Christopher Morley on Truth

Collecting the short stories in the anthology Nothing But the Truth got us to thinking about the topic,  and this short essay from Christopher's Morley's "Mince Pie" (1918) is a real gem:


"Our mind is dreadfully active sometimes, and the other day we began to speculate on Truth.

Our friends are still avoiding us.

Every man knows what Truth is, but it is impossible to utter it. The face of your listener, his eyes mirthful or sorry, his eager expectance or his churlish disdain insensibly distort your message. You find yourself saying what you know he expects you to say, or (more often) what he expects you not to say. You may not be aware of this, but that is what happens. In order that the world may go on and human beings thrive, nature has contrived that the Truth may not often be uttered.

And how is one to know what is Truth? He thinks one thing before lunch; after a stirring bout with corned beef and onions the shining vision is strangely altered. Which is Truth?

Truth can only be attained by those whose systems are untainted by secret influences, such as love, envy, ambition, food, college education and moonlight in spring.

If a man lived in a desert for six months without food, drink or companionship he would be reasonably free from prejudice and would be in a condition to enunciate great truths.

But even then his vision of reality would have been warped by so much sand and so many sunsets.

Even if he survived and brought us his Truth with all the gravity and long night-gown of a Hindu faker, as soon as any one listened to him his message would no longer be Truth. The complexion of his audience, the very shape of their noses, would subtly undermine his magnificent aloofness.

Women have learned the secret. Truth must never be uttered, and never be listened to.

Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.

Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay.

All the above is probably untrue."

Aldous Huxley -- Part I

I have been reading and re-reading Aldous Huxley this past month or so, and so much of what he wrote has bearing on truth -- and lies.  More to come, but here are some samples:

"An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie."
Aldous Huxley

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
Aldous Huxley

"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations."
Aldous Huxley

"Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors."
Aldous Huxley

"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know."
Aldous Huxley

"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them."
Aldous Huxley

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
Aldous Huxley

Voters think even our first president lied - latimes.com

Voters think even our first president lied - latimes.com

" . . .maybe recent data just show that today's disgust with Washington (the town, not the man) is starting to affect the reputation of earlier giants. Either way, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 74% of voters think the father of our country lied while in office."

 As I have been editing these anthologies it has reinforced a belief that the stories we tell -- to ourselves, to each other, to school children -- are as much about the world as we want it to be as they are about the world as it is. The story about George Washington and the cherry tree ("I cannot tell a lie, father -- I cut it down with my little hatchet") was invented by Parson (Mason Locke) Weems out of whole cloth but it illustrated something that we wanted and that we needed to believe: that our founders, that our leaders were incorruptible. So what does it mean when we no longer believe that story?

Perhaps it signifies that we no longer believe honesty is important, or that it is unattainable. Perhaps it means that we believe that power inevitably corrupts and we are naive to think otherwise. It could also be that we want to have leaders with feet of clay to justify our own shortcomings: even Honest Abe told a whopper on occasion, right? The key is that this poll doesn't reflect a change in attitudes towards Washington and Lincoln: it represents a change in our attitudes about truth.