instruments specially contrived for such a purpose--with a
foot rule, a level, or a theodolite--it is not easy to be exact; it is
easier, alas! to be inexact. From those who mark the divisions on a
scale to those who measure the boundaries of empires or the distance of
the heavenly stars, it is by careful method and minute, unwearying
attention that men rise even to material exactness or to sure knowledge
even of external and constant things. But it is easier to draw the
outline of a mountain than the changing appearance of a face; and truth
in human relations is of this more intangible and dubious order: hard
to seize, harder to communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose,
colloquial sense--not to say that I have been in Malabar when as a
matter of fact I was never out of England, not to say that I have read
Cervantes in the original when as a matter of fact I know not one
syllable of Spanish--this, indeed, is easy and to the same degree
unimportant in itself. Lies of this sort, according to circumstances,
may or may not be important; in a certain sense even they may or may
not be false. The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live
truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a
formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie--heart and
face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons
intimacy. And, _vice versa_, veracity to sentiment, truth in a
relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or
falsify emotion--that is the truth which makes love possible and
mankind happy.

_L'art de bien dire_ is but a drawing-room accomplishment unless it be
pressed into the service of the truth. The difficulty of literature is
not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader,
but to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood
in the case of books or set ora